Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

How the Occult Gave Birth to Science
https://nautil.us/how-the-occult-gave-bi...e-1041122/

EXCERPT: These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers... (MORE - details)

Friedrich Nietsche: "Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not beforehand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and wizards who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?" --The Gay Science

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Zozobra: a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century
https://theconversation.com/is-the-elect...ice-242890

EXCERPTS: According to the philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book “Analysis of Mexican Being”:

“Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on … indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.” (MORE - details)

"Much of Newton's writing on alchemy may have been lost in a fire in his laboratory, so the true extent of his work in this area may have been larger than is currently known. Newton also suffered a nervous breakdown during his period of alchemical work.

Newton's writings suggest that one of the main goals of his alchemy may have been the discovery of the philosopher's stone (a material believed to turn base metals into gold), and perhaps to a lesser extent, the discovery of the highly coveted Elixir of Life.[6] Newton reportedly believed that Diana's Tree, an alchemical demonstration producing a dendritic "growth" of silver from solution, was evidence that metals "possessed a sort of life."

Some practices of alchemy were banned in England during Newton's lifetime, due in part to unscrupulous practitioners who would often promise wealthy benefactors unrealistic results in an attempt to swindle them. The English Crown, also fearing the potential devaluation of gold because of the creation of fake gold, made penalties for alchemy very severe. In some cases, the punishment for unsanctioned alchemy would include the public hanging of an offender on a gilded scaffold while adorned with tinsel and other items...

....Newton's various surviving alchemical notebooks clearly show that he made no distinctions between alchemy and what's now considered science. Optical experiments were written on the same pages as recipes from arcane sources. Newton did not always record his chemical experiments in the most transparent way. Alchemists were notorious for veiling their writings in impenetrable jargon; Newton himself invented new symbols and systems."---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newt...lt_studies