The secrets of alchemy

What Hacker News says

1. Michelangelo11Oct 2024
   > I recently read The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence Principe, which I loved, especially because he tries to replicate ancient alchemical recipes in his own lab. And sometimes he succeeds! For instance, he attempts to make the “sulfur of antimony” by following the instructions in The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony (Der Triumph-Wagen Antimonii), written by an alchemist named Basil Valentine sometime around the year 1600. At first, all Principe gets is a “dirty gray lump”. Then he realizes the recipe calls for “Hungarian antimony,” so instead of using pure lab-grade antimony, he literally orders some raw Eastern European ore, and suddenly the reaction works! It turns out the Hungarian dirt is special because it contains a bit of silicon dioxide, something Basil Valentine couldn’t have known.

   > No wonder alchemists thought they were dealing with mysterious forces beyond the realm of human understanding. To them, that’s exactly what they were doing! If you don’t realize that your ore is lacking silicon dioxide—because you don’t even have the concept of silicon dioxide—then a reaction that worked one time might not work a second time, you’ll have no idea why that happened, and you’ll go nuts looking for explanations. Maybe Venus was in the wrong position? Maybe I didn’t approach my work with a pure enough heart? Or maybe my antimony was poisoned by a demon!

   > An alchemist working in the year 1600 would have been justified in thinking that the physical world was too hopelessly complex to ever be understood—random, even. One day you get the sulfur of antimony, the next day you get a dirty gray lump, nobody knows why, and nobody will ever know why. And yet everything they did turned out to be governed by laws—laws that were discovered by humans, laws that are now taught in high school chemistry. Things seem random until you understand ‘em.

   Well, this example doesn't just fail to support the argument, but undercuts it. Basil successfully identified the kind of antimony that would work, -despite- having no concept of sulfur dioxide. He did not write down something like "not all kinds of antimony work for this recipe, so get a bunch of different kinds and try them all" -- that, or a stronger version ("sometimes the recipe fails, we don't know why"), would support the author's point.

   So we're left with the author trying to argue that this alchemist thought the world was "too hopelessly complex to ever be understood" on the basis of ... the alchemist correctly identifying the ingredient that would make the recipe work.

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2. wrpMay 2021
   This is one of a few recent histories of alchemy. If you are interested in the technical aspect, I strongly recommend "The Secrets of Alchemy" by Lawrence M. Principe. He is a chemist as well as historian, and has gained insight through replicating ancient techniques.
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3. currymjMar 2019
   excellent exploration of this idea in the wonderful history book “The Secrets of Alchemy”.

   the author actually followed some alchemical recipes which were thought to be nonsense. yet under the right conditions (using iron implements, bad control of temperatures, impure materials) they produced results that must have seemed miraculous at the time — fluorescent materials, elaborate crystalline structures, and so on.

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4. jatsignSep 2017
   For anyone interested in the history of alchemy, I recommend "The Secrets of Alchemy" by Lawrence M. Principe. Great insight into the actual history of the subject without getting caught up in hidden-mystery bs.

   https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Alchemy-Lawrence-M-Principe/d...

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5. unimpressiveFeb 2018
   As Lawrence Principe points out in his Secrets Of Alchemy, Alchemy was in fact the precursor to our modern notion of 'Chemistry'. The alchemists had theoretical foundations for their work which were inspired by and often incorporated 'unscientific' notions of divinity. At the same time however it's very important to remember that in contemporary terms this wasn't unusual, it's only in hindsight that we can say Newton's mathematical work was more scientific than his theological or alchemical work. (Having read this scholarly book on the subject which spares the bullshit, I quite recommend it.)

   To people with the 'Magicians Mindset' as Keynes might put it, the world has a rational soul underlying it which can be teased out by careful study of all things. If you're a Christian and start with this prior belief, then it makes perfect sense that you should expect your theological studies to inform your understanding of the natural world and your understanding of the natural world to inform theological studies. This is a mindset where metaphors and abstract connections are not of the human mind. Rather, they represent features of the territory showing us God's divine authorship of the world.

   Another good book that outlines some of this is Hall's The Secret Teachings Of All Ages, which discusses the essentially Aryan (Indo-Iranian) thesis that all theological traditions discuss the same underlying esoteric doctrine which itself descends from one civilization. Having been written in 1928, Hall speculates Atlantis. (Naturally, you should take this text with perhaps more than just a grain of salt.) As far as I know the modern version of this thesis usually places the ultimate originating civilization in India.

   https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Alchemy-Lawrence-M-Principe/d...

   https://archive.org/details/The_Secret_Teachings_Of_All_Ages...

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