What is “Experiment” in Paracelsus’ Medical System?
Uliana Strugovshchikova
The article is devoted to the Renaissance medicine, the origins of its formation as scientific experimental discipline. Economic, social and scientific processes that have direct and indirect influence on formation of the Renaissance scientific environment are taken into account. Among them: pilgrimage routes, fairs, including book fairs, wars, geographical discoveries, religious missions establishment, invention of printing, scientists’ correspondence from different countries. The Renaissance era has given many prominent personalities in different fields: Copernicus in physics, Luther in theology, Titian in painting, Michelangelo in architecture and many others. One of the brightest personalities in medicine was Paracelsus, a doctor who combined “high” university therapy with “low” craft surgical practices that were previously considered unworthy occupations for nobles, and also introduced chemistry into medical practice. Paracelsus’ merit also is systematization of previous eras knowledge and inclusion of this knowledge in his own medical system, based on interaction of three types of knowledge emitted by Paracelsus: science (theoria, scientia) – experience (erfahrenheit, experientia) – experiment (experimentum), while Paracelsus emphasizes the importance of experience (experientia), which a doctor gains in wanderings, contrasting it with theoretical, speculative training at medical faculties.
Explanation of the interactions of three types of knowledge is comparable with modern approaches to experiment’s definition, which different scientists explain differently. Definitions of the “experiment” by Galileo, Niels Bohr, and Ian Hacking were chosen as examples for comparison.
The article also focuses on Paracelsus laboratory as a kind of space that combines various factors: natural, social, technical and economic, where the living (doctors, patients, other people, animals, plants and mushrooms) and non-living entities (signs, texts, teachings) interact. When these entities communicate with each other, new knowledge arises.