Before Chemistry Had a Name: AI Reveals the Alchemical Roots of Modern Science

Amsterdam — In 1650, an English publisher released a book called A New Light of Alchemy by the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius, bundled with writings by Paracelsus. The book promised to reveal the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone.

What it actually contained was something more remarkable: a theory of matter that anticipated modern chemistry by 150 years. Sendivogius described a “universal spirit” in the air that sustained life — a substance we now call oxygen, identified formally by Lavoisier in 1778.

This text, along with hundreds of other alchemical works, is now freely readable in English for the first time through Source Library, the AI-powered digital library created by the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam.

The Alchemists Were Scientists

The standard history of chemistry begins with Lavoisier and Boyle, treating everything before them as superstition. But the texts themselves tell a different story.

From Sendivogius's A New Light of Alchemy (1650), now translated on Source Library in 390 pages:

“Art imitates Nature. Whatever is not in Nature cannot succeed by Art; for water, as I said before, does not ascend higher than the place from which it was taken.”

And in his concluding treatise on the operations of nature:

“The seed is nothing else but the air congealed... everything that has seed is multiplied in it, but without the help of Nature, it is not accomplished.”

Edward Kelly, the controversial English alchemist who worked alongside John Dee, described the alchemist's art as a collaboration with nature itself:

“Art assists Nature and Nature assists Art. A vessel like an urinal presupposes a substance created by Nature alone, in which Art assists Nature and Nature assists Art.”

Thomas Vaughan, the Welsh alchemist and twin brother of the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, wrote in his Lumen de Lumine (1651):

“Salvation itself is nothing else but transmutation.”

These weren't metaphors to their authors. Vaughan and his contemporaries believed that understanding the transformation of matter was the same project as understanding the transformation of the soul — and that both required careful observation of nature.

What's in the Collection

Source Library's alchemical holdings include over 200 works spanning three centuries:

• Paracelsus (1493–1541): Medical and alchemical treatises that transformed European medicine, arguing that diseases had specific chemical causes and chemical remedies — a radical departure from Galenic humoral theory.
• Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636): A New Light of Alchemy — 390 pages now fully translated, containing his theory of the aerial nitre (atmospheric oxygen) and the role of air in combustion and respiration.
• The Crowning of Nature (Coronatio Naturae, c. 1600): A stunning illustrated alchemical manuscript from Cambridge University Library, with emblems depicting the stages of the alchemical work.
• Kirchweger's La nature dévoilée (1772): A late alchemical compendium that bridges the transition from alchemy to modern chemistry, showing how alchemical concepts were gradually translated into chemical language.

Why This Matters for the History of Science

“The boundary between ‘alchemy’ and ‘chemistry’ was invented retroactively,” says the Source Library editorial team. “When you read these texts in the original, you see continuous experimentation, careful observation, and theoretical sophistication. The alchemists weren't failed chemists. They were chemists before the word existed.”

Robert Boyle, often called the “father of chemistry,” owned extensive alchemical manuscripts and conducted alchemical experiments throughout his life. Isaac Newton wrote more pages on alchemy than on physics. These facts are well known to historians of science — but the primary sources they relied on have largely remained inaccessible to the public.

Source Library changes that. Every alchemical text in the collection is freely available with AI translation, original text, and high-resolution page images.

Open Data for Research

All translations are released as open data under a Creative Commons license. Researchers, educators, and AI developers can access the full corpus for any purpose.

“We're not just translating old books,” says the Source Library team. “We're restoring a missing chapter in the history of science. The alchemists' questions — What is matter? How does it change? What makes life possible? — are still our questions.”