From University to Court: The Reversal of Stahl's Positions on Gold-Making.

Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential chymical-medical author of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, first believed in alchemical transmutation and reversed his position over the course of his career. This essay begins by placing Stahl's early teaching in alchemy in a larger background in which German princes and academics shared intense interest in gold-making. Then, tracing Stahl's intellectual development, it shows that he developed an increasing reservation about alchemy, though he remained open to the possibility of transmutation during his tenure at Halle.

Collaborative production and experimental labor: two models of dissertation authorship in the eighteenth century.

This article examines two early modern models of dissertation authorship that both relied on extensive collaboration between the degree candidate and his supervisor. The dissertation conducted on the traditional model, practiced until the eighteenth century at German universities, was a joint product of the supervisor, who prepared the thesis in writing, and the degree candidate, who defended it in the oral disputation. The two collaborators shared the credit for a successfully defended thesis in different forms: right for public recognition and rights to use and reproduce the thesis.

Fermentation, phlogiston and matter theory: chemistry and natural philosophy in Georg Ernst Stahl's Zymotechnia Fundamentalis.

This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the context of contemporary natural philosophy and the author's career. I argue that the Zymotechnia was a mechanical theory of fermentation written consciously against the influential "fermentational program" of Joan Baptista van Helmont and especially Thomas Willis, Stahl's theory of fermentation introduced his first conception of phlogiston, which was in part a corpuscular transformation of the Paracelsian sulphur principle. Meanwhile some assumptions underlying this theory, such as the composition of matter, the absolute passivity of matter and the "passions" of sulphur, reveal the combined scholastic and mechanistic character of Stahl's natural philosophy.