Alchemy

Alchemy which comes from the Arabic word called al-kimia which means, 'Egyptian art'. Before Chimestry, there was Alchemy. Alchemyis both a philosophy and an ancient practice which is focused on the attempt to change ordinary metals into gold, and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties. Alchemy is a blend of pseudoscience, magic, and mystical philosophy. Some alchemists were only fakes. But others were learned people who had more philosophical goals. They felt that if they learned how to make gold from lesser metals, they could also perfect other things. They considered gold the perfect metal because of its beautiful luster and its resistance to rusting. They also tried to find the elixir of life (a substance that would cure disease and lengthen life). They failed to find it, but their work in preparing and studying chemical substances helped the science of chemistry develop. Astrology is concerned with man's relationship to "the stars" (including the members of the solar system); alchemy, with terrestrial nature. It was considered that god/dess did not desire that man as a whole know the secrets of alchemy, but that the alchemist must leave behind at least one pupil that knew the secrets. Many books on alchemy began with "my dear son" in the hopes that the alchemists son could somehow decode what he had said. Alchemists that had no son, considered their pupils their sons.

Alchemy has been practiced in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), India, Persia (mordern Iran, China, Japan, Korea, the classical Greco-Roman world and the medieval Islamic world, and then medieval Europe up to the 20th and 21st centuries.

Some alchemy was practiced in China and Islam. But it developed into a major system in Egypt during the next 300 years. The Greek-speaking scholars of Alexandria used it in trying to explain how Egyptian artisans made things. Greek-Egyptian alchemy spread through Syria and Persia to the Arabs. It spread to Western Europe during the 1100’s and 1200’s.

Lead (atomic number 82) and gold (atomic number 79) are defined as elements by the number of protons they possess. Changing the element requires changing the atomic (proton) number. The number of protons cannot be altered by any chemical means. However, physics may be used to add or remove protons and thereby change one element into another. Because lead is stable, forcing it to release three protons requires a vast input of energy, such that the cost of transmuting it greatly surpasses the value of the resulting gold. Transmutation of lead into gold isn't just theoretically possible - it has been achieved! There are reports that Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead (possibly en route from bismuth, in 1980) into gold. There is an earlier report (1972) in which Soviet physicists at a nuclear research facility near Lake Baikal in Siberia accidentally discovered a reaction for turning lead into gold when they found the lead shielding of an experimental reactor had changed to gold.

The most famous alchemical text is the Emerald Tablet, written around 500BC and attributed to the mythical Egyptian figure of Hermes Trismegistus. Among its twelve lines are the essential words - “as above, so below". They capture the essence of alchemy, that the heavens mirror the earth and that all things correspond to one another. Alchemy was taken up by some of the most extraordinary people in our intellectual development, including Roger Bacon, Paracelsus, the father of chemistry, Robert Boyle, and, most famously, Isaac Newton, who wrote more about alchemy than he did about physics. It is now contended that it was Newton’s studies into alchemy which gave him the fundamental insight into the famous three laws of motion and gravity.

Alchemists drew their theories of matter from the ancient Greeks. They believed that all matter was made up of a single, formless substance. Alchemists thought this substance became the four elements–earth, air, fire, and water–when combined with hot or cold and wet or dry. They thought they could change one substance into another merely by changing the balance of these elements, a process called transmutation. This theory led them to try producing gold from other metals. In the early 1500’s, Swiss scientist Paracelsus tried to substitute sulfur, mercury, and salt for earth, air, fire, and water. Alchemists also searched for the philosopher’s stone (a magical substance that was supposedly able to make the transmutation process easier).