May 19, 2022 11:18 PM
Friedrich Wilheim 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?"
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https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/artif...chemistry/
EXCERPTS: Although it may seem like a modern fantasy, the project of artificially creating a living organism already resounds through the experiments of the ancient alchemists. Long before the birth of modern chemistry, the physician and alchemist Paracelsus, in his 1537 volume “De Rerum Natura,” describes a bizarre biochemical procedure for the preparation of what he called a homunculus, a synthetic organism with the appearance of a very small human being. Paracelsus’s procedure involved the use of certain biological components such as human semen, manure, and blood, which, when subjected to a long process of fermentation, would enable the development of an embryo.
While this type of occult operation may seem absurd today, the result of magical superstitions and, in terms of our contemporary view, a fundamental misunderstanding of how life works, such tales of ancient science often contain deeper and more relevant significance than it may seem...
[...] I have always been fascinated by the occult origins of chemistry; I think that, although they are not always evident, contemporary chemistry still bears these ancient influences within it. The idea, so dear to alchemists, of a continuity between the inorganic and the organic world, between dead and living matter, was the basis for the development of modern chemistry and still influences many of our technologies today. [...] Paracelsus’s alchemical procedures, while fascinating, would never have led to any demonstrable result, and yet chemistry, over its long history, has never entirely freed itself from the ambition to discover how to break through from the inanimate realm of dust and crystals to the domain of the living in all its forms.
When Mary Shelley first published “Frankenstein” anonymously in 1818, contemporary science was at a very delicate point...
[...] Contrary to what might be expected, although the details of the procedure of creation are never entirely revealed to the reader, in Mary Shelley’s imagination Frankenstein’s creation of the monster is more like a process of chemical synthesis than the result of a series of intense electrical shocks. The young Victor Frankenstein, with no access to the most up-to-date theories of natural philosophy, begins his autodidactic “scientific” training following in the footsteps of Renaissance magicians and alchemists such as Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. Upon arriving at university, the young Frankenstein, disappointed by the rigors of a modern science that spurns his dreams of greatness, is driven by a fatal attraction to chemistry, the only scientific discipline that seems capable of fulfilling the miraculous promises of the ancient occult sciences. As his chemistry professor tells him:
These fatal words, which will lead the young Victor down the road to ruin, seem to suggest that chemistry, despite the apparent humility of its methods, is the only science capable of revealing the secrets of life and death to the devoted scientist. And indeed, throughout its history, chemistry has often found itself wandering the edgelands of life, trying to understand the characteristics that a chemical system must possess in order to be considered living.
As we have seen, the study of complexity reveals that there is no rigid boundary between living and non-living matter: The difference between these two states of matter does not lie in the specific nature of their components, but has to do with different ways in which the same chemical components may be related to one another.
What is more, the construction of chemical and nanotechnological systems capable of self-organization shows that, between the almost completely passive behavior of a stone (the chemical structure of which, however, still has a certain degree of complexity) and that of an intelligent animal such as a human, there is a very dense spectrum of different material structures, each capable of interacting in a specific way with the reality around it.
Life is first and foremost a problem of organization, and since the dawn of its history, chemistry has always been concerned with understanding how material relates to itself, organizing itself spontaneously into the incredible variety of natural and artificial structures that exist... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - -
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/artif...chemistry/
EXCERPTS: Although it may seem like a modern fantasy, the project of artificially creating a living organism already resounds through the experiments of the ancient alchemists. Long before the birth of modern chemistry, the physician and alchemist Paracelsus, in his 1537 volume “De Rerum Natura,” describes a bizarre biochemical procedure for the preparation of what he called a homunculus, a synthetic organism with the appearance of a very small human being. Paracelsus’s procedure involved the use of certain biological components such as human semen, manure, and blood, which, when subjected to a long process of fermentation, would enable the development of an embryo.
While this type of occult operation may seem absurd today, the result of magical superstitions and, in terms of our contemporary view, a fundamental misunderstanding of how life works, such tales of ancient science often contain deeper and more relevant significance than it may seem...
[...] I have always been fascinated by the occult origins of chemistry; I think that, although they are not always evident, contemporary chemistry still bears these ancient influences within it. The idea, so dear to alchemists, of a continuity between the inorganic and the organic world, between dead and living matter, was the basis for the development of modern chemistry and still influences many of our technologies today. [...] Paracelsus’s alchemical procedures, while fascinating, would never have led to any demonstrable result, and yet chemistry, over its long history, has never entirely freed itself from the ambition to discover how to break through from the inanimate realm of dust and crystals to the domain of the living in all its forms.
When Mary Shelley first published “Frankenstein” anonymously in 1818, contemporary science was at a very delicate point...
[...] Contrary to what might be expected, although the details of the procedure of creation are never entirely revealed to the reader, in Mary Shelley’s imagination Frankenstein’s creation of the monster is more like a process of chemical synthesis than the result of a series of intense electrical shocks. The young Victor Frankenstein, with no access to the most up-to-date theories of natural philosophy, begins his autodidactic “scientific” training following in the footsteps of Renaissance magicians and alchemists such as Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. Upon arriving at university, the young Frankenstein, disappointed by the rigors of a modern science that spurns his dreams of greatness, is driven by a fatal attraction to chemistry, the only scientific discipline that seems capable of fulfilling the miraculous promises of the ancient occult sciences. As his chemistry professor tells him:
The ancient teachers of this science […] promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.
These fatal words, which will lead the young Victor down the road to ruin, seem to suggest that chemistry, despite the apparent humility of its methods, is the only science capable of revealing the secrets of life and death to the devoted scientist. And indeed, throughout its history, chemistry has often found itself wandering the edgelands of life, trying to understand the characteristics that a chemical system must possess in order to be considered living.
As we have seen, the study of complexity reveals that there is no rigid boundary between living and non-living matter: The difference between these two states of matter does not lie in the specific nature of their components, but has to do with different ways in which the same chemical components may be related to one another.
What is more, the construction of chemical and nanotechnological systems capable of self-organization shows that, between the almost completely passive behavior of a stone (the chemical structure of which, however, still has a certain degree of complexity) and that of an intelligent animal such as a human, there is a very dense spectrum of different material structures, each capable of interacting in a specific way with the reality around it.
Life is first and foremost a problem of organization, and since the dawn of its history, chemistry has always been concerned with understanding how material relates to itself, organizing itself spontaneously into the incredible variety of natural and artificial structures that exist... (MORE - missing details)