Sir Isaac Newton, Alchemist

Hugh Pickens writes "Natalie Angier writes in The Hindu that it is now becoming clear that Newton spent thirty years of his life slaving over a furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another. Angier writes, 'How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy, which in its commonest rendering is described as the desire to transform lead into gold?' Now new historical research describes how alchemy yielded a bounty of valuable spinoffs, including new drugs, brighter paints, stronger soaps and better booze. 'Alchemy was synonymous with chemistry,' says Dr. William Newman, 'and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation.' Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics,' says Newman. 'He's not just passing light through a prism — he's resynthesizing it.'"

Comments

Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Science is not a field of study it is the approach.

Re:Science

[itsybitsy]

"... there was still a lot of mumbo-jumbo out there ..."

Still is, if not more so. I'm not just talking about homeopathy or magical crystals or other new age clapp trap, lots of wild claims and other mumbo jumbo are made in the name of other fields of science without the hard evidence to back it up.

Re:Science

[radicalskeptic]

For a fairly entertaining examination of this idea, someone might want to check out out Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle books. I've only gotten through the first (Quicksilver) but it takes place during Newton's lifetime and Newton himself is one of the more major characters, along with Leibnitz and other less famous "natural philosophers."

Re:Science

[MightyMartian]

The chief difference is that we have developed ways of at least separating legitimate areas of research from quackery. Homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and the whole long litany of frauds and whackos certainly can gain some traction with the general public, but you won't exactly find them publishing in peer-reviewed journals. And even when you get the odd crackpot like Andrew Wakefield (well, more than likely he's a con-artist, but you get the point) who does manage to get past the gates, it doesn't last forever. In the case of the MMR-autism scam, the fault seems to have been in having the balls to just come out and declare the whole thing a fraud, but maybe in Britain, with its nutty libel laws, the Lancet had to be a bit more careful.

Re:Science

[Minwee]

lots of wild claims and other mumbo jumbo are made in the name of other fields of science without the hard evidence to back it up.

We're talking about Newton here. Why did you have to go and bring Economists into it?

Re:Science

[jamesh]

Careful. Chiropractors don't like being discredited.

Re:Science

[Lotana]

Offtopic:

You mentioned chiropractors in your list of frauds. I was always under the impression that all chiropractors do is pop your joins back to how they supposed to be after you been an idiot by sitting in that uncomfortable chair for several days. Nothing more.

Is there some mystical part to the field being pushed that I am not aware of? Do they claim to do more besides physical task of setting your bones straight?

Re:Science

[MichaelSmith]

Yes, to put it mildly

The core concept of chiropractic, vertebral subluxation, is not based on sound science. Research has not demonstrated that spinal manipulation, the main treatment method employed by all chiropractors, is effective for any medical condition, with the possible exception of treatment for back pain

Re:Science

[rgmoore]

Is there some mystical part to the field being pushed that I am not aware of?

Yes. Chiropractic was originally a semi-mystical practice like a lot of pre-scientific medicine. The founders claimed that all sickness was caused by misalignment of the joints, so they could cure any disease by correcting the misalignments. A minority of chiropractors today still make those claims. They also oppose a lot of other modern scientific medicine, including vaccination.

Re:Science

[phantomfive]

There likely is still a lot of mumbo-jumbo out there (string theory, perhaps?). Science doesn't mean being right. Science, in a single word, might be described as 'evidence-based.' Before science, people trusted people like Aristotle for no other reason than that he was Aristotle. Now when we trust scientists, we're not doing it because we think they have some god-given right, but because we trust that they've looked at the evidence, and we can look at that evidence too if we have the time/desire.

This is why Galileo and Newton are still scientists, even though there was a lot they didn't know. They ran experiments, and looked at what really happened, instead of debating based on what someone said a thousand years before. In Newton's alchemy, he was still experimenting to see what could be done, not writing long dissertations without ever turning on a burner. Seriously, that's what people did before science: before the idea of basing things on evidence.

Nullius in Verba, "On the words of no man," this is what science is; if a man is not backed up by evidence, his words are useless.

