Although it seems have been at the intersection of diverses knowledges, I posted in Metaphysics, understanding literally meta-physics.
Essentially, the prerequisites to pursuit, are:
- elementary notions of psychology,
- general notions of chemistry and of physics (corpuscular),
Reducing this (past) discipline in converting led in gold seem have been the (unsuccessful) work of only a few.
Sorry if you find that this topic is a return to obscur ages…
I invoque at this title Carl Gustav Jung, who distilled the collective sub-conscient notion from these ages.
(-And I will make a sub-topic apart:
Some researchers have found that alimentation could influence, not only a person in his life, but one or two generations later.)
-So I deeply think that it can be surely the same with the way of thinking, explaining in a way why C. G. Jung had his idea.
Taken in its generality, we surely can think there was as many alchemies as alchemists.
But I think this is not a weak aspect, but a strong one…
(New subject apart:
I think if the Bible was taken so, maybe not so many people would be atheists.)
Several aspects talk favorably for this « science » of old ages,
begining with realities, as acids solutions able to dissolve gold or platinum discovered in the ages in question,
or again the reality of transmutation.
But these were only experimental realties; the discipline is most accorded to have included spiritual aspects at the other hand.
And between these two extremities, of course, all the other possible domains of this period, including - most probably - some psychological aspects.
At this point, the work of the alchemist was not consisting in only finish his experiment (which seems to have been so long that it most probably never ended, as - by example- the attempt to obtain a purity of 100%), but to evolute himself with his experiment.
Finally, I extend these considerations in the idea that - less restrictively - a person thinking his own concepts and trying to bound analogies between domains (of knowledge), as physicists, could be called nowadays as alchimist.
The problematic of physics, I think, could be an attempt to understand the world ever in a mechanist way, acting in trying - by example - to decompose (for a purpose of understanding) an interaction leading to consider a (new) smaller particle (some gluons or « virtual » photons) explaining this way the phenomenon of interaction, what only move the problem to another place, as I develop there:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12042&p=175729#p175729
-I want tell the story that arrived to me in 1999. I met during a grape harvest, a tramp (someone who has no home), and this person spoke to me better than my own father ever did…
He initiated me to alchemy concepts, explaining me (these are his own purposes) that:
Alchemy did not have any relation to chemistry, and
that we had to be prudent with philosophy.
I understood the second point later, in the fact (resumed here) that the proper of philosophy in general, is having no « doctrine » (except some particular « schools » of thoughts) - I understand this way - no axis in thinking and even more in evolution, what could lead on the well-known fact, that we have no formal progress in philosophy.
But about the fact, I think that chemistry had necessarily been the experimental side of alchemy.
The discover of some acids able to dissolve gold from the alchemical period, and even the discover-in-mind of the transmutation couldn’t - from my point of view - make chemistry aspects irrelevant; indeed, not only I consider these « elements » as relevant for themselves, but moreover, relevant of a more global but coherent knowledge…
Obviously, one « scientific fact » that we can a priori blame against alchemists, is the idea consisting in elements which were not chemical ones.
I personally see in modern physics - corpuscular physics - a correspondant notion to these; effectively, if we consider the chemical atome (an atome of a chemical element), he was not literally a-tome, as it was divisible - and this is why the physicists considered briefly alchemy before considering that it said approximatively « all and anything » as they did not have any reference (as I personally do, except one or two names of past or present personalities) -
so if we consider this one, as it is divisible I said, the « atome of the atome » was in a first time the neutron, according to the definition of Leucippe, brought by Democrite, knowing (in brief) :
non divisible and neutral (about the electrical charge), but…
the atome of the neutron is noting, regarding the fact we found quarks « Up » and « Down », presenting asymmetrical charges (they have as electrical charge - in comparison to electron - 2/3, and (-1/3)).
All that last paragraph to say that we finally re-obtain - although under a form approximatively of a particle (rather supposed if I don’t mistake myself) - some « principles » - why not the previous « elements » - due to the fact relatively unclear (also for me, during I try to develop), that in place of having one particle pro quantity of a quality (as it is the case for the weight), we have some qualities, the known electrical charge in the occurrence, who are apparently not equi-distributed; which fact could lead in my sense either to more smaller constitutive particles, or to some principles possibly non localized, or at least not in the manner as being in their representative particle.
And this is where I recall the paragraph about gluons, who interact with quarks - to talk about only the « atomic »/« chemical » or baryonic matter.
This ends the part where I would mean the pertinence of some experimental aspects.
I already mention that I have a relative knowledge of physics, sometimes as an autodidact, what means surely limited.
This post consider mostly the experimental ideas - understand chemicals ones - but I would like to let people contribue also with the concepts Carl Gustav Jung discovered in alchemists, (as psychology is not my domain), but what is in principle well known by other people.
And I would like to let the priority to people motived by the topic, rather than in some non-constructive critics.
. However, what I meant by the 'Monad' or the 'One/All' is not really a literal 'atom' by any means. It's more of like an all encompassing 'primal force' that permeates all of the particulars in the universe - kind of like an Ether that binds all forces and is possibly the Collective Consciousness of all things.