James~
Thanks for that quote, that is fantastic.
Harry~
It's not so much that I want to frame what I'm doing within the lens
of science as it exists today so much as make what is otherwise a very
rich and complicated system a little more accessible. What I want to
do (and whether or not it ends up this way is still up in the air) is
craft something like the alchemy version of the Chicken Qabalah,
something that a novice could pick up and come away with a
conversational foundation and yet still go in depth enough to have
some academic merit. I think the most effective way to do this would
be to work backwards from modern science to give a sense of place, but
I don't want my treatment of the modern sciences to really go beyond
that, which is to say a stepping stone of accessibility. And forgive
me if I misstep in some of my terminology. I am not an expert in the
field by any means and have only recently as a result of this project
and my courses begun to really delve into the meat of this. Which is
partly why I am asking for assistance here.
On Nov 13, 2007 1:24 PM, James John Bell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I pasted part of an essay by author and practitioner John Michael Greer
> where he states that the terms used during the Renaissance were not
> "science" but the "mechanical philosophy" and not "pseudo-science" but the
> "chemical philosophy". Might be worth considering.
>
> - James
>
>
>
> "At that time, three broad currents of thought dominated the scene in
> Europe. One of these was based on what was left of medieval Christian
> tradition. Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter Reformation had left
> little of the old spirit of synthesis intact; the need to defend theological
> claims against the scathing attacks of rationalists and sectarian enemies
> forced all sides in the religious disputes of the time to harden their
> boundaries. Still, a more or less conservative Christianity still remained
> as a powerful intellectual force in most of Europe. Because of its
> connections with the medieval philosophical movement known as Scholasticism,
> it was often called the "scholastic philosophy."(9)
>
> The second current had more complex origins. In Classical times, some
> traditions of thought argued for a view of the world based entirely on the
> evidence of the senses and the operations of logic. Some of these,
> particularly as reflected through the writings of Aristotle, became
> ancestral to a medieval school of philosophy known as Nominalism, which held
> similar beliefs.(10) In the Renaissance, Nominalist ideas spread in many
> directions and took a wide range of forms. All this ferment coalesced toward
> the end of the Renaissance with the rise of a new, radically materialist
> philosophy of nature, armed with an equally new experimental method that
> allowed questions about nature to be put to practical tests. We now call
> this new philosophy modern science; in the late Renaissance, it was called
> the "mechanical philosophy."(11)
>
> Then there was the third current - that complicated blend of Cabala,
> Platonism, magic and alchemy that we now call Renaissance Hermeticism.(12)
> The Renaissance discovery of ancient texts of magical philosophy, above all
> the books attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, sparked an explosive revival of
> magic. Over the next few centuries, philosophers of magic such as Marsilio
> Ficino and Cornelius Agrippa found ways to fit the whole body of Western
> occult tradition into a more or less cohesive whole. The resulting system
> was a major influence on Renaissance culture and remained influential,
> especially in England and Germany, as the Renaissance waned. Because of its
> heavily alchemical emphasis in the late Renaissance, its most common name at
> the time was the "chemical philosophy."(13)
>
> These three currents - Christian orthodoxy, emergent natural science, and
> Renaissance Hermeticism - did not develop in isolation from one another, and
> many of the writers and scholars of the age held views drawn from more than
> one. It has even been argued, notably by the late Dame Frances Yates, that
> much of what became the mechanical philosophy had its roots in the
> Renaissance revival of magic.(14)"
>
> http://www.lastwizards.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1131329479&archiv
> e=1153724296&start_from=&ucat=2&do=archives
>
>
>
> On 11/13/07 9:17 AM, "Ty Falk" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > And it is not a "genuine science" by the standards of today, but
> > rather a precursor. And in that vein pseudo is an appropriate prefix
> > despite the connotations. What term would you then suggest? How about
> > "pre-science" or "antescience"?
> >
> > On Nov 13, 2007 11:33 AM, Harry Roth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> "Pseudo" means "not genuine, an imitation." It does indeed have negative
> >> meaning.
> >>
> >> Harry Roth
> >>
> >> Ty Falk wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I think we're getting at the same things but are becoming hung up on
> >>> semantics. The prefix of pseudo isn't a derogatory assignment, but
> >>> rather an acknowledgment of the spiritual component, differentiating
> >>> it from common scientific practice. Besides, I'm not sure how you are
> >>> seeing that my stating that the practice of alchemy being the
> >>> framework for many "modern" sciences is my excluding all but the
> >>> spiritual. If anything, it's a nod to both.
> >>>
> >>> On Nov 13, 2007 10:57 AM, Harry Roth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Ty Falk wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> I am aware of some of the
> >>>>> work being done in practical alchemy, such as the work with whitegold
> >>>>> in reversing cellular decay (still not sure what I think about that)
> >>>>> but I call it a pseudoscience only as it has evolved into chemistry
> >>>>> and physics.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> I guess you prove my point that you are seeing alchemy as a purely
> >>>> spiritual endeavor, since you say that practical alchemy "evolved" into
> >>>> science. The term "pseudoscience" privileges science as somehow more
> >>>> valid, yet alchemy not only came before science historically but
> >>>> continues to exist and be practiced to this day by practical alchemists
> >>>> who combine the physical and spiritual aspects of alchemy rather than
> >>>> exiling them from one another as many contemporary spiritual alchemists
> >>>> do. I am talking about lab work uniting the spiritual and the physical
> >>>> as is described in old alchemical texts, not stuff like ORMUS, or
> >>>> practice that at least works with the fundamentals of alchemy, like
> >>>> Armand Barbault did in his spagyrical medicines.
> >>>>
> >>>> I would not use the prefix "pseudo" unless I were setting out to be
> >>>> inflammatory. But if that prefix can be applied to anything, it is to
> >>>> science as a pseudoalchemy, no? Some alchemists even make such an
> >>>> argument. Fulcanelli argues that the alchemical operations that science
> >>>> adopted were part of what he calls "archemy," which is using alchemical
> >>>> means without any alchemical knowledge, spirit, attention to time of
> >>>> year, etc. Fulcanelli was a physicist writing in the 1920s, so I would
> >>>> think that if anyone would identify alchemy as a pseudoscience or even
> >>>> as some nice old toothless granny of science, it would be him.
> >>>>
> >>>> I think if you decide to discuss alchemy only as a spiritual
> >>>> undertaking, that is one thing. I think it would be an honest endeavor
> >>>> to say that outright, although to me that is a limited, truncated
> >>>> version of alchemy, regardless of whether you are focusing on
> >>>> symbolism. Practical alchemists make much use of the symbolism of
> >>>> alchemy and draw connections between symbols that will be missed by
> >>>> someone who interprets them merely spiritually. To say that alchemy has
> >>>> been superseded by science is like arguing that the everyday practice of
> >>>> rabbinic law has been superseded by the mere belief in Jesus Christ as
> >>>> one's personal savior. I would argue that they are two completely
> >>>> different things that are related only superficially.
> >>>>
> >>>> Harry Roth
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
>
--
Ty Falk
~~~~~~~
Erisian
Anthropologist
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
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