Re:Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on the chiropractic school, a large percentage of chiropractors claim that many non-back ailments are caused by "subluxations" and, rather than simply popping the back into place, will try to sign the patient up for a continuing treatment (usually accompanied by NOT popping the back into place to prevent the patient from cancelling), claiming that the root cause of the back misalignment is an underlying muscle asymmetry which requires recurring office visits.

The honest/non-cultish ones just pop you into place and send you on your way.

Re:Science

[Kirijini]

...homeopathy or magical crystals or other new age clapp trap...

Most homeopathy and new age healing methods don't actually make scientific claims (in part because they can't), they're spiritual endeavors that depend to a great degree on the belief of the "patient." If you put your "faith" in science and hard data, then, yeah, avoid new age healing. But there's nothing wrong with spiritual fulfillment and/or the placebo effect.

Yeah, there are frauds out there who claim they can cure cancer with magic charms, and that's dangerous. But most new agey healers deal with things like joint pain, chronic pain, headaches, and other ailments that are likely stress and/or posture related, and so really just need belief by the patient that they've been healed, or some kind of spiritual fulfillment. Sometimes there are things that pills or surgery can't fix.

The real mumbo jumbo is astrology, because it does make scientific claims.

Re:Science

[MightyMartian]

Except that even proponents of string theories admit that there's no evidence for it currently, and that it will be some time before we can even create the technology to indirectly test for these theories. As much as anything else, science is defined by how cautiously it approaches theories like super strings, brane theory, and so forth. They're intriguing ideas that physicists will be the first to state may explain the universe, or may just be delightful mathematical models that have nothing to do with reality.

The scientific method came into existence because of guys like Galileo and Newton, but the full genesis of methodological naturalism really wasn't until the end of the 18th century. I won't say that Newton weren't scientists within the framework of natural philosophy, but as far as being modern scientists like Darwin and Maxwell, they still weren't quite there.

Re:Science

[Chris Burke]

it takes place during Newton's lifetime and Newton himself is one of the more major characters, along with Leibnitz and other less famous "natural philosophers."

Does it feature the infamous Newton vs Leibnitz Calculus Slap Fight?

Re:Science

[MightyMartian]

From what I can tell new age healing systems do indeed make claims, and if you're going to make claims about physical phenomena then those claims can be tested. This is why the Brits are gearing up to stop taxpayers paying for all the alternative therapies. Want to throw your money at a witchdoctor in a lab coat, be my guest, just don't do it on the public's dime.

Re:Science

[zooblethorpe]

Does it feature the infamous Newton vs Leibnitz Calculus Slap Fight?

It's been a while since I read it, but I think I remember that being mentioned. Also, it includes a rough recipe for distilling white and/or red phosphorous from vats-worth of fermented pee -- whoohoo!

Cheers,

Re:Science

[c6gunner]

Selling people lies is always wrong. You can dress it up in "spirituality" and "faith" and whatever other nonsense is currently popular in your society, but you can't change the fact that you're taking money from people by lying to them. The fact that you're also helping spread ignorance only adds insult to injury.

Re:Science

[zblack_eagle]

For now, it will cost you more than the gold is worth, but once energy becomes almost free...

...then gold and lead will be worth the same. Likely the value of lead will go up and the value of gold will go down in proportion to supply and demand of the respective elements.

Re:Science

[Mateorabi]

Yes, and it's actually a major motivator that drives the plot, even if the argument itself only gets a bit of ink. It's the whole reason Waterhouse is called back from the colonies to England.

Re:Science

[UnknowingFool]

It's obvious because of the stability of lead that you won't be able to do it by chemical means (which is, I guess, often implied). However, with nuclear transmutation is definitely possible to change bismuth into lead and lead into gold. For now, it will cost you more than the gold is worth, but once energy becomes almost free..

It is obvious now after hundreds of years of rigorous theory and testing. In Newton's time, it wasn't clear whether some new, unknown chemical would turn lead into gold. We know now from atomic theory that lead and gold have different number of protons and simple chemical change would not convert one to another. Chemistry at the time was in its infancy. The law of conservation of matter wasn't stated by Antoine Lavoisier, which many historians consider the father of modern chemistry, until 1789 (some 60 years after Newton died). Even then Lavoisier proposed that heat was caused by a weightless fluid called caloric so he wasn't right about everything.

Re:Science

[Kirijini]

The new age healers I've known are 1) nice people who want to help you, and 2) honest about what they can and can't do.

Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," but you're ignoring that people are getting spiritual fulfillment and moral satisfaction from it. It's the same thing with spiritual healing. A lot of people do feel better afterwords, and in fact feel better served by spiritual healing than from whatever treatment a doctor gives them. Bear in mind that I'm talking about treatment for things like chronic pain and headaches, not cancer or infectious diseases.

Re:Science

[drawlight]

A while back (June 5 2009) Tom Levenson was talking about his book, "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist," on Science Friday http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144. A caller asked the Levenson about Stephenson's work. Levenson said that the Newton's voice was so plausible that he had stopped reading them until he had finished his own book.

Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.

Re:Science

[c6gunner]

Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," ....

And I do. Many people, likewise, voluntarily give their entire life savings to the Church of Scientology, or give their 13-year-old-daughters to the head of their cult. Saying that people do it "willingly" is meaningless when the problem at hand is that people are being manipulated and lied to.

Re:Science

[rycamor]

A while back (June 5 2009) Tom Levenson was talking about his book, "Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist," on Science Friday http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105012144. A caller asked the Levenson about Stephenson's work. Levenson said that the Newton's voice was so plausible that he had stopped reading them until he had finished his own book.

Very interesting to note. I had been wondering about that part of the story.

Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.

Absolutely!. I am at the last 100 pages right now and it surely does not lose steam. Nor punk. (OK, I'll stop now)

Re:Science

[blahplusplus]

"Science is not a field of study it is the approach."

I think one forgets that human beings start at near ground zero as well, it's easy after the fact to know things are errors then it is to know them during the time one lives. How many errors in science today will look just as bad as alchemy in the future?

Re:Science

[MightyMartian]

And there's no such thing as Moped Jesus, either.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

It is obvious now after hundreds of years of rigorous theory and testing. In Newton's time, it wasn't clear whether some new, unknown chemical would turn lead into gold.

Alchemy was only partially about the transmutation of actual metals. When it talks about turning "lead" into "gold" it is usually talking about a spiritual refinement, a transformation of the base animal aspects of humanity (lead) to a higher, more platonically pure state (gold). If you've read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, you'll find many ideas of science and math that are informed by this tradition. The notion that alchemy was about making gold misses the entire point. The transmutation of metals was as much about misdirecting the Grand Inquisitors as it was about making gold.

For a very interesting discussion of alchemy, I highly recommend the book Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation by the great historian Peter Levenda. It's also worth reading Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages as an entertaining overview to the philosophical aspects of alchemy.

Re:Science

[Nursie]

I think you're talking about Osteopaths.

Chiropractics is not regulated to the same extent (in the UK at least) and reeks of quackery and pseudoscience. Osteopaths fix your bones, chiropractors believe they can fix pretty much anything by popping your bones around.

Re:Science

[mr_mischief]

Actually, gold has more inherent worth than lead. Gold's not as likely to poison you. It's an excellent conductor. It doesn't oxidize and corrode to the same extent as other metals (lead doesn't either). Gold is highly reflective. It is more attractive to look at according to most people. It's (like lead) very malleable and ductile. It is even denser than lead, meaning that it would be preferable for shielding material if it was more affordable.

If energy were free, it's still not likely everyone would be owner of equipment that could perform this task. Gold may then be only marginally higher in price than lead, but its greater desirability would still account for some premium.

Re:Science

[Nursie]

Homeopathy does not operate that way. It makes claims about curing illness with like-like interactions, it makes claims about the alleged memory of water, it makes claims that the further something is diluted the more powerful it is. Homeopathists are frequently quoted in news articles saying things like "science just doesn't understand the mechanisms yet"

It's snake oil, through and through.

Re:Science

[lysdexia]

Unknowing Fool!

Cower before the power of my phlogiston bomb!

Re:Science

[glwtta]

Also, don't give up reading the trilogy! It gets better and a lot of the pieces don't come together until the final book.

Hmm, I actually thought the third book was a huge let-down. I still love the trilogy (I mean "cycle") as a whole, though.

