Talk:Geber

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Rewrite[change source]

Hi Apaugasma, I have reworded some of his page to make it the more simple. I hope you like it! I recognize that it's very difficult to avoid using the passive voice without active (!) effort, but I think I've rid the article of it now. I hope it's not too contorted. GPinkerton (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi GPinkerton! I had no idea you were active here. Makes sense though, especially given the fact that this project is probably much less targeted by POV-pushers? I mainly rewrote this article because it was full of the same misinformation as the old en.wiki article. I knew that my English wasn't simple enough, but I figured that it would be better to have a slightly complex and accurate article than a simple and misleading one. I kind of hoped someone would come around to simplify it, but I never thought it would be you! To be honest, some of it does sound a bit contorted ("the writings together have the name", "translations [...] came into existence"), but as a whole it is very much an improvement. Hope to see you around at en.wiki again sometime! Apaugasma (talk) 17:43, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apaugasma sadly almost all Wikipedias are too small to rely on the kind of randomized peer review rate that some parts of English Wikipedia can attain. Many articles here are stub copies of English Wikipedia articles from more than decade ago. They contain all kinds of weird ideas and word choices. In many cases no attention to language has been paid and no attempt to simplify made. Others are just neglected, like alchemy.

For this article, could we add something about why the synthesis of a particular inorganic compound was important. What was it for? How long was it before the Jabirian texts had an impact on practical industries? GPinkerton (talk) 06:40, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the alchemy article here is much better than its en.wiki counterpart, simply because it doesn't contain all the ignorant, ahistorical, modernist/occultist speculations which rid this type of article on en.wiki. Rather, the article here more or less faithfully reflects the scholarly ignorance on this subject, which –while not ideal (no ignorance is of course)– is precisely what a wikipedia should do.
As for the questions you're asking: they're the very same questions that every student of the history of alchemy and chemistry is asking, and is hoping will still be answered within their lifetime, because research simply hasn't got around to it yet. The last 30 years have seen a true revival in the study of early modern chemistry, but medieval chemistry is still sorely neglected.
The current status quaestionis is rather thin here (still mostly based on the work of Paul Kraus in 1940s as summarized in the en.wiki article), but if I can broaden it with insights stemming from my own original research, I can tell you that the artificial production of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) was important because it is the first recorded case where chemists realized they could actually reproduce a naturally occurring compound in the laboratory. If they could artificially produce sal ammoniac, then why not also silver and gold (and indeed, today we can artificially produce gold)? It is really the discovery of chemical synthesis as a whole that we're talking about here, something that earlier chemists had long been dreaming of, but that was first realized in the time of the Jabirian authors (or perhaps a little bit earlier in the Sassanian schools, see the en.wiki article).
Another important aspect of this discovery is that it crossed the organic-inorganic divide: that a mineral could be produced from animal and plant materials showed that ultimately, they are all composed of the same type of elements, and that it is elemental composition which determines the nature of things (something we today take for granted, but that contradicted how many Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophers saw it at the time, and that was first actually proven by the chemical synthesis of sal ammoniac). As far as I know, there was no practical use for it: rather, it provided a huge impulse to the dreamy ambitions of artificial creation which so characterized medieval chemistry.
Nevertheless, sal ammoniac did figure prominently as a starting ingredient in the later experiments that led to the discovery of the mineral acids (nitric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid), which were and still are of great industrial importance (this is around the time of pseudo-Geber). But generally before ca. 1700, much science was really science fiction, a link that is still strong today in the way we imagine theoretically possible technologies as already quasi-existing (e.g., artificial intelligence, 'just a matter of time now'). That's not to say that medieval chemists did not also make real advancements in practical applications. However, most of what is known on that front relates to later chemists; if the Jabirian texts also contain such practical advancements (as they most probably do), they still need to be brought to light by future research. Apaugasma (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Apaugasma Thank you for such a detailed answer. I was thinking, as regards ammonium chloride, that we should explain "naturally occurring": what is this stuff, where and how is it found in nature, what did people use it for (or else why did it have a name), how would Jabir have recognized it, (i.e. how does it behave), and was its synthesis considered part of a greater alchemical process (in the texts)? Is there a way of explaining all this in Simple English?
My point about the alchemy page is that it is extremely vague and brief and doesn't mention Egypt or name any alchemists! I do agree that the more recent Western mysticism aspects get undue attention in English Wikipedia which need not be imported here. (BTW: AI very much does exist, it's technological singularity and artificial general intelligence that're a-coming.) GPinkerton (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I fear that what you propose would necessitate some serious deep-diving into the sources, which is something I do not currently have the time for. If you would like to do so, I suggest you start with the references given by Kraus 1942–1943, vol. II, pp. 41–42, which are:
  • Stapleton, Henry E. (1905). "Sal Ammoniac: A Study in Primitive Chemistry". Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. I (2): 25–40. (better scans of this journal may also be available on archive.org)
  • Ruska, Julius (1923). "Sal ammoniacus, Nušādir und Salmiak". Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. 14 (5). doi:10.11588/diglit.38046. (available under CC-BY-SA at the link)
  • Ruska, Julius (1928). "Der Salmiak in der Geschichte der Alchemie". Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie. 41 (50): 1321–1324. doi:10.1002/ange.19280415006. (pay-walled)
Apaugasma (talk) 15:56, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]