Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis

This open access book provides a fresh perspective on analysis and synthesis across several areas of inquiry. The two operations form a primary basis of modern laboratory science, ranging from the spectrographic analysis used in practically every scientific discipline today, to the naming of entire disciplines, such as synthetic organic chemistry. Despite their acknowledged significance, however, the history of analysis, synthesis, and their relations over the longue durée is poorly understood. Several volumes have been devoted to the history of analysis and synthesis in the sense that premodern mathematicians and philosophers used the terms, but very little work has been done on the tradition of material decomposition and recomposition and its relationship to mathematics and philosophy. The present volume brings together scholars in the history of medicine, mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, and alchemy to explore the ways in which these multiple disciplines understood and used analysis and synthesis as experimental,  justificatory, and conceptual tools.

William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University. Most of Newman’s work in the History of Science has been devoted to alchemy and "chymistry," the art-nature debate, and matter theories, particularly atomism. His most recent monograph is Newton the Alchemist: Science, Enigma, and the Quest for Nature’s “Secret Fire” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).  Newman is also General Editor of the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-digital editions of Newton’s alchemical writings with multimedia replications of Newton’s alchemical experiments. Newman is on the editorial boards of Archimedes, Early Science and Medicine, and Ambix.

Jutta Schickore is Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University. Her research interests include philosophical and scientific debates about scientific methods in past and present, particularly about control experiments, (non)replicability, failure, and negative results; science and the public; and the relation between history and philosophy of science. Her publications include the monographs Controlled Experiments (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024), About Method. Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections, 1740–1870 (University of Chicago Press, 2007) She has been a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin, Germany 2024-2025), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ, 2007-2008 and 2017-2018), of the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, NC, 2011).