Re:Science

[gmuslera]

A small correction. Gold would have higher value than lead. Price is set with the market, and could be related or not with how useful or abundant could be a particular element (take the case of helium, or gold itself)

Re:Science

[mr_mischief]

Gee, it's pretty clear to me that when an MD or a DO puts someone in traction for neck or back issues or sciatica, they are manipulating the spine. It's pretty clear to me that anti-inflammatory pills and muscle relaxants stopping spasms in the muscles of the neck, back, chest, groin, and buttocks work the same when an MD, DO, or chiropractor recommends them.

My MDs, DOs, and my chiropractors all recommended either pilates or yoga for helping keep the back in shape. They all told me that ice is good, massage is good unless there's a particular injury, and that a temporary heel lift could help with sciatica.

Both my MD at the time and my chiropractor at the time wanted to wait the exact same amount of time for me to have any adjustments or massage therapy for my neck after a car accident, and both recommended the same treatments for it once the inflammation in the joints had settled down except for one part: the MD wanted me on ibuprofen for the inflammation and Valium for the muscle spasms in the meantime, while the chiropractor wanted me on the ibuprofen for inflammation and some mineral supplements which are widely regarded as useful for helping with muscle spasms.

Now, I'm not saying all chiropractors are great people and that there's no quackery in the field. It's been my experience, though, that a reputable chiropractor will tell you up front when you can be helped and when you should go to an MD or DO instead.

Re:Science

[mr_mischief]

And if both did exist, I-50 would likely pass mostly through portions of the country that take their late news at 10 or 12, based on where I-44 and I-64 run. Although I guess it could run all the way from Bakersfield, CA to Richmond, VA someday. :-)

Re:Science

[Jaime2]

It persists even beyond the development of the modern scientific method. Sure Newton participated in what we now refer to as mumbo-jumbo, but Einstein called the statistical aspects of quantum mechanics mumbo-jumbo. Even people who are mental leaps beyond their peers still have their feet planted in their own time.

Re:Science

[phantomfive]

I won't say that Newton weren't scientists within the framework of natural philosophy, but as far as being modern scientists like Darwin and Maxwell, they still weren't quite there.

It would be interesting if you explained why you consider Darwin to be more of a scientist than Galileo.

Re:Science

[Artifakt]

It wasn't obvious until atomic theory got established. Until somebody does enough experiments to figure out something of what the fundamental pieces are, it makes perfect sense to test things, to see if gold is what it is because the weightyness of it is combined with its ductility, color, and resistance to aqua regia as though they were all fundamentals, and maybe you can move one or more fundamentals around from one pile to another. So you start with lead because it has similar weightyness and somewhat similar softness, and you try mixing in mercury because it is fluid and so the fluidness might pass from the mercury and make the maliable lead more maliable, able to be beaten into thinner sheets. You try to get one observed property to decouple from another and jump from one type of substance to another. Antimony gets all sorts of colored sheens to it, maybe you can get the yellow sheen to split off and pass into the lead. Now you're researching splitting and recombining colors.

Re:Science

[AJWM]

If you've read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, you'll find many ideas of science and math that are informed by this tradition.

Never, ever take a science fiction story or novel (let alone technothriller or any other genre) as the sole source for something technical or historical. Fiction writers make stuff up, and while some of us try to lean toward more technically accurate than not (and Stephenson's usually pretty good at this, although he'll occasionally slip in a howler), we're not above tweaking something for the sake of a good story. Others just make it up wholesale.

Re:Science

[Artifakt]

The Placebo effect doesn't work the way most doctors think it does. It's an area where modern medicine is toting around a strange idea, as odd in its own way as bleeding to release humors was back 300 years ago, just not as dangerous to retain.
I say this because there were some research studies on the Placebo effect that make no sense at all if it works like most people think it does. In them, test subjects were given real opiate pain meds, and/or placebo opiates, in various combinations. After about a week of getting used to the drugs, then either a chemical which blocks opiate uptake in the brain was administered, or a placebo version of it. No one is really sure why, but the real blocker blocked either the real opiates or the placebos from relieving the pain equally well, and the placebo version of the blocker most often didn't work on either, but where it did, it was about equally likely to block real opiates and let the placebo versions still work, or vice versa. Various versions of this experiment have gotten many rather quirky results, but never ones that really make sense by any known theory of how placebos work.

Re:Science

[mosb1000]

The difference is rigorous scientific investigation. Just because it works doesn't mean it's science.

