Origins of Alchemy

It’s nice to have a leisurely Saturday. I still wake up early, but because I do not have to go to work, I can enjoy second breakfast like a hobbit. So sometime between 10:30-11:30am I was having a tasty scone, sipping Irish tea and reading the first chapter of The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence Principe. This is a book that should indeed be read slowly and leisurely as it is chock-full of interesting history, and from my (limited) point of view as a non-historian, a great deal of painstaking research has gone into this book. The author is a professor in both the departments of History AND Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. He even repeats some of the alchemical experiments as part of his research for the book. I’ve been looking forward to this book for a while since I’ve typically begun my first-year chemistry class by discussing alchemy to set the tone!

I’m sure I will have a lot more to write about as I slowly work my way through the book, but just reading through the first chapter set my mind abuzz. Principe begins by discussing early alchemical efforts in antiquity. There aren’t a lot of documents from this period, and they can be difficult to decipher. In particular, these early alchemists were rather secretive, in the sense of protecting trade secrets. Metallurgy is where alchemy has its roots. A number of the documents were recipes for the patination of metals (the coating of one metal on top of another) so as to pass off one metal object for another. Coins, valuables, jewelry, were frequent targets. Gold and silver, or something that at least looked like them, were coated on top of cheaper metals. Apparently the Roman emperor Diocletian tried to find and burn a lot of the treatises because he was introducing a new coinage and trying to fight the debasement of currency.

The focus of the chapter is on a Greco-Egyptian alchemist named Zosimos (circa 300 A.D.), “revered as an authority for the rest of alchemy’s history, and the first about whom we have any reasonably substantial or reliable historical details.” What is interesting is the blending of theory and practice. Alchemists like Zosimos were not just mixing things randomly, they had guiding principles. A key idea was that metals have two parts: soma and pneuma, representing “body” and “spirit”. The former is nonvolatile and forms the basic essence of being a metal. The latter is the variable that features the particular properties of a metal. Zosimos uses fire “to separate the spirits from the bodies”, i.e., chemical reactions initiated by burning substances.

As I was reading this it made me think about the Gnostics who had similar dualistic ideas, and were known for believing in secret knowledge (hence the gnosis). They were active around the same period in antiquity. It also made me think about whether scientists have become the new gnostics in the way we have gotten super-specialized, each with our bits of knowledge inaccessible to most of mankind. Sure enough, several pages later, Principe discusses the link between the two. Just before getting into the details, he writes: “This recognition brings up a huge point for the entire history of science: how do practitioners’ philosophical, theological, religious, and other commitments manifest themselves in the study of the natural world, whether in alchemy or elsewhere?” Then after going through the details, Principe summarizes with the following paragraph, which I think is both interesting and illuminating, so I will reproduce it here.

“We completely miss the fullness and multivalent complexity of pre-modern thought if we dissect it into modern categories. Zosimos had no reason to isolate his philosophical or theological commitments into special categories separated from the balance of his thought. Today there is a tendency to imagine that such “mixing” (it is mixing only from our perspective) somehow impedes rational and clearheaded work on practical matters, yet this is not only a modern prejudice but also far from true. Zosimos’s methods – like anyone else’s – of thinking about, conceiving, and interpreting his work could not help but be influenced by, and draw on, the totality of the way in which he conceived the world as a whole. Thus, it is incorrect to say that alchemy for Zosimos was itself a religion, and an exaggeration to say that his alchemy was Gnostic. Yet it is equally wrong to imagine that Zosimos could (or should) “turn off” his ways of thinking, his mental landscape built upon contemporaneous Gnostic, Platonic, and other commitments, when at work on practical alchemical processes. Even modern scientists cannot do that, although some of them convince themselves that they can (perhaps under the trickery of a daimon named Pure Objectivity).”

This makes me think about thinking. Meta-thinking perhaps? I’ve been trying to get my students to think more about their learning, hopefully through writing blog posts and participating in the online discussion forums through the LMS. (Ours is Blackboard, which I find a little clumsy.) It’s also uncanny how I was just having a discussion a couple of days ago about scientists using methodological naturalism as an axiom in “doing science” but that this does not necessarily commit one to philosophical materialism on the one hand or religious faith on the other hand, and that the two should be untangled. But maybe it’s not that easy to untangle them.

Principe also discusses the origins of the words chemistry and alchemy. One popular idea was that it comes “from the Coptic kheme, meaning ‘black’, alluding to the the ‘black land’, Egypt, in reference to the color of Nile silt.” What’s cool is that chemistry could be the “Egyptian art” or the “black art”. Yes, I practice the Black Arts! Principe thinks that the most likely root is the Greek cheo which has to do with melting, fusing and a word that signifies metal. Then chemistry becomes the art of metallurgy. It could be both, says Principe, and I personally like the “black art” etymology even if it may not be true.

That was just Chapter 1! It gave me a lot to think about, and a lot to look forward to. If this is something you’re interested in, I suggest getting the book and reading it yourself. There will likely be more blog posts on Principe’s book and this topic.