Viswanathan K's Thoughts

I used to think that the difference between alchemy and chemistry was like the difference between astrology and astronomy: the ignorance–wisdom split. But something always felt jarring with that view: how then did so many of the great scientists like Newton and Robert Boyle (he of the gas laws fame) believe in alchemy? Was it just greed and hope? That felt too simplistic…   Philip Ball’s book on water, H2O , explained the reasons. The first one is obvious. Given what was at stake with alchemy (gold, riches), it is not surprising that none of its practitioners shared information or made their techniques public. That in turn meant that independent confirmation, or attempts to redo the process, were out of the question. Further, they encrypted their notes to ensure that even if stolen, they wouldn’t make sense to others. Which in turn ensured there was no way to compare two methods or attempts.   But it’s the other reason that goes far deeper, and is built on ancient, oft...

The scientist, Robert Boyle, is famous for the gas law named after him. But he contributed to far more things in science, writes Paul Strathern in his wonderful history of chemistry, Mendeleyev’s Dream . For starters, he revived the atomic theory. Almost everyone agreed that that since gases could be compressed (without any increase in their weight), it implied that “gases consisted of particles separated by a void”. Boyle extended the reasoning as follows: the “particles separated by a void” principle should apply to water vapour, a gas. Therefore, shouldn’t the same principle apply to water in liquid and solid states as well? And if it applied to water in all states, shouldn’t it apply to all substances? And thus was revived the atomic theory. Boyle also defined what an element is: anything that could not be broken down into a simpler substance. But this definition had a problem: “When a substance was found to be an element, this could only be a provisional state of affa...

From ancient times, men have valued and wanted gold. As a consequence, they made a lot of effort to try and convert materials into gold. The process was called alchemy. Many legends and stories had the alchemy theme in them. The Midas Touch is the most famous instance. The Philosopher’s Stone was supposed to be able to convert anything into gold (The Philosopher’s Stone in the Harry Potter book had nothing to do with gold though). Did anyone actually succeed at alchemy though? According to Marco Polo, the answer was Yes. Kublai Khan had “mastered the art of alchemy”! Huh? Why Marco Polo came to that conclusion makes for an interesting story. Today, we take paper currency for granted. But that was not always the case. In fact, the Chinese were the first to use paper currency. During Marco Polo’s time, the Europeans still used gold or silver or other metals as currency, not paper. So when Marco Polo came to China and saw the Khan give his paper currency in return for gold with...