Re:Science

[Artifakt]

That's easy, Galileo first submitted his papers to a non-peer reviewed journal (The only 'peer' review available at the time being within the Roman Catholic church, which was going through a stuffy phase at the time). Galileo self published in the popular press ahead of such review (A definite no-no for a working scientist). Darwin went through a (admittedly a bit rudimentary by modern standards) peer-review process (that correspondence with Wallace and others).
        I'm only half being tongue in cheek with this. Darwin used parts of the scientific method that were simply unknown in Galileo's time. For example, Darwin described a number of ways to falsify his theory, one of them being: "It being admitted that, if it were ever shown that the mechanisms of heredity allow unlimited blending, the entire proposal would become of no account". Darwin was more fully a scientist simply in the sense that he thought more about identifying what alternate explanations he considered and their implications, and how to test them. His work sustained more modern science (Crick and Watson's Noble for the discovery of the DNA coding mechanism was awarded in part because they had demonstrated that the genetic code the way it was implemented in real organisms didn't allow unlimited blending and so their research led inexorably to testing a never fully verified consequence of the theory of natural selection. Showing that a specific code that didn't support blending was the one nature actually used finished the process of putting Natural Selection on a solid footing that Mendel only started.). I'm not sure if there are any predictions made by Galileo that were unverifiable at the time but eventually proved to be more and more testable, so that generations of other scientists kept coming back to them, but I can't think of any.

Re:Science

[fusiongyro]

The chiropractor in the small town I live in used to have pamphlets around the office explaining how depression, the flu, and acne are caused by spinal misalignment. I'm guessing they aren't printed just for him.

Re:Science

[modecx]

Except that even proponents of string theories admit that there's no evidence for it currently, and that it will be some time before we can even create the technology to indirectly test for these theories.

And so it was with many of the important advances in chemical theory in the 18th century onward, and with nuclear physics in the late 19th - early 20th century. Some of the ideas were later proven patently wrong, some as close but no cigar, and others contribute to the views we now hold as correct. Heck, look at Gravity Probe B--it was almost a hundred years after the conception of the ideas, that it was at all realistic to even attempt to measure the real world effect against the predictions.

It's a good thing to have these sort of theories, even if there's no way to test them right now.

Re:Science

[Kirijini]

It doesn't have to be science to be useful.

Re:Science

[mcornelius]

They may not like being discredited, but they have been discredited time and time again. They have no scientific basis.

Re:Science

[mcornelius]

No, they talked about it, but they are still funding homopathy.

Re:Science

[quenda]

with the possible exception of treatment for back pain

And back pain has repeatedly been shown to respond to placebo treatment.
So even though the spinal manipulation successfully treats back pain, that does not mean the pain had anything to do with vertebral alignment or "subluxations".

Re:Science

[mcornelius]

Saying that people do it "willingly" is meaningless when the problem at hand is that people are being manipulated and lied to.

Sorry, but the problem being people manipulated and lied to would cause a recursive witch-hunt into the history of mankind. The problem is not people being manipulated and lied to. The problem is people being too credulous.

Re:Science

[quenda]

That famous study is from 1978. I think most doctors would know about it by now.

Re:Science

[mcornelius]

In them, test subjects were given real opiate pain meds, and/or placebo opiates, in various combinations. After about a week of getting used to the drugs, then either a chemical which blocks opiate uptake in the brain was administered, or a placebo version of it.

What, pray tell, is a placebo opiate?

No one is really sure why, but the real blocker blocked either the real opiates or the placebos from relieving the pain equally well, and the placebo version of the blocker most often didn't work on either, but where it did, it was about equally likely to block real opiates and let the placebo versions still work, or vice versa. Various versions of this experiment have gotten many rather quirky results, but never ones that really make sense by any known theory of how placebos work.

Actually, no. Pain cannot be measured or quantified on any absolute scale, and clinical trials require (subjective) self-reported approximations of pain, and that leads to non-uniformity of results. (There are many other reasons, but this one of the simplest. Placebo effects are fairly well understood.)

Re:Science

[quenda]

The I50 is a thermal imaging camera. How does that not make sense?

Re:Science

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Gold has no inherent worth, not even with those properties.

