Question

For much of the twentieth century, historians of the Scientific Revolution treated alchemy as an embarrassing mystical vestige, an irrational precursor to the empirical rigor of early modern chemistry. In recent decades, a necessary historiographical corrective has emerged: scholars now frequently emphasize the operational continuities between alchemical practices and seventeenth-century chemical inquiry, meticulously documenting how luminaries such as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle relied heavily on alchemical laboratory techniques. Yet, in their zeal to rehabilitate alchemy's reputation, these revisionist historians have often committed an anachronistic error. By rebranding alchemists merely as pragmatic proto-chemists, the revisionist account strips alchemical practice of its inextricable spiritual and vitalist dimensions, evaluating historical actors strictly by how closely they anticipated modern scientific paradigms. Ultimately, the profound historical impact of alchemical traditions on the Scientific Revolution cannot be located in their piecemeal contributions to modern chemical methodology. Rather, their crucial legacy was methodological in a much broader sense: by championing the tactile, experimental manipulation of matter as a valid means of acquiring natural knowledge, alchemical traditions eroded the entrenched Aristotelian doctrine that privileged pure, abstract theoretical deduction above material intervention.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the central claim of the passage as a whole?