9. Ibid., bk. 20, secs. 33, 73, 87, respectively.
10. Placita Philosophorum [falsely attributed to Plutarch, actually by another writer, based on a work by Aetius, ca. 50 BCE, as noted by Theodoret], Peri tōn areskontōn philosophois physikōn dogmatōn [and falsely attributed to Qustā ibn Lūqā by Ibn al-Nadīm], in Hans Daiber, ed., Aetius Arabus: Die Vorsokratiker in Arabischer Überlieferung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980), 133, trans. Martínez.
11. Heraclides Ponticus (ca. 387 to 312 BCE) as paraphrased by Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers [ca. 225 CE], trans. C. D. Yonge, bk. 8, Life of Pythagoras (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), sec. 4.
12. Auriferae Artis, quam Chemiam Vocant, Antiquissimi Authores, sive Turba Philosophorum (Convention of Philosophers) (Basel, 1572), dictums 13, 49, 32, trans. Martínez. The Arabic manuscript seems to date from about 900 CE, as shown by Martin Plessner, and it partly derives from Greek sources. See E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957), 82–83.
13. In addition, some alchemical texts that noted that Pythagoras knew the secret of transmutation are the following. Johann Siebmacher noted that after Hermes Trismegistus, the second sage to know the secret art “aside from those in Holy Scripture” was Pythagoras. See Johann Ambrosius Siebmacher, Wasserstein der Weysen das ist, ein chymisch Tractätlein, darin der Weg gezeiget, die Materia genennet, und der Process beschrieben wird, zu dem hohen geheymnuss der Universal Tinctur zukommen (Water-stone of the Wise) (Frankfurt: Lucas Jennis, 1619), pt. 1. Wasserstein der Weysen was reprinted for decades. For the Latin translation, see Musaeum Hermeticum (Frankfurt: L. Jennisii, 1625). See also Jean Jacques Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa (Geneva: Sumpt. Choet, G. De Tournes, Cramer, Perachon, Ritter, & S. De Tournes, 1702); Hermetisches A. B. C. derer ächten Weisen alter und neuer Zeiten vom Stein der Weisen (Berlin: Christian Ulrich Ringmacher, 1778). Like Siebermacher, Johann Grasshof claimed that against the envious, Pythagoras described the one substance as “the one and true Matter”: Hermannus Condeesyanus [Grashhof], Dyas Chymica Tripartita, Das ist: Sechs Herrliche Teutsche (Frankfurt am Main: Luca Jennis, 1625). Also, a medieval sonnet claimed, “This is the stone blessed and great, of which spoke Hermes and Gratiano, Elit, Rosir, Pandolfo and Ortolano, Pythagoras with all of his sect.” Codex Riccardiano N. 946 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence), in Mario Mazzoni, ed., Sonetti Alchemici-Ermetici di Frate Elia e Cecco d'Ascoli (San Gimignano, Tuscany: Casa Editrice Toscana, 1930).
14. Johannes Kepler, Harmonices Mundi, Libri V (Lincii Austriae: Godofredi Tambachii, 1619), bk. 3, in Joannis Kepler, Astonomi Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ed. C. Frisch (Frankfurt: Heyder & Zimmer, 1864), 132: “quin aut Pythagoras hermetiset, aut Hermes pythagoriset.”
15. For example, historian David Lindberg notes, “Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) reported that Pythagoras traveled to Egypt, where he was introduced by priests to the mysteries of Egyptian mathematics.” See David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 12.
16. Isocrates, Busiris [ca. 375 BCE], secs. 28–29; George Norlin, Isocrates, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).
17. Herodotus, The Histories [ca. 430 BCE], trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), e.g., bk. 2, chaps. 49, 50.
18. Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 81.
19. Niall Livingstone, A Commentary on Isocrates' Busiris (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 159.
20. Thomas Taylor, “Dissertation on the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas,” in Proclus, The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus, on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, trans. Thomas Taylor, vol. 1 (London, 1792), cvi.