Gold just is. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Science

[Jade_Wayfarer]

Nevertheless, it's really simple and popular (in good sense) explanation of alchemy's goals. C. G. Jung and W. Pauli even wrote a book at some point, and it's main ideas were based on their research of Western alchemy. Of course, it had nothing to do with impossible chemical reactions, it was all about psychology (and a little bit about physics in general). So, if a good "technothriller" uses some correct basic idea, it's not a bad thing - interested reader would find more material on his own.

And it's still much better than to blindly assume that all alchemists of the past (some of the acknowledged wisest men of their time, for a second) were just crazy loons or clever crooks. Of course, there were many greedy liars and misguided fools in that trade - but is it much different from today? With all modern "astroturf", "snake oil", Apple cult and "conspiracy theories", are we much better than society that believed in possibility of chemical transmutation of elements? So I think it's good that Stephenson is trying to educate someone a little - I'd prefer truth in science fiction over a lie in an official school book.

Re:Science

[pjt33]

Newton was Master of the Mint for a quarter of a century.

Re:Science

[ultranova]

Don't forget that many people voluntarily give money to their church every sunday, and are happy to do so, and feel that it's the right thing to do. You could call that "taking money from people by lying to them," but you're ignoring that people are getting spiritual fulfillment and moral satisfaction from it.

Most churches don't claim that giving money to them will bring you health or good fortune. They are asking for money for running costs and charity without any promise of a return. Making such promises - selling indulgences - was one of the abuses that launched Protestantism, you know.

Re:Science

[IICV]

Uh huh, you lucked out - a good chiropractor is basically a physical therapist without that accreditation, or an actual physical therapist going by another name for some reason. It doesn't really matter that the fundamental chiropractic theory is complete and utter unsubstantiated bullshit equivalent to Chi or ghost stories; if the treatment works, after all, it works (though I and I'm sure many other people have philosophical objections to that, it's hard to come up with pragmatic ones).

Unfortunately, not all chiropractors are as good as yours, and not all people who go to chiropractors are as lucky as you. There's definitely bad chiropractors out there, who say that their manipulations can cure literally everything. I mean, don't you remember the three or four Slashdot articles about the British Chiropractor Association suing Simon Singh for libel? They sued him because he said that a lot of their claims were bogus (literally, they sued him for using that word), and they eventually dropped the case because the claims are bogus.

Here's the problem, though: you can't tell which kind it will be before you go to them. Sure, you can look up reviews and ask your friends, but that is pretty meaningless; unless your friends are trained medical professionals, they're not really going to have a good idea of whether or not the chiropractor knows wtf they're doing. If you were designing a house, you wouldn't just find a random architect on Yelp - you'd make sure you found one who had a good reputation and was a licensed architect. The problem with chiropractors, though, is that there's very little if any regulation on who can call themselves a chiropractor, and there's almost no educational requirements; Joe Random off the street can basically just decide he's a chiropractor one day and open up shop, which is not how it works for the MD you so casually disregard.

"Fine," you say, "it doesn't really matter! From a pragmatic standpoint, they're not really hurting anyone, right? Either they cure you, or they send you off to a real doctor who does." Unfortunately, it often doesn't work like that; in terms of actual medical problems, the time a chiropractor spends trying to fix you by adjusting your sublaxations and crackin' your bones is time that's wasted unless you actually had certain classes of muscular or skeletal problem. If you had, say, severe joint pain and spent a couple of weeks going to a chiropractor instead of going to a doctor, the chiropractor might not even know to look for lupus. In the worst cases, unethical chiropractors might refrain from referring a patient with problems they can't handle to a doctor, simply because there's really no standards of conduct for them.

And even then, the contention that what they can only harm you by delaying treatment might not even be true! It's been argued (quite convincingly, I think) that certain kinds of chiropractic manipulations on the neck can cause stroke.

So yeah, it boils down to this: the actual art chiropractors practice (i.e, chiropractic) is a sham and a scam with absolutely no medical backing. Though there are actual chiropractors that know enough to heal you out there, there is no way of guaranteeing that any specific chiropractor won't try to adjust your neck and potentially give you a stroke, or give you bad advice that doesn't work, or string you along and delay effective treatment.

