13. Alchemy is a physical science
…… Statistical Significance ……… Supporting sources: 5
Contradicting sources: 0
Statistical significance: 0.9990234
This premise is statistically significant
…… Supporting Quotations ……… [182] This mineral water can be extracted only from those things
which contain it; and that thing from which it is most easily obtained is difficult to discover, as is also the mode of its extraction. It dissolves gold without violence, is friendly to it washes away its impurities, and is white, warm, and clear. Without our Mercury, Alchemy could not be a science, but only a vain and empty pretence. If you can obtain it, you have the key of the whole work, with which you can open the most secret chambers of knowledge. Its nature is the same as that of gold, but its substance is different, and the preparation of it causes a great stench.
~ Philalethes, Eirenaeus. A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby. 1694 AD. Alchemical Tract
[414] And because the philosophers had so obscurely set forth this
science in strange involvings of words and shadows of figures, the stone of the philosophers was doubted by a very many men.
[415] Tell me by the immortal God, what is more unjust than for men
to hate what they are ignorant of? And then if the thing do deserve hatred, what is of all things more shallow? What more abject? Or what greater madness and potage is there, than to condemn that science in which you have concerned yourself just nothing at? Who hast never learned either Nature or the majesty of Nature, or the property or the occult operations of metals. The councellour also babbles and crokes, and the pettyfoggers of the law, the greatest haters of philosophy, who with the hammer of a venal tongue coin themselves money out of the tears of the miserable: who shipping over the most sacred of laws, have by the intricacies of their expositions persecuted all the world with their frauds. But why do I go after jeers and satyrs? Let these crabbed fellows and their followers remain perpetually in their opinion, who know nothing. Which is honest, which is pleasant, which is delightful, which lastly is anything elevated above a vulgar doctrine: and who have attained at nothing glorious and famous, but perhaps at some plebian business from the black sons of Cadamus. But to which purpose are these? I have made the choice of this
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stone of the philosophers familiar to me; and I very often call it the only Minerva, and the greatest pearl of all occult philosophy, or of magic, not indeed of the superstitious, but of the natural. Yet it seems in the opinion of the unlearned to degenerate far from a better study: which is decreed and ordained by the divine will.
~ Ficinus, Marsilius. Book of the Chemical Art. 15th Cen. Alchemical Tract [946] If therefore Nature be follicitous in hiding these things, lest they
should be indifferently prostrated to all, or Hogs get to the honey-pots; no wonder if Ancient and Modern Philosophers, have invented so many enigmatical Figures, and hidden Fables, to cover and cloath this Science with; For they known well enough, that ceremonious Nature, would never have hid her self under so many different Forms and Species, but have appeared naked, but that her Venerable Secrets would thereby incur that contempt, which always accompanies common things.
[948] Nature set this ignivomous Dragon, in the door of the Garden,
to keep the Tree of golden Apples, that is, the knowledge of her hidden Secrets, which our prudent Ancestours would not deliver in writing, but onely by word of mouth, to such as they thought worthy of such knowledge: And this is the cause, why those great and admirable Sciences, have in progress of time vanished, and are accounted as Fables and Tales. ~ Combachius, Lodovicus. Sal, Lumen & Spiritus, Mundi Philosophici. 1656 AD. Alchemical Tract
[77] In many ancient Books there are found many definitions of this
Art, the intentions whereof we must consider in this Chapter. For Hermes said of this Science: Alchemy is a Corporal Science simply composed of one and by one, naturally conjoining things more precious, by knowledge and effect, and converting them by a natural commixtion into a better kind. A certain other said: Alchemy is a Science, teaching how to transform any kind of metal into another: and that by a proper medicine, as it appeared by many Philosophers' Books. Alchemy therefore is a science teaching how to make and compound a certain medicine, which is called Elixir, the which when it is cast upon metals or imperfect bodies, does fully perfect them in the very projection.
~ Bacon, Roger. The Mirror of Alchemy. 13th Cen. Alchemical Tract
[162] We have here, as in medicine, practice founded upon sound and
well-tested speculative knowledge; and here also, as in medicine, we can be practically successful, only if our knowledge be strictly in accordance with the facts of Nature. Alchemy is an operative science, and produces effects by supplying natural conditions, e.g., by the action of fire. Medicine is either preventive or curative; it either teaches us the conditions of health, and instructs us how to avoid disease, or, when we are ill, it provides the exact remedy which our disease requires. Alchemy has no need of conservative or preventive action; but it instructs us how to restore and cure, as it were, the diseases of metals, and to bring them back to a
p.52 13. Alchemy is a physical science
state of perfect health, in which state all metals are either silver or gold. The difficulties of our Art are great, especially on account of the disagreement which apparently prevails amongst its most authoritative exponents. The second difficulty of our Art is that of carrying out practically the clearest and most straightforward printed directions. This difficulty might be got over by watching the operations of some great master; but in the nature of the case, only few can enjoy so high a privilege. The third difficulty consists in the fantastic tricks and absurdly barren devices of fraudulent professors of this Art, in consequence of which many find it impossible to believe in the reality of our operations. And the claims of the Art itself appear so miraculous, and so far exalted above the ordinary course of Nature, that the vulgar herd are of necessity led to regard the Alchemist as a kind of sorcerer or magician, and to place his pretensions in the same class with those of the man who professes to work signs and wonders. These are but a few of the difficulties in which the study of our Art is involved; and if there be so many obstacles in the way of its investigation, how much more difficult must be the discovery of its methods? Nevertheless, I stoutly maintain that the Art of Alchemy is clear and true, and founded upon Nature; that its products are as truly silver and gold as the precious metals which are produced in the bowels of the earth;
[169] There are three parts of Philosophy: that which deals with
matter in motion, or physics; that which is concerned with matter at rest, or mathematics; and that which abstracts from both matter and motion, or metaphysics. Alchemy belongs neither to the second nor to the third of these departments of science; consequently, it takes its place in the first department, or that of physical science, for it deals with real being joined to motion and matter, and not with metaphysics, which are divine, and have regard to real being separated from motion and matter. Each physical science deals with a certain division of matter, and so does our Magistery. Science is possible by means of the fact that the universe is the work of an Intelligence to which our reason corresponds. The Divine Intelligence has subjected all natural and supernatural phenomena to the rule of certain laws, which laws our reason was created capable of apprehending, and this state of things is the preliminary condition of all science whatsoever. Our reason is either practical or speculative, according to the class of mundane relations with which it deals; and thus we have speculative philosophy, or science, and practical philosophy, or art. Our Magistery is speculative in so far as it teaches us the nature and relations of metals; it is practical in so far as it teaches us how to utilise this knowledge for the production of the Philosopher's Stone, and the transmutation of common metals into gold and silver.
~ Bonus, Peter. The New Pearl of Great Price. 1338 AD. Alchemical Tract
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This statistic alone destroys the spiritual interpretation of alchemy. There are zero references in alchemical tracts prior to the 19th century that suggest alchemy is not a physical science and there are 5 different sources that specifically define alchemy as a physical science.