Is Alchemy > Science?

This is a transcription of a speech I delivered this week. So every argument would not be well explained. Transcribed from the speech written, not the one actually delivered. There are minor differences. In case there is obvious need of more explanation, I’ll add it in parenthesis.

A man sat under a tree. An apple fell on him and as they say, the rest is history. Everyone knows who I am talking about. Sir Isaac Newton.

Discovery of gravity, discovery of laws of motion, discovery of light spectrum, foundations for calculus. That’s one hell of a résumé . Without doubt Newton is a very significant figure in the history of science.

But what many people don’t realise is that Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist. The Cambridge professor spent a major portion of his life in the pursuit of Philosopher’s stone. The mythical object that converts any metal into gold. I would argue that there is a possibility that the lessons he learnt from his study of alchemy impacted more than his discovery of gravity.

By no means I’m saying that discovery of gravity was an insignificant discovery. But lessons learnt from pursuit of gold might have impacted the lives of every day common man more than discovery of gravity.

In 1699, Newton became the Master of Royal mint. In 1717 he implemented policies which essentially kept the British currency on gold standard. What prompted Newton to take such an action was that he summarised from his studies in alchemy that, gold cannot be artificially created.

This anchoring of British currency on gold stabilised it and became the harbinger for modern day capitalism. And capitalism was the driving force behind the improvements in human condition, by an astronomical scale, since then.

I’m not here to say that studying alchemy is better than studying science. Of course not. I’m trying to impart some contrarian ideas. The ideas that are thought obvious or is popular opinion might not be worth the pursuit. Subjecting every idea to contrary thoughts is a good exercise, in my opinion.

This is the reason why even the devil gets an advocate in the Catholic Church. During the proceeding for sainthood, an person is appointed to argue why the particular person should not be made a saint. The commonly used phrase “Devil’s advocate” arises from this practice. (This point is made in my last article with respect to AI. It is still incomplete. The speech was in front of an audience who haven’t read the article.) I want to give some contrarian thoughts here.

During the cold war, US and Soviet Union were in arms race and space race , among other races. Internet was born in the research wing of US defence department. But it was not the nuclear weapons or the supercomputers or the internet that essentially won the war for the United States. It was, supermarkets. Fresh, quality produce, which also looked good, at cheap prices. This was the achievement of supermarkets.

Along with achievements of NASA, supermarkets were also used as a fuel for US propaganda machine. Fresh produce used to be airlifted from United States to socialist countries too be displayed in model supermarkets. This was borderline unethical, due to variety of reasons. But far better than what fuelled Soviet propaganda machine.

Coming back to science. Scientists like Albert Einstein and John von Neumann was enthralled by the ideas put forth by a man named Kurt Gödel. Gödel mathematically proved that everything cannot be proved and explained by logic and reason alone. This made a lot of scientists of the tome uncomfortable. But John von Neumann felt liberated after listening to the paper, as told by Neumann.

Neumann’s later inventions and theories power modern biology and almost every modern day electronic equipment that consumes and produce data. John von Newmann is widely considered as the smartest person that ever lived on this planet. And he was liberated by the knowledge that logic and reason cannot explain or prove everything.

Again I’m not here telling you to chuck logic and reason out the window. In the end what I want to tell you is, chase the gold, you might end up with and apple that will change the world.

Originally published at Stacked Squares.