A Vital Matter: Alchemy, Cornucopianism, and Agricultural Improvement in Seventeenth-Century England
Justin Robert Niermeier-Dohoney (Author), University of Chicago (Degree granting institution), Adrian Johns
This dissertation investigates the influence of vitalist matter theories and the practical, operational techniques of alchemy on agricultural improvement projects in seventeenth-century England. It argues that the historical territory of alchemy is much broader than many historians of this subject have conceded over the past generation. In fact, among a subset of utopian social reformers in mid-seventeenth-century England, alchemy was both an expansive worldview that explained physical change in the cosmos as well as a set of practices that could be applied in multiple locations where generation, growth, and change were the ultimate goals. This included the question of botanical growth and, most imperatively, the necessity of improving agricultural production
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2018
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, Ann Arbor, 2018