The Histotical Influences of Alchemy

What was the historical and scientific importance of Alchemy in both Europe and Arabia?

Alchemy plays an important part of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Alchemy, though not discussed at the beginning or through most of the book, is a vital aspect of the novel. The most important aspect of alchemy, in my opinion, is spiritual alchemy;

“This is why alchemy exists," the boy said. "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. (emphasis mine) That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

This quote exhibits pursuing a personal legend more than alchemy yet carries the same idea of finding the spiritual side of alchemy; finding the diamond in the rough, the non-glittery, non-golden, gold that exists between the rocks that we see everyday. Though spiritual alchemy is interesting, I wanted to discuss alchemy in general.

Alchemy was a proto-scientific study of air, water, earth and fire. It was also the study of transmutation which was the process of turning lead into gold and it was the study of many other proto-chemical or proto-physical things like The Elixir of Life. It is also known as the “old” science or like mentioned above “proto-science”. Alchemy also had belief and faith instead of firm facts. Most discussed studies in The Alchemist were The Elixir of Life, which gives you immortality and especially the Philosopher's Stone, which takes years to make under the process of Magnum opus and when its made it undertakes yet another process which (as mentioned ab...

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...eaning before. It justified many of the people’s beliefs. With the birth of new eras came a new form of science, actually 3 more forms; the successors of alchemy: chemistry and physics. The third form is biology. Like its predecessor chemistry contains all minerals, some natural and a few man-made. Alchemy was unjustifiable in modern culture and seems impossible because people wanted to believe in facts not faith, and alchemy faded slowly until its disappearance.

In conclusion, alchemy had a great impact on shaping modern sciences. Alchemy developed through the ages. It moulded itself to transform to modern chemistry and modern physics. Alchemy was faith and science was fact and people chose to believe in facts instead of having faith. In my opinion, Alchemy did a great job of being the proto-science and filled in until it gradually substituted by modern science