2004-04-26, 23:28 | Link #21 | |
Dictator of the World
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Canada, In my basement playing DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION
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2004-04-27, 00:31 | Link #22 | |
Feldmarschall
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As for alchemy, it was the medieval study of nature with strong elements of mysticism thrown in. A lot of the ideas mentioned in FMA, like the Philosopher's Stone, and the transmutation of base metal to gold, were objectives of alchemical study. But most of it was really bunk because the medieaval alchemists had no serious concept of what we now call the scientific method (forming a hypothesis, performing an experiment to test it, and refining the results to prove or disprove it). The method used in most alchemy would probably be along the lines of "I think if I mix 10 drams of bituminous limestone with an distillation of mercury I can make gold! ... Hmm, that didn't work. What about sulfur and natron? Crap that didn't work either..." So basically the alchemist never got anywhere with the gold-making, but as a side effect of all their dorking around, eventually learned about properties of various chemicals as a side effect. So the practice of alchemy laid the basis for the modern science of chemistry. But to say that alchemy=chemistry is just wrong. And it certainly isn't physics-- alchemy had no concept of the atomic structure of matter and so on. |
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