If you don't believe me, check your chiropractor's website or pamphlets - if they're in the USA, I bet you anything that they have something like the Quack Miranda Warning somewhere in there. And if they don't, they're not just a chiropractor - they almost certainly have some sort of real medical certification, which means that they don'

Re:Science

[julesh]

Most churches don't claim that giving money to them will bring you health or good fortune. They are asking for money for running costs and charity without any promise of a return

Don't forget that there's a strong thread in most forms of Christianity that being a generally good, charitable person who helps do God's work makes you more likely to be accepted into heaven rather than being damned to a rather unpleasant eternity spent in hell. This turns "just asking for charity" into "extracting money with (vague, ill-defined) menaces" in my book.

Re:Science

[Anonymous Coward]

"Worth" is relative to needs. If through some act of magic I did not need food to survive, then food would be worthless to me, food would just "be". Gold's properties have many industrial applications and therefore has worth for these applications and the people who need it to accomplish those tasks. So yes gold, does in fact have inherent worth.

Re:Science

[Peeteriz]

Almost *any* stuff has inherent worth, and gold even more so.

Even a twenty-ton pile of bulls*it has significant inherent worth - in it's possible use as fertilizer,

Re:Science

[Vintermann]

Chiropractic, in its original form, teaches that all disease arises from certain maladjustments of the spine ("subluxations") that have not even been proven to exist. How much a chiropractor believes in it varies a lot.

It's one of several medical disciplines that can be either responsible or not (i.e, "alternative"). Osteopathy is another - US osteopaths have almost completely abandoned the unscientific views of their founder, but you don't have to go further than Canada to find osteopaths who are hardly better than naturopaths. The other way, in the US midwivery is often seen as an alternative practice, and is in fact a lot less rigorous than midwivery in other countries, where it's simply professional, scientific birth assistance.

Re:Science

[mrmeval]

If energy can be converted to matter then the cost of the energy is the price. It would make gold, silver, lead and other mater cost the amount of energy it takes to create them.

Re:Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, ever take a science fiction story or novel (let alone technothriller or any other genre) as the sole source for something technical or historical.

Absolutely. There are people who can teach you to do this today if you can find them...

There were 2 forms of alchemy - internal and external. The internal alchemists learnt how to transmute energies within their bodies to produce the elixir. However, the practices were couched in language that to the uninitiated would make it seem like they were creating physical substances, transmuting the physical element of lead into gold. So the external alchemists thought that they had to make a physical substance. As it happens this seems to have sparked off modern chemistry.

But the important point is not to blindly believe, but to seek for oneself. I speak from experience.

Re:Science

[Hognoxious]

They just got their asses kicked in court.

Re:Science

[Vintermann]

But most new agey healers deal with things like joint pain, chronic pain, headaches, and other ailments that are likely stress and/or posture related

Indeed they do. But that is not harmless. For instance, consider Eczema. It is affeced by stress, and responds well to placebo, so a skillful alternative therapist (skillful at helping the patient relax and feel he's in competent, caring hands) can have an effect on it. But so can scientific medicine. A simple corticosteroid salve has an effect that knocks the placebo effect out of the water.

Have you ever seen someone with the kind of eczema they treat with class D corticosteroids? It does not look pretty, and it feels worse - think sunburn times three. When having the choice between a "natural" therapy that maybe gives a slight respite in 14 weeks time, and a real medicine that can make it go away completely in days, I think that parents who choose the former for their kids are getting close to abuse.

Re:Science

[tehcyder]

If you've read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, you'll find many ideas of science and math that are informed by this tradition.

Never, ever take a science fiction story or novel (let alone technothriller or any other genre) as the sole source for something technical or historical

GP was merely suggesting a fictional work as a more approachable introduction to some of the concepts. He did not say "Anathem is the ultimate technical and historical guide to Alchemy and Philosophy."

Re:Science

[tehcyder]

Try googling "Simon Singh chiropractor libel", they tried to ruin him by suing for libel when he made some informed criticisms of the chiropractic discipline. Luckily they backed down in the end, making their questionable scientific status even more obvious.

Re:Science

[tehcyder]

Don't forget that there's a strong thread in most forms of Christianity that being a generally good, charitable person who helps do God's work makes you more likely to be accepted into heaven rather than being damned to a rather unpleasant eternity spent in hell. This turns "just asking for charity" into "extracting money with (vague, ill-defined) menaces" in my book.

