Here is an article I wrote about forty years ago. It has kept some value, I think.
Alchemy misled the world for centuries. Obscure of origin, its Western form seems to have arisen in the first century BC in Alexandria as a fusion of Greek speculation and Egyptian technology.[1] Its proponents soon integrated it with astrology and hermetic mysticism. Not surprisingly, from its very inception, this strange brew had a blinding effect upon thinkers.
Following the thought of Empedocles,[2] alchemists believed that all matter was composed of four elements: Earth, air, wind, and fire. In turn, combinations of wetness, dryness, cold, or heat produced these four. By changing proportions and combinations, they thought it should be possible to convert one metal into another. It was widely believed there existed a philosopher’s stone and a powder that would speed or catalyze the process of conversion. Work focused on converting so-called base metals to gold. Alchemists hoped by discovering the secret of transmutation to gather techniques to retard human aging. Alchemical work had to be done with appropriate prayers and mystical trappings.
Error attaches itself to error. The field swarmed with charlatans and frauds. In Christendom, the first champions of this arcane lore were heretical groups: Gnostics, Manichees, Nestorians, and Monophysites.[3] Wherever alchemy spread (it was especially strong in the Islamic world) it stultified true scientific research. This effect is evident even today wherever the possibility of alchemy is seriously contemplated. Burland, for example, in The Arts of the Alchemists, posits unestablished phenomena (apportations, anima, “time-stepping,” and intrusions of a fourth dimension) to support the idea.[4]
Despite its absurd elements and fraudulent operators, alchemy was not a complete bust. Too many ingenious minds engaged in the effort for that to be so. As the Bible says, “All hard work brings a profit….”[5] Out of their indefatigable researches and experiments useful knowledge precipitated. Many of the tools a chemist uses—stills, balances, cupels, flasks, retorts, and water baths—were developed by alchemists. They discovered nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acids; the elements antimony, arsenic, bismuth, and phosphorus; and alum, borax, cream of tartar, ether, plaster of Paris, red lead, various salts, and barium sulfide.[6] We cannot help but admire the tenacity that persevered for so many centuries on so slight results.
Not surprisingly, the clearest thinkers of the middle ages emphasized the experimental techniques of alchemy over the mystical. Among such were, Albertus Magnus,[7] Pope St. Sylvester II,[8] Paracelsus[9] and Van Helmont.[10] Churchmen studied the “science” assiduously to determine if it contained valid thinking. This was difficult to ascertain, since alchemists wrote with the avowed intent of concealing their techniques from all but initiates.[11] When Protestant scientist Robert Boyle discarded alchemy’s astrological and mystical mumbo jumbo, and its dense, esoteric verbiage (which Buffon declared afforded “only obscurities and unintelligible processes”)[12] he made a great leap toward modern chemistry.[13]
References:
- “Alchemy” in The World Book. Field Enterprises, 1966.
- Feldman, Anthony and Ford, Peter, Scientists and Inventors (New York: Facts of File, 1979) p. 6,7.
- Burland, C.A., The Arts of the Alchemists (New York: Macmillan, 1967)
- Ibid.
- Proverbs 14:23
- “Alchemy” in Encyclopedia Americana (Americana Corp., 1956)
- Taylor, F. Sherwood, The Alchemists, Founders of Modern Chemistry (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949) p.97.
- Brusher, Joseph S., “Sylvester II” in Popes Through the Ages (Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1959) p.280.
- Scientists and Inventors, p.22,23.
- Taylor, p.175.
- Ibid. p.ix.
- quoted by Jacques Sadoul, Alchemists and Gold; the Story of Alchemy Through the Ages (New York: Putnam, 1972) p.23.
- e.g.: Boyle, Robert, The Skeptical Chymist (Oxford: Henry Hall, 1680)