21. Gloria Mundi sonsten Paradeiss Taffel (Frankfurt, 1620), reprinted in Musaeum Hermeticum (Francofurti: Sumptibus Lucae Jennissii, 1625); translated as: The Glory Of The World; or, Table Of Paradise; A True Account of The Ancient Science which Adam Learned From God Himself; Which Noah, Abraham, And Solomon Held as One of the Greatest Gifts of God; which also All Sages, at All Times, Preferred to the Wealth of the Whole World, Regarded as the Chief Treasure of the Whole World, and Bequeathed Only to Good Men; namely, The Science of the Philosopher's Stone, pt. 2, in Arthur White, ed., The Hermetic Museum, vol. 1 (London: James Elliot, 1893).
22. Will H. L. Ogrinc, “Western Society and Alchemy from 1200 to 1500,” Journal of Medieval History 6 (1980): 119.
23. Bernardi Trevisanvs, De Chymico Miracvlo, qvod Lapidem Philosophiæ appellant, ed. Gerardvum Dornevm (first published in 1567; Basileæ: Hæredum Petri Pernæ, 1583), 3–15.
24. William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 229.
25. Basile Valentin, Les Douze Clefs de la Philosophie [1599] (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1956), 118, trans. Martínez.
26. On weaponry, the eagle, and sal ammoniac, see Lyndy Abraham, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 214, 64, 176, 181, respectively.
27. See Lawrence Principe, “The Gold Process and Boyle's Alchemy,” in Alchemy Revisited, ed. Z. R. W. M. von Martels (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 200–205.
28. In 1661, weatherman Richard Towneley and physician Henry Power used a barometer to measure air pressure at different altitudes on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and they found that as the pressure upon air increases, its volume decreases. Power informed William Croone, in London, who in turn relayed a paper to Boyle. In 1662, Boyle described their conclusion as “Towneley's hypothesis,” omitting Power, and then systematically confirmed it with the aid of Robert Hooke. Power's work (dated 1 August 1661) was later published as Experimental Philosophy, in Three-Books: containing New Experiments, Microscopical, Mercurial, Magnetical. with Some Deductions, and Probable Hypotheses, Raised from Them, in Avouchment and Illustration of the Now Famous Atomical Hypothesis (London: T. Roycroft, 1664 [actually published in 1663]).
29. Daniel Lysons, History of the Origin and Progress of the Meeting of the Three Choirs of Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford, and of the Charity Connected with It (London: D. Walker, 1812), 55; J. Rutherford Russell, The History and Heroes of the Art of Medicine (London: John Murray, 1861), 217; Richard Lodge, The History of England from the Restoration to the Death of William III. 1660–1702 (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1910), 476.
30. Robert Boyle, The Origine of Formes and Qualities, 2nd ed. (Oxford: H. Hall/Oxford University, 1667); Principe, “The Gold Process,” 204; Basilius Valentinus, Chymische Schriften, vol. 1 (1677; repr., Hildesheim: H. A. Gerstenberg, 1976), 31. In Valentine's time, other alchemists also knew how to produce aqua regia. Principe's reading of Valentine's keys is supported by the confirmation that other alchemists such as Boyle read them also in such terms.
31. Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest. Including Boyle's “Lost” Dialogue on the Transmutation of Metals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 98–100.
32. Boyle, Origine, experiment 7, pp. 14, 233, 244.
33. Some of the Rosicrucians claimed that Pythagoras knew the art of how to communicate with the gods, visible and invisible. See Anonymous [attributed to Johann Valentin Andreä], The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R: C: commonly, of the Rosie Cross, with a Præface by Eugenius Philalethes [pseudonym for Thomas Vaughan] (London: J.M. for Giles Calvert, 1652), preface. Claims that Pythagoras could speak with the gods were ancient, for example: Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 225 CE) trans. Frederick Cornwallis Conybare, vol. 1 (London: W. Heinemann, 1912), 3, 91.
34. Principe, Aspiring Adept, 11.
35. Ibid., 100.
36. H. Carrington Bolton, “Chemical Literature” (Part 2) (address, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Montreal, 23 August 1882), reprinted in Chemical News 46, no. 1190 (29 September 1882): 146.
37. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, 1st. ed., vol. 1 (London: W. Strahan, 1776), 418.
38. Theophrastus Paracelsus, The Aurora of the Philosophers [1575], in Paracelsus His Aurora, & Treasure of the Philosophers. As also The Water-Stone of the Wise Men; Describing the Matter of, and Manner How to Attain the Universal Tincture, J. H. Oxon, ed. (London: Giles Calvert, 1659), chap. 5.
39. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15.
