Essay on The Many Goals of Alchemy

Essay on The Many Goals of Alchemy

The Many Goals of Alchemy Alchemy is not just the changing of base metals into gold as most people think, although that was one of the goals people tried to achieve through alchemy. Alchemy is stemmed from astrology; both make attempts to understand mans relationship to the universe and exploit it. While astrology is concerned with the stars alchemy is concerned with the elements of nature. Alchemy also stemmed partly from metallurgy, a science that deals with the extracting of metals form ore and the combining of metals to make alloys. Today's modern chemistry evolved from alchemy using the extended knowledge of substances and how they react with each other. There were several goals that alchemist tried to achieve but the driving ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...If the base metals could be purified they would become gold, silver or some other precious metal. However they never succeeded We now know that changing one element in to another is impossible with out the use of a nuclear reaction, of which they had no knowledge of or any way of accidentally creating. Another popular goal of alchemy was to make the old young again and also to gain immortality. Like changing metals it is also known as transmutation and was believed to be purification. Most of the potions they concocted made people very sick and even killed. A lesser–known goal was to discover a substance that could bring about any desired change instantly. There were many myths about it and many names. Zosimos, an alchemist from 300A.D. first proposed the idea of such as substance. He called it the tincture also called the philosopher stone later on. Many of the processes in alchemy were chemical thought they didn't call it this. But there wasn't much science involved in their mixing of substances; most of it relied on folklore and superstition. Many of the reactions the created used impure mixtures of chemicals that they regarded as a substance not knowing that they were using several different chemicals at once. For many alchemists the mixing of chemicals wasn't as important as the chanting and incantations the said while they made their potions and elixirs. In fact this lead to myth of magic and witchcraft where spells were cast using

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