Colin Goodenow, Mike Tobin, Brendan Tanner, Roy Baron
10/21/10
Scientific Revolutions
Professor Brandenburg
Alchemy: A Journey through Time
For a long time, alchemy has been considered merely the illusory precursor to chemistry. While it is true that alchemy did play a direct and substantial role in the development of chemistry, it is significant for reasons far beyond just that.
Beginning from its roots, alchemy has played an important role in many societies. The city of Alexandria in Hellenistic Egypt is considered to be the craft’s birthplace. The Egyptian god Thoth, ruler of magic, written word, and medicine is considered to be the ancient figurehead of alchemy. Only the priests who worshipped under him were permitted to take part in the sacred rites of alchemy, as they were viewed as his sons.
Once the Greeks realized how closely Thoth resembled their own god of medicine, Hermes, a sort of synthesis occurred. Thoth and Hermes were essentially combined to form one cross-cultural god, Hermes Trismegistus, thrice-great Hermes. This new god would go on to become the classical world’s representation of the ideals of alchemy. This combining of gods was actually a fairly commonplace occurrence between the Egyptians and the Greeks, as Alexandria was under heavy Greek influence after Ptolemy was made its ruler.
Aristotle too was fascinated by the field of alchemy and made several contributions to it. Amongst the most important was his proposal of a fifth element, aether. At the time, it was widely accepted that all things were comprised of primal forms of four different elements: water, fire, earth, and air. Aristotle’s views were revolutionary because he proposed that aether comprises the heavens, that which we cannot see. This idea moved on even into the medieval ages.
The medieval ages were a strange time for the field of science. The Christian church tried to suppress teachings and ideas that conflicted with their scripture and as a result the advancement in science slowed. If a scholar was to educate his apprentice in any of those sacrilegious teachings they would have to do so in a clandestine manner, out of fear that they would get killed or imprisoned. Luckily the spread of Christianity was not able to reach what is now the Middle East. With this freedom, the controversial and heretical ideas were able to flourish in this area, one of these ideas being alchemy.
The world alchemy shows its Arabic roots in its etymology. Though there are different theories on how the world came to be, it is commonly agreed that the “al” in alchemy was an Arabic article that became the prefix in the word when it was brought to Europe. The part that is disputed is where the chemy came from. The first theory is that it came from the Greek word chumeia, a word meaning pouring or infusion. The other theory is based on the word Khem, a word that derives from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Either way, the word shows how the teaching of alchemy traveled from Rome to Arabia and then finally back to Europe.
Over time the view of Arabic scholars in Europe changed and instead of fearing the alchemist, saying they were witches, the Europeans opened up to their teachings. They justified this change in thinking by saying that what alchemist were doing was good magic, a magic that only used powers that occurred in natural things. The changed view on alchemy allowed it to spread quicker and gain power. By the time of Tudor England it became normal for alchemists to reside in the royal courts. Queen Elizabeth even commissioned a project to create the philosophers stone.
With this new acceptance, scholars were able to work more freely, allowing them to test new theories and create new methods. One scholar that was able to take advantage of this was Henning Brand. Brand was able to try different experiments in an attempt to turn his urine into gold; they were both yellow in color after all. He never quite succeeded in this, but he was able to discover phosphorus because of it.
Through it’s “journey” through time and across continents alchemy influenced many great minds. Instead of being a distant and occult art totally unrelated to anything we might know today, like many think, it is very possible to look into other fields and see links to alchemy and the philosophy behind the study. Paracelsus, one of the most influential thinkers in the field of medicine, had a very deep background in alchemy. Like medicine, fields like chemistry, astronomy, psychology and botany have been directed by alchemists in one way or another.
Modern medicine may seem light years ahead of what existed in the Renaissance, but if it were not for the contributions Paracelsus and others like him had made it is very possible we would some very different ideas about how to treat illnesses. He pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in healing as well as the technique of weighing urine; which is still used today. He was also the first to speak specifically about the human subconscious and how it can affect over-all health: “It is not the curse or the blessing that works, but the idea. The imagination produces the effect.” More important than that was the new idea of symptom vs. disease. Before Paracelsus, it was thought health was balanced between the four humors of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, as taught by the Greeks. But when Paracelsus dared to branch away from the ancient texts and take the time to study the body he found diseases were localized to certain organs and could be caused by external forces. This new understanding of “germs” and contagiousness helped greatly during the time of the Bubonic Plague and outbreaks of venereal diseases throughout Europe.
Chemistry is one of the fields we can most directly associate with alchemy if we can forgive the latter for its occult roots. Many of the different pieces of equipment still used in laboratories today were invented by Muslim alchemists hundreds of years ago. Things like beakers, flasks and different kinds of distillation equipment were first used long ago for experiments in the occult. In fact, one could almost argue that chemistry is the same thing as alchemy, only with the theology removed. It was a very gradual shift as ideas and beliefs changed throughout time. Alchemists like Boyle developed rules and laws like the Scientific Method and Boyle’s Law that are the basis for many studies now.
Because the idea of macrocosm and microcosm was so important to alchemists, they spent many hours studying the stars in hopes to better understand what was happening inside of the human body. They believed each of the seven planets (known at the time) corresponded to one of seven different organs. The sun to the heart, the moon to the brain, tin to liver, copper to kidneys, lead to spleen, iron to the gallbladder and mercury to the lungs. While that may not have been the most effective strategy, this interest did lead to great new discoveries and understanding of the planets.
With these examples and many more we can start to see how alchemy may have had a more significant role in our understanding of the world than it appears. The ideas may have had some basis in occult philosophies that do not agree with our ideas, but that does not make the intricate research these great thinkers did any less significant to the fields they impacted.
Today’s media industry is thriving with themes, characters and applications of Alchemy. The related ideas to what went on during Greece and the Egyptians all the way to present day. Alchemy is full of some very rich history and content that makes for amazing work in media. Some examples that have used this information to the fullest would be the movie industry as well as television shows. Recent movie plots include, Perfume-a murderer has mastered the art of distillation and extracts the essence’s of woman and turns their oil into world renown perfumes. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a second example. The first of a series based around the use of magic and alchemy alike. The first movie specifically being about the legendary philosopher’s stone, a long sought after substance in the history of alchemy.
Alternative to movies, cartoons like Avatar the air bender, an American telling the story of ancient race of simple people. They are able to live their lives just by tapping into internal Chi energy manipulating fire, water, earth and wind. As the story unfolds there is a great struggle finding a balance between each other. Captain planet a 90’s cartoon based around a group of kids each endowed with a ring controlling one of various earth elements. Combining the energy of the rings summons a deity of earth who is able to shape shift and manipulate all elements. But the media is not limited to just America. One of most intricate of shows surrounding Alchemy get its origins from Japanese based Animation. The show is purely based around a society that has a major conflict around the use of alchemy. In addition to the conflict the whole society is able to sustain itself on the use of alchemy. Today alchemy’s popularity has grown even larger then before being fueled by the entertainment industry.
http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/9-2/obrist.htm
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Hennig_Brand
