Gehennical Fire:The Lives of George Star key,an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution

摘要

It is safe to say that few readers of this Journal have ever heard of George Starkey or his creation and alter ego,Eirenaeus Philalethes.Yet,according to William Newman,professor of history of science at Indiana University,Starkey was probably the best known and most widely read American scientist be-fore Benjamin Franklin.Moreover,Starkey/Philalethes exerted considerable influence on at least three heroes of the scien-tific revolution-Boyle,Newton,and Leibniz.This fascinat-ing character is the principal subject of these two scholarly monographs.Gehennical Fire was first published in 1994 by Harvard University Press and has been reissued,with a new forward,by the University of Chicago Press.Alchemy Tried in the Fire is a more recent work.Because of their common con-tent,these books will be reviewed together.