Knowable

Use in the book

The classification locates necessary properties of forms under knowledge, giving geometry as its example. It then assigns the forms themselves and the principles of those properties to intellect. “Knowable” here therefore has a defined place in a fourfold scheme rather than meaning anything whatsoever that a person might learn.

Places to read

1. I.48.6.7Necessary geometrical properties are distinguished from instances and forms themselves.

Translation in this edition

“Object of knowledge” makes the classification explicit; “knowable” supplies a compact adjectival equivalent.

Use in the book

At page 17 Khunrath asks what universal means in Nature and in the other scibilia. The question is preparatory to a distinction: a principle's presence in all things does not make its condition universal in each particular thing. The invocation of other knowable fields asks the reader to bring ordinary conceptual discrimination to the alchemical dispute. It is not an invitation to accept an equivocal use of 'universal' simply because the word is impressive.

Page 23 follows the series of one God, one world, one first matter, one Saviour, one faith, and one Church. These are different universals associated with different knowable subjects. Magnesia is said to bear universal testimony concerning them out of the great world. The passage both gathers and distinguishes: the repetitions of one give the argument force, but the phrase about different scibilia prevents all the items from being read as the same kind of thing.

The singular returns on page 157 when claimants must be tested 'in the chymical knowable discipline'. A successful display does not suspend the obligation to examine the performer's account. As in other fields, one must distinguish grounds from assertion and truth from falsehood. The move places alchemy within the demand for intelligible judgement while preserving its own material and interpretive questions. This is a small term with a useful linking function: it allows Khunrath to appeal to general standards of knowing without dissolving the specificity of the Art.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 17The meaning of universal is examined in Nature and in other knowable domains.
2. 1599 p. 23Different universals of different scibilia are distinguished within the sequence of ones.
3. 1599 p. 157The chymical scibile is a field in which claimants and spirits must be tested at Nature's touchstone.

Translation in this edition

'Discipline' is an interpretive English choice, not a second word present in the Latin. Depending on the clause, 'knowable subjects' or 'objects of knowledge' can help a reader hear the range. The supplied rendering is retained as the headword to give a direct route back into the translation.