Ambix Special Issue on “Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry” about to be published!

I am happy to announce that the Ambix Special Issue on “Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry”, which I co-edited together with Guillermo Restrepo and Farzad Mahootian, is about to be published.

With four contributions of my own, in addition to co-editing the issue, this was a major project, which was catalysed by the wonderful May 2025 NYU Abu Dhabi workshop, The Alchemy of Global Partnerships, convened by Farzad Mahootian.

Of the four contributions I was directly involved in

1. The Introduction: computational approaches to the histories of alchemy and chemistry (co-authored with Farzad Mahootian and Guillermo Restrepo) reflects on the epistemic horizons and responsibilities of computational methods.
2. Mediating Alchemical Language across Terminologies and Cultures in Ruland’s Lexicon Alchemiae: A Data-driven Study of Arabic Terms (with Farzad Mahootian and Hazem Lashen) leverages LLMs for a hybrid close and distant reading.
3. Contextual Word Embeddings for Paracelsian Lexicography: Tangled Terminologies and their Origins in Ruland’s Alchemical Dictionary (with Vojtěch Kaše) performs distributional semantics and tracks the provenance of Ruland’s terms across an earlier corpus.
4. In the epilogue A Computational Turn? Reflections on Digital and Computational History of Science, Knowledge and Technology, I reflect whether there is such a thing as ‘Computational History of Science’ (no, not as a consolidated discipline) and what that could look like.