Quotes from Lawrence M. Principe

the history of science cannot be written by pulling scientific 'firsts' out of their historical context, but only by seeing with eyes and minds of our historical characters.

The same concern about the coming of the Antichrist lay behind much of what Roger Bacon—also a Franciscan friar—wrote to the pope about sixty years earlier: the church will need mathematical, scientific, technological, medical, and other knowledge to resist and survive the assault of the Antichrist.

The author concealed behind the pseudonym of Geber is probably an Italian Franciscan friar and lecturer named Paul of Taranto.

But the word more likely has a Greek origin, given that Greek was the language both of the earliest alchemical texts and of literate Greco-Roman Egypt. The "chem" of alchemy and chemistry very probably derives from the Greek che?, which means "to melt or fuse." Che? also gives rise to the Greek word chuma, which signifies an ingot of metal.

Analyzing the name of a thing can thus reveal something about the thing itself. The same thinking forms the basis of that branch of Jewish Kabbalah known as gematria, and its Christian versions that were explored in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Indeed, an entire generation became acquainted with the stone and one of its supposed possessors, the medieval Parisian notary Nicolas Flamel, by means of the first of J. K. Rowling's wildly successful books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. (Regrettably, American publishers corrupted the substance's ancient name into the meaningless "Sorcerer's Stone.