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#540960
aaa
Trippy.
6/13/2008 3:17:42 PM
#541170
Sawyer
Quick wiki search:
Late 17th century and done by relatively secular authorities (Rober Boyle)
And the Muslims even beat that, in the 9th Century by two guys named Avicenna and Al-Kindi.
I'm curious though, where did he get early 16th?
6/13/2008 4:53:55 PM
#541666
IanC
"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth."
6/13/2008 10:02:38 PM
#541729
Edward
Yes it is real. Me and my brother tried using it to bring our mom back to life, but I lost an arm and a leg and my brother lost his whole body. Luckily I was able to replace them with automail and my brother's soul was put into a suit of armor.
We now search for the philosopher's stone.
6/13/2008 10:35:00 PM
#541961
Envy
I'm going to kill you my brother, Edward!
6/14/2008 2:03:07 AM
#542148
sgt snoodles
actually alchemy is the predecessor to modern chemistry. Now that we have chemistry alchemy is obsolete and nobody gives a flying fuck about it anymore.
6/14/2008 4:18:13 AM
#542220
Fanatic-Templar
6/14/2008 6:15:33 AM
#542283
Larty
Alchemy is not science because it's not self-correcting. Alchemists usually blamed failed experiments on their testing equipment rather than their hypotheses.
6/14/2008 8:51:17 AM
#542758
Quarkyhadron
Alchemy; which is the practice of turning lead into gold is impossible in chemistry. Unless you have a nuclear reactor in which case it is possible to destabilize lead nuclei and cause them to decay into gold.
6/14/2008 7:58:01 PM
#542768
Alcari
Ah, alchemy.
Knowing that A+B makes C, but not having a clue as to why.
6/14/2008 8:03:50 PM
#542958
Old Viking
Correct spelling is real, I can assure you. Give it a go some time.
6/15/2008 12:16:05 AM
#543018
Wrath
@Edward:
I'm gonna take your body, bitch! Also I was inside your mom. lol
6/15/2008 2:31:00 AM
#543677
tmr
Yeah, Dumbledore and Flamel were renowned in alchemy.
6/15/2008 9:11:28 PM
#544337
Oh. Well now that you have assured me, I believe it completely. Yep. That's all I needed, the assurance of some random person online.
6/16/2008 3:16:53 PM
#544903
Scar
I shall smite thee, Edward!
6/16/2008 10:09:45 PM
#546780
Microraptor
He needs his anime/manga privileges revoked, plz.
6/18/2008 12:40:05 PM
#549977
Antichrist
Alchemy was the beginning of Chemistry, but thats as far as that goes. You can't change Iron into Gold (Chemically anyway).
6/20/2008 1:07:48 AM
#551016
Brain_In_A_Jar
Alchemy was indeed the beginning of chemistry. The difference is that alchemy was mostly ignorant empiricism, whereas chemistry is based on rationalism. Alchemists typically didn't have a fucking clue how anything they did was working or any means of predicting results, they operated by guesswork - mixing any old shit together and remarking when it did something interesting, like changing colour, and blindly hoping the correct sequence of interesting but incomprehensible reactions, much like a magical incantation or a cargo-cult aeroplane summoning ritual, might actually produce something of value, whereas modern chemists make predictions based on an underlying model and only use empirical tests to validate that model.
In short, alchemy is cargo-cult chemistry. Oh, with a healthy dose of something remarkably similar to numerology, too - attributing various chemicals with relevance to particular supernatural entities, seasons, etc based on vague, superficial similarities, in the hope that one can be used to predict the behaviour of the other. Granted, there's a bit of a grey area as the alchemists gradually learned how to be proper chemists over the centuries, but you get the idea.
6/20/2008 4:56:27 PM
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