40. An initiation rite for the Rosicrucian Society included a procedure for multiplying the red medicine toward transmutation: “The multiplication is performed according to the table of Pythagoras; the ratio of one side of the equilateral triangle to the whole figure, thus. That is, 4 parts of the Medicine to 10 parts of the metallic water.” See Sigismund Bacstrom, “Copy of the Admission of Sigismund Bacstrom into the Fraternity of Rosicrucians by the Comte de Chazal” [1794], transcribed by Frederick Hockley [1839], First Multiplication, 17; Andover Harvard Theological Library, Cambridge, Mass., item bMS 677.
41. Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, with an introduction by Mrs. W. Brown Meloney and with autobiographical notes by Marie Curie (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 186.
42. Barbara Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 96.
43. Frederick Soddy, “Some Recent Advances in Radioactivity,” Contemporary Review 83 (May 1903): 720.
44. Ernest Rutherford, quoted in William Cecil Dampier Whetham to Ernest Rutherford, 26 July 1903, Rutherford Papers, Cambridge University, England; microfilm at the Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, Maryland.
45. For discussion see Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius, 191–204.
46. Goldsmith, Obsessive Genius, 85. See also Marie Curie, Revue Scientifique (July 1900), quoted in Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 171.
47. Frederick Soddy, interview by Muriel Howorth, early 1950s, in Muriel Howorth, Pioneer Research on the Atom; Rutherford and Soddy in a Glorious Chapter of Science: The Life Story of Frederick Soddy (London: New World, 1958), 83–84. Soddy was mistaken, the product was actually radon, not argon.
48. Ibid.
49. Soddy, letter of 23 December 1950, published in Muriel Howorth, Atomic Transmutation: The Greatest Discovery Ever Made; from Memoirs of Professor Frederick Soddy (London: New World, 1953), 74.
50. Marie Sklodowska Curie, “Radium and Radioactivity,” Century Magazine (January 1904), 461–66.
51. E. Rutherford and F. Soddy, “Radioactive Change,” Philosophical Magazine 5 (1903): 576–91.
52. Pierre Curie, “Radioactive Substances, Especially Radium” (lecture to the Swedish Academy, 6 June, 1905, for the Nobel Prize in physics of 1903), in Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901–1921 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1967), 77.
53. Mrs. William Brown Meloney [Marie Mattingly Meloney, known as “Missy”], “The Greatest Woman in the World,” Delineator 98, no. 3 (April 1921): 15–16.
54. H. G. Wells, The World Set Free (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1914), 50–51.
55. Mark S. Morrison, Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 143.
56. Edwin McMillan, Martin Kamen, Samuel Rubin, “Neutron-Induced Radioactivity of the Noble Metals,” Physical Review 52, no. 4 (August 1937): 375–77.
57. J. Cork and J. Halpern, “The Radioactive Isotopes of Gold,” Physical Review 58, no. 3 (August 1940): 201. J. Lawson and J. Cork, “Internally Converted Gamma-Rays from Radioactive Gold,” Physical Review 58, no. 6 (September 1940): 580.
58. R. Sherr, K. Bainbridge, H. Anderson, “Transmutation of Mercury by Fast Neutrons,” Physical Review 60, no. 7 (October 1941): 473–79.
59. K. Aleklett, D. Morrissey, W. Loveland, P. McGaughey, and G. Seaborg, “Energy Dependence of 209Bi Fragmentation in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions,” Physical Review C 23, no. 3 (March 1981): 1044–46.
60. Frederick Soddy, “The Evolution of Matter” [1917], in Soddy, Science and Life: Aberdeen Addresses (London: John Murray, 1920), 107.
61. Marie Curie, quoted in Eve Curie, Madame Curie, A Biography by Eve Curie, trans. Vincent Sheean (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday/Doran, 1937), 341.
62. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, and Betty Sue Flowers, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 143.
CHAPTER 5. DARWIN'S MISSING FROGS
1. Frank J. Sulloway, “Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend,” Journal of the History of Biology 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 1–53.
