In 1619, Daniel Sennert crouched over a low furnace in his cloistered laboratory at the University of Wittenberg. The air was still and stifling. Though the room was packed, no one said a word. Instead, the several dozen learned men who had crammed themselves into the small space stared at a little white crucible as Sennert removed it from the flames. He tipped out the contents and a delicate stream of molten silver ran from the crucible to collect in an earthenware bowl.

Gasps filled the air. Such a thing wasn't supposed to be possible. Chills ran down the spine of every man in that room, even Sennert himself. For he knew, in that moment, the world had changed forever.¹

The State of Sennert's Science

In the days before Newton, Boyle, Kepler, and others remade the process of scientific inquiry, humanity's understanding of nature and our scientific methods were markedly different. The writings of Aristotle formed the foundations of natural knowledge and the workings of matter were explained by the qualities imparted by abstract Forms, rather than the formulation and arrangement of physical atoms.

Sennerts procedure — Photo credit: Google Books

From our vantage now, it might seem strange, but the Aristotelean scholars of the time were quite comfortable with their theory's ability to explain the natural world. While their understanding of nature was changing over time (as does ours), it had stood for centuries and they had little empirical evidence that anything was terribly awry.

That is, until the discovery of the mineral acids.

Nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acid were discovered gradually during the middle ages with the first (known as aqua fortis) discovered around 1300 C.E.

Before the use and widespread adoption of the mineral acids in scientific inquiry, it was understood that all materials underwent the same general process: what Aristotle called Corruption and Generation.

Broadly speaking, nature itself generated all primary materials from the four Aristotelean Elements (sometimes five) and then either Nature (or God) imparted that matter with Forms, which determined the perceivable qualities of the matter. Trees were generated (grew) from the earth, then died or were cut down in the process of corruption that resulted in wood, corrupted further to rot and earth, or ash and smoke (depending on the method). The specifics aren't important here. What is important is that Scholastic...

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