Why the round enters a philosopher’s speech

The Turba philosophorum is a medieval alchemical work that presents its ideas as a conversation among an assembly of philosophers. Its roots reach back into Arabic alchemy. Each speaker’s contribution stands alongside the utterances of others. In one of the sayings attributed to the speaker called Zimon, a round form, the four elements and a single thing are brought together within the space of scarcely more than a sentence.

A shape with no preferred starting point

I notify to posterity that the rotundum turns into four elements, and is derived out of one thing.

– Turba philosophorum, The Turba Philosophorum, 1896, p. 133.^[1]

Someone looking at a circle can begin at any point and, by continuing around the edge, return to that same point. This gives roundness an intelligible place in a discussion of something considered as a whole. But the saying does not leave the reader contemplating a stationary figure. The round passes into the four elements. A shape the eye can take in at once now has to be understood as a succession of changes.

One voice in an assembly

The reference to a single thing at the other end of this movement keeps the four names from falling apart into a simple list. Earth, water, air and fire belong within one connected history in this speech. The compact formulation says little about individual operations at an alchemist’s bench. It puts a question to those operations that can be asked again whenever a new distinction is made. Amid a succession of forms, how does one recognize that one is still speaking about the same thing?