And why is it no longer a practical, or credible profession?
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It's difficult to boil alchemy down to a few paragraphs, because it really was a broad field of philosophical interests. The most well-known goal of alchemy was to transmute base metals (such as lead) into precious metals (such as gold), but this was really a metaphor for the transmutation of a human soul - flawed as it may be - into something more perfect and beautiful. Alchemists also sought ways to prolong life and protect health. Alchemy was a protoscience. Ancient alchemists developed scientific techniques to probe the material world, and from their philosophical pokings grew the real science of chemistry. As an analogy, ancient astrologers' fascination with the motions of the planets gave rise to the modern science of astronomy.
The alchemy-that-was is no longer considered a credible profession because we as a species have outgrown it, intellectually speaking. Alchemists laid a very sturdy framework for the development of chemistry, but once chemistry got established, it was more than capable of investigating the physical world without relying on alchemical principles. People realized that you couldn't turn lead into gold (they didn't know about nuclear reactions at the time...) and that there was no panacea that would cure every illness. Still, you could argue that alchemy never really disappeared...it simply matured into modern-day chemistry.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
The alchemy-that-was is no longer considered a credible profession because we as a species have outgrown it, intellectually speaking. Alchemists laid a very sturdy framework for the development of chemistry, but once chemistry got established, it was more than capable of investigating the physical world without relying on alchemical principles. People realized that you couldn't turn lead into gold (they didn't know about nuclear reactions at the time...) and that there was no panacea that would cure every illness. Still, you could argue that alchemy never really disappeared...it simply matured into modern-day chemistry.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
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Alchemy is the science of mixing substances. Chemistry is the science of measuring substances. Both have been reduced to a subset of quantum mechanics.
Antoine Lavoisier, a French alchemist, decided to tackle a question that nobody had ever been able to answer: "When a glass of pure water evaporates it always leaves a residue. What is the residue?" M. Lavoisier did something nobody had ever done before: he weighed everything. He found the weight of the glass plus the residue was the same as the glass alone before the experiment. He concluded that the residue was glass, dissolved in the water and precipitated by evaporation. He wrote a book about his studies and again he did something nobody had done before: he wrote his book in French instead of Latin, specifically so everybody could study it. You can still buy his book. (Free if you have Kindle.)
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozi…
Antoine Lavoisier, a French alchemist, decided to tackle a question that nobody had ever been able to answer: "When a glass of pure water evaporates it always leaves a residue. What is the residue?" M. Lavoisier did something nobody had ever done before: he weighed everything. He found the weight of the glass plus the residue was the same as the glass alone before the experiment. He concluded that the residue was glass, dissolved in the water and precipitated by evaporation. He wrote a book about his studies and again he did something nobody had done before: he wrote his book in French instead of Latin, specifically so everybody could study it. You can still buy his book. (Free if you have Kindle.)
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozi…
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Alchemy is where they would change one element into another although there's a lot to it. Some people don't believe it works and say it's basically along the same lines as magic. It was more so popular back when they still thought the sun revolved around the earth.
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it depends who im talking to