2. For example, many students preparing for college admission exams have used study guides that included the statement: “It all began in the Galapagos, with these finches”—accompanied by a question asking to what “It” refers. The “correct answer” is: “(C) Darwin's theory of evolution.” Sharon Weiner Green, Ira K. Wolf, eds., Barron's How to Prepare for the SAT 2007, 23rd ed. (New York: Barron's Educational Series, 2006), 582–83. Other examples: “What Darwin saw were thirteen distinct finch species, each closely resembling each other in most ways, yet each had a characteristic beak structure well suited to a particular (specialized) food source…. It was the finches that clinched it for Darwin,” in Barry Boyce, A Traveler's Guide to the Galapagos Islands (Aptos, Calif., and Edison, N.J.: Galapagos Travel/Hunter Publishing, 2004), 15. “The finches were about the same size and all very similar in color. The only differences in the finches Darwin saw were their beaks and what kind of food they ate. There were finches that ate insects, seeds, plant matter, egg yolks and blood,” in Liz Thompson, Michelle Gunter, Emily Powell, Passing the Nevada 8th Grade CRT in Science (Woodstock, Ga.: American Book Company, 2008), 194; also in Michelle Gunter, Passing the ILEAP Science Test in Grade 7 (American Book Company, 2006), 132. “Later he saw in these finches the key to understanding the evolutionary process,” in Michael Roberts, Michael Reiss, Grace Monger, Advanced Biology (Nelson: Delta Place, U.K., 2000), 724. Another biology textbook that remained unaware of Sulloway's findings is Peter H. Raven and George B. Johnson, Biology, 5th ed. (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999).
3. Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1845), 380.
4. Nora Barlow, ed., “Darwin's Ornithological Notes,” Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, vol. 2, no. 7 (February 1863): 201–78; for table 5.1, Darwin's quotations from 1835 are from pp. 261–62, and are taken from Darwin, “M.S. Notes Made on Board H.M.S. Beagle, 1832–36,” no. 29: “Birds,” pp. 72–74. University Library, Cambridge. See also Gavin de Beer, ed., “Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species, Part 1, Four Notebooks (B–D: July 1837 to July 1839),” Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, vol. 2, nos. 2–5 (January–September 1960): 23–183; and Gavin de Beer, M. Rowlands, and B. Skramovsky, eds., “Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species, Part VI: Pages Excised by Darwin,” Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, vol. 3, no. 5 (March 1967): 129–76. Finally, the quotation of 1857 from Darwin's big manuscript on “Natural Selection” is from: R. C. Stauffer, ed., Charles Darwin's Natural Selection; Being the Second Part of his Big Species Book Written from 1836 to 1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 257, and are taken from Darwin, “Natural Selection” (manuscript), chap. 6, folio 43, Cambridge University Library.
5. David Lack, Darwin's Finches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947).
6. Robert I. Bowman, Morphological Differentiation and Adaptation in the Galapagos Finches, University of California Publications in Zoology, vol. 58 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961). Afterward, Peter and Rosemary Grant actually measured changes in the beak sizes of Galápagos finches over time and draught. See, for example, Peter Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
7. Additional sources for table 5.2: Charles Darwin, Oct. 1835, in Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beag
le between the years 1826 and 1836, vol. 3 (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 462; Darwin, Journal of Researches, 380; Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859), 28.
8. Stephen Jay Gould, “Darwin's Sea Change, or Five Years at the Captain's Table,” in Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 33.
9. Georges Cuvier, An Essay on the Theory of the Earth [1813], trans. Robert Kerr, with notes by Robert Jameson, 3rd ed. (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 17.
10. William Paley, Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (London: R. Faulder, 1802), 451, 453, 464–65.
11. Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882, with original omissions restored [manuscript 1876–1882], ed. Nora Barlow (London: Collins, 1958), 72.
12. Ovid, Metamorphoses (ca. 8 CE), bk. 15, ed. Brookes More (Boston: Cornhill Pub., 1922).
13. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1830), 12. Lyell speculated that “Pythagoras might have found in the East not only the system of universal and violent catastrophes and periods of repose in endless succession, but also that of periodical revolutions, effected by the continued agency of ordinary causes” (14).
14. John W. Judd, The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 16.
15. Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary, ed. Richard Keynes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 292.
16. Claudius Ælianus, Varia Historia [ca. 220 CE], in Claudius Ælianus, His Various History, trans. Thomas Stanley (London: Thomas Dring, 1665), bk. 4, chap. 17.
17. Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1836, vol. 2: Proceedings of the Second Expedition, 1831–1836, under the Command of Captain Robert FitzRoy (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 486–87.
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