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.

Contents

Introduction: Traditions of Analysis and Synthesis – William R. Newman

The Dark Side of Sunthesis? Fraud and Substitution in Graeco-Roman Pharmacology – Laurence Totelin

Spagyria, Scheidung, and Spagürlein: The Meanings of Analysis for Paracelsus – Didier Kahn & William R. Newman

Chymistry Goes Further: Sensible Principiata and Things Themselves Over the Longue Durée – Joel A. Klein

Philosophical Methods of Analysis and Synthesis from Medieval Scholasticism to Descartes and Hobbes – Helen Hattab

A Fresh Look at Newton’s Method of Analysis and Synthesis – Alan E. Shapiro

Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton on Analysis and Synthesis – Niccolò Guicciardini

Knowing Diseases and Medicines Forward and Backward: Analysis and Synthesis from Galen to Early Modern Academic Medicine – Evan R. Ragland

Cutting Through the Epistemic Circle: Analysis, Synthesis, and Method in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Anatomy – Tawrin Baker

Taxis and Texture: Johann Daniel Major (1634–1693) on Spirits, Salts, and the Limits of Analysis – Vera Keller

Phenomena and Principles: Analysis–Synthesis and Reduction–Deduction in Eighteenth-Century Experimental Physics – Friedrich Steinle

Analysis and Induction as Methods of Empirical Inquiry – Jutta Schickore

From Chemical Analysis to Analytical Chemistry in Germany, 1790–1862 – Peter J. Ramberg

Questioning the Symmetry Between Analysis and Synthesis in Chemical Practices – Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent

Contesting the Musical Ear: Hermann von Helmholtz, Gottfried Weber and Carl Stumpf Analyzing Mozart – Julia Kursell

Source: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-76398-4