Research

German physician and chemist

The very wide scope of his thoughts and works includes the phlogiston theory of combustion which was later disproved by the discovery of oxygen, and yet contributed essential insights with respect to the reversibility of reactions, and the hidden persistence of chemical components involved; and his thoughts on the role of "anima" which seem rather outdated today, and yet they introduced, as early as the turn of the 18th century, concepts relevant to modern biology and psychology such as homoeostasis, synergy, the preparation of voluntary movements, and distinctions between unconscious yet reasonable actions, and those directed by rational deliberations.

Stahl’s main medical work is “Theoria medica vera”, 1708, Halle. One of the key publications on the chemical theory of combustion is “Zymotechnia fundamentalis seu fermentationis theoria generalis”, 1697, Halle, German 1734.

A Leopoldina Symposium on Stahl, including the role of “anima” in the tradition of Paracelsus, and the cause of a controversy with Leibniz is documented in: Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734) in wissenschaftshistorischer Sicht (Dietrich von Engelhardt and Alfred Gierer, eds.), Acta Historica Leopoldina 30 (2000), with a reproduction and translation of his essay “De differentia rationis et ratiocinationis” (1701). See also "Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734), German Physician and Chemist", Article by A. Gierer in: "Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment" (A.C.Kors, ed.), vol. 4, p 124-125, Oxford University Press, New York 2003.

Career

Born 1659 in Ansbach, Stahl studied in Jena 1679-1684. From 1694 to 1715, he was professor of medicine in Halle. In 1700 he was elected member of the Leopoldina. 1715 he moved to Berlin to serve, until his death in 1734, as personal physician of the King of Prussia and president of the Collegium medico-chirurgicum.