Technikatörténeti szemle 22. (1996)

Papers from the Second International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Eger, Hungary, 16–19 August, 1995) - Pérez-Bustamente, A. Juan: The Holistic Concept of Alchemy

Since the darkest ages, mankind's culture and tradition rely strongly on symbolic languages and ways of expression. Chemistry is not an exception (remember, among others Bergmann, Hassenfratz, Dalton and Berzelius). Symbology is a most useful instrument of knowledge enabling man to condensate much information, inequivocally, in a very reduced space. But to understand symbols we need keys which are not necessarily easy to dispose of. Therein lies one of the main barriers precisely which make a difficult task to understand the meaning of alchemy properly (holistically). Alchemical symbology is plenty, as a matter of fact, of polivalent symbolism, metaphores, acrostics, acronims and mystic allegories which need to be deciphered for its proper understanding. Alchemy is a synergic syncretism of a great variety of elements, both spiritual and material, which the present paper aims at disclosing by means of a new approach based on a pictorial methodology of conceptual semiotics which tries to serve the purpose of visualizing and clarifying the outcome deriving from the interrelationships of a number of fundamental cornerstones which gave rise to the appearance and development of alchemy. The study of alchemy means a most thrilling and challenging adventure into knowledge and culture, an authentic bath of inter- and pluridisciplinar humanism involving a most wide spectrum of mankind's activities and interests (myths, religions, philosophy, mystics, metaphysics, history, techniques and crafts, esoterism, languages, etymologies, symbolism, art, iconography, archaelogy, paleography, etc.). In the author's opinion if alchemy were just protochemistry (a pseudoscience) but nothing else, it would be a limited, poor, even boring subject... Fortunatedly it is much more than that without pretending to ignore the proven fact that the "pedigree" of chemistry sinks profound roots into ancestral alchemical conceptions and unscientific technical or laboratory experimentation based exclussively on blind empiricism. Alchemy means a very important chapter of the history of mankind, trough all ages up to the 19th c, directly connected with its thoughts, beliefs, hopes and crafts as well as a continuous attempt to put into practice the metaphysical tenets of the qualitative philosophical paradigm of matter, aiming at the attainment of richess, health and even youth and inmortality. Contrary to the actual concept and practices of real science, alchemy remained a traditional sacred, secret ("hermetic") knowledge only accesible to priests, iniciated or adepts, who protected their wisdom aiming at the achievement of both material and spiritual enterprises under a thick veil of esoteric occultism and cryptic symbolism. For most overspecialised actual scientists alchemy means little more than