Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Alchemy

« to enrol themselves in the philosophical tradition, albeit awkwardly.

Texts were attributed to pagan gods,mythological and biblical figures, ancient and medieval philosophers.

Such attributions assured secrecy, while raisingthe prestige of writings of obscure authors; they might even be a subtle indication of affiliation.

4 Alchemical doctrines The basic idea of alchemy is the identity of nature and first matter as a dynamic unity: elements can pass one into another, in a circular movement that alchemists reproduced in their vessels.

No theory of natural loci (low and high are interchangeable, according to the Tabula smaragdina c .9 AD), no dualism of matter and spirit exists, as first matter is the all-embracing source of change.

The alchemist, who can obtain first matter by meansof the dissolution of natural bodies, is almost a new creator who makes a new reality come out of the artificiallyproduced chaos 'putting nature into nature', that is, cultivating the seeds of perfection existing in nature (perfectmetals) according to natural rules, and 'awaiting nature's time of delivery'.

(R.

Llull, Testamentum c .14 AD).

This structure is first seen as continuity inside the inanimate field of metals, and as analogy between metals andplanets: all metals are nothing but imperfect gold (like embryos at various stages), and the alchemist accomplishesnature's work outside the womb of earth in a shortened time, possibly within an astrological framework.

Somealchemists viewed the process as a victory over nature and time, foreshadowing the Promethean developments ofmodern science and technology: there are some hints that medieval theologians rebuked alchemy for this claim.

Yetthe relation between alchemical art and nature's work was generally considered in a more subtle and complex way,especially in the theoretical attempts made by fourteenth-century alchemists who developed the idea of elixir.Continuity from inanimate matter to human beings was explicitly or implicitly affirmed, and the alchemists wereconscious of themselves as a part of the matter/nature that they manipulated in order to perfect, not to dominate.This consciousness preserved their attitude of religious reverence for nature, whose abandonment was a majorfeature of modern science.

5 Alchemy and Western philosophy Discussing matter and its transformations, alchemists encountered philosophical themes from the beginning.

There have even been attempts to trace backalchemy to Aristotle's idea of change in material substances, but actually alchemy (practice plus theory) was notyet born.

In later Antiquity an especial relationship existed between alchemy and Hermetic thought: the unity offirst matter, the principle of sympathy, the doctrine of occult virtues, all are behind Bolus' axiom that 'Nature ischarmed by nature, nature prevails over nature, nature rules nature'.

The Stoic doctrine of pneuma lingers on in the search for material essences through distillation, a practice that goes back to Maria the Jewess ( c.3 AD).

Medieval developments were considerable, as scholastic philosophers and alchemists compared alchemy to the Aristotelianphilosophical concepts.

According to Albert the Great ( De mineralibus c .13 AD) alchemy helped to complete the Aristotelian science of metals.

Roger Bacon showed a broader concern, viewing alchemy as the general theory ofgeneration and corruption of all natural beings.

Some alchemists even tried to translate into Aristotelian languagetheir experience, identifying form with the purest and thinnest substance (quintessence) resulting from sublimationor distillation.

How much of Stoic natural philosophy intermingled with Aristotelian ideas in this attempt is unclear.Form was also identified with the soul, so that all material bodies, metals included, were considered endowed with asoul; body and soul were kept united by spirit, an idea which the alchemists could also find in medical literature, anddeveloped into that of the universal 'medium' that gives unity and life to the created world.

The Hermetic elementshad never disappeared from Western alchemy, as the central role of the Tabula smaragdina shows; during the Renaissance, they became prevalent.

Alchemical doctrines were known to virtually every Renaissance philosopher,discussed by most of them, accepted by many.

The relation between Renaissance Platonism and alchemical thoughtmight be considered afresh, as alchemy is a project to obtain on earth the stability and perfection that characterizethe Platonic world of ideas, manipulating the universal spirit that mediates between matter and the divine world.The most significant development, however, can be found in Paracelsus, whose idea of 'making visible the invisible'rests on the alchemical assumption that the quintessence of material bodies can be revealed through the opus .

So, Paracelsian alchemy aimed at revealing the secret of life and putting it to work for the spiritual and bodily health ofhumans.

More definitely, the idea of an alchemical remedy or elixir crystallized in that of potable gold, whichinterested Ficino and Francis Bacon among others.

In the seventeenth century, Francis Mercurius van Helmont turned the idea of the universal spirit into that of alkahest, the basis for subsequent chemical developments whichultimately led to the discovery of oxygen.

Newton's alchemical and cosmological speculation about the creative,non-mechanical spirit animating matter is at the core of the debate about the role of Hermetism in the ScientificRevolution.

The re-emergence of Stoic ideas concerning first matter and mixed bodies in seventeenth-centuryalchemy has recently been considered to establish it as part of the normal science of that epoch.

Even after thebirth of modern chemistry, alchemy maintained its appeal to speculative spirits: Goethe apart, we have the clearinstance of the subsequent development of Naturphilosophie in nineteenth-century Germany, with alchemical doctrines flowing into the mainstream of vitalism.

More surprising perhaps is to find alchemy defined in theEncyclopédie as chemistry brought to the highest degree of perfection and therefore capable of operating marvellous effects, 'la chimie sublime, la chimie par excellence'.

6 Alchemy and the present Nineteenth-century scholarly research on protochemistry overlapped with the latest development of esoterical alchemy(hyperchemistry).

Historians of chemistry judged alchemy a mix of positive empirical data about chemical matterwith obscure mystical speculation.

An echo of their attitude is still felt in the consideration of alchemy as an error inthe history of science, indeed, according to Bachelard, 'the first error' in the scientific approach to the problem ofmatter.

Alchemy attracted the attention of C.G.

Jung as a historical testimony of the dynamics of the unconscious. Jung's deep study of alchemy led him first to conceive of it as the projection upon matter of the unconscioustendency to individuation; but he also saw in alchemy the expression of a more complex relation between humanityand nature, where matter is recognized as the feminine counterpart of the divine, and human knowledge is fosteredby the very light of nature (a Paracelsian idea), comparable to the light of Revelation.

Thus Jung gave a positivevalue to the link between religious attitude and empirical research in alchemy.

On the other hand, the idea of thealchemists as forerunners of the modern ideal of the scientist who overcomes nature and time is at the core of M.Eliade's ( 1956 ) view of alchemy as an intermediate stage between archaic metallurgy and modern technology. Recent proposals from within French esotericism bear on epistemology and aesthetics: A.

Faivre's ( 1971a ). »