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In the two millennia after Democritus first proposed that matter could be divided only until one reached a smallest defined particle, natural philosophers debated what the smallest unit of matter could be. With the flowering of the Scientific Revolution, the concept that atoms are the basic unit of matter was gradually established beyond dispute. And in the latter half of the century just past, several leading historians of science thought they had pinned down more or less exactly who knew what about atoms and when.

Atoms and Alchemy, Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution William R. Newman Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006 235 pp., $30, paper

Schoolchildren in the 1950s and '60s were taught that each atom was a miniature solar system of sorts: a tiny, dense lump of protons and neutrons (the sun) ringed by a cloud of electrons orbiting in rapid circles (the planets). The number of negatively charged electrons exactly balanced the positive charge of the protons in the nucleus. We knew these electrons were in fixed orbits in a complex ladder based on each electron's energy level and the number of electrons orbiting the atom. And this knowledge was given currency on magazine covers and billboards and even television, depicting both good in the form of nuclear energy and evil in the form of bombs and fallout. These images reminded us that although atoms are unimaginably small, splitting an atom's nucleus released energy that made nuclear weapons not merely the most powerful bombs in history but something more, something difficult to grasp: real doomsday weapons.

While schoolchildren practiced hiding under their desks in "Duck and Cover" drills, historians of science were codifying a view of how and when atoms came to be seen as the basic unit of matter. Briefly, the idea that atoms are the smallest unit of any element was a minority opinion in Western science from its beginnings with Democritus all the way up through the late 1600s. Then—so the story went—the Scientific Revolution occurred. Reason reigned, superstition was superseded.

Readers who follow developments in physics and chemistry know that the scientific view of atoms today is much more complex than the mini-solar-system view popularized in the mid-20th century. It turns out that no one can determine both the position and the momentum of tiny subatomic particles, so the current view of electrons around the nucleus of an atom describes only a cloud of probable positions. The nucleus is far more complex than the spherical lump of positively charged and neutral particles pictured in textbooks just a few decades ago. Each proton and neutron is composed of smaller particles called quarks that exist for eons or fractions of seconds and have fractional charges and "colors" and spins and charm and other characteristics far more challenging to visualize and grasp than the old model.

So too, the popular image of the Scientific Revolution, representative of the mid-century scholarly consensus even if greatly simplified, has given way to messier narratives that reflect new understandings of the history of science. And nowhere is this change more apparent than in the revised estimate of alchemy among a growing number of contemporary scholars.

Alchemists, of course, figured in the familiar Enlightenment story as the last crazy magicians of the Middle Ages, charlatans scamming credulous creatures of the pre-modern world. In the 17th century, they were vanquished by the Scientific Revolution, their mummery discredited once and for all. But in Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution, William R. Newman tells a very different tale. Newman's intent with this book is to "give cause for reconsideration of the traditional 'grand narrative' of the Scientific Revolution. It is time to consider this topic anew rather than adding further lucubrations to the surveys and textbooks of our forebears." Aiming to rescue the beginnings of modern science from accumulated errors and misreadings, Newman clearly demonstrates that alchemists developed and refined laboratory practices that formed part of the foundation of what has become known as the Scientific Revolution. Far from springing up unbidden after a long and dreary epoch of rank superstition, the Scientific Revolution took root in the good soil of centuries of experimentation, much of it done by the alchemists.

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