The Middle Ages called and want their sterotype back.

Seriously, I'm not even religious, but that is a pretty inaccurate view of most modern Christianity.

Re:Science

[h4rm0ny]

One thing you seem not to have a lot of in the USA are Osteopaths. These are very different to chiropractors, more like specialist doctors. In Europe, they're well known and respected and there's a very clear demarcation between them and chiropractors. But I think in the USA, it's more just chiropractors everywhere, yes?

Re:Science

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the only questionable source he has. I hardly consider Manly P. Hall's work to be historically accurate, it's essentially a compilation of various esoteric Freemason rituals mixed with some excerpts from the Hebrew Kabbalah regarding mysticism. It was published during the early 20th century when "magick" rituals were a matter of fashion in 'high' society, and was most likely inspired by the 'work' of Alister Crowley.

The transmutation of metals was most certainly NOT a 'ruse' to throw off the Inquisition; the Inquisition was opposed to science and Alchemy would have been just the type of Devil's Work they were seeking to destroy. If anything, the idea of spiritual transformation would have been what was used to 'throw off' the Inquisition.

The fact of the matter is that nobody really knows why any one individual studied alchemy. We do know that it was the direct predecessor of Chemistry, and you could say that it was an infant version of Chemistry much like Astrology could be said to be an infant version of Astronomy. Back then 'Science' and Religion (along with Mysticism and anything you might consider as part of the Occult) were intertwined, you couldn't really do either one without the other. So it stands to reason that most people who seriously pursued it did so for the same reasons people have studied any subject- knowledge. Just as in Physics we can say the ultimate goal is to develop a single unifying theory, but in practice most people who study it do so in order to develop theories which lead to practical applications. So depending on who might take issue with the specific experiments an alchemist might be doing, they would tell them the goal was either spiritual transformation (playing into the acceptance by the Church) or else monetary gain (obviously playing to the greed of the Secular). Or in other words, they'd tell you whatever would keep them out of trouble and get you to help pay for the research.
We can pretty safely say that the goal of alchemy is the same as the goal of chemistry, which is the study of how chemical reactions work. Being able to turn lead into gold was just one practical application, but specifically an application that held VERY broad appeal to those in positions of authority.

The problem is that little is really known about alchemy, and what IS known has been very heavily polluted by the "esoteric" Occult movements (which is where most of the claims of spiritual transformation come from).

Re:Science

[delinear]

Unfortunately even the "nice" ones are unqualified to give the advice they're giving. If I go to a "nice" alternative therapist with chronic headaches and she believes it's stress related and prescribes a homeopathic course of lavender to help me sleep because she doesn't have the skills to identify a malignant brain tumour, how exactly is she helping me? Sure the placebo effect works for some people, but the first stop should always be a qualified doctor, and any responsible alternative therapist (cough) ought to insist on only ever seeing referrals from doctors.

Re:Science

[AjaxIII]

You make a decent argument, however you are lumping all Chiropractors in together. My wife was diagnosed with MS. It wasn't a doctor who figured it out, the regular MD thought her symptoms were nothing to worry about. She went to a chiropractor once, who figured out what the issue was immediately, and made her an appointment with a neurologist before she left. The Neurologist screwed thing royally with office mismanagement, but the chiropractor actually followed up and made sure the Neurologist got the right information to the right people. My wife was diagnosed probably 10 years before any regular doctor would have bothered to take the time to refer her to a specialist, and even the specialist screwed things up at first. There are good chiropractors, and bad doctors, but that doesn't mean you can throw the entire field out because of a couple of quacks.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

Never, ever take a science fiction story or novel (let alone technothriller or any other genre) as the sole source for something technical or historical.

But, you'll find that fiction is among the best sources when it comes to ideas and that was what I was talking about.

In Anathem, Stephenson captures very well the essence of what alchemy does, which is apply scientific principles to human spirituality (and vice versa). He covered some of the same ground in The Baroque Cycle.

Alchemists realized that science is an occult practice, in that the truth is hidden and has to be coaxed out by the dedicated seeker with contemplation and experiment. They took the same approach with their inner lives as with their outer. As above, so below. If you think about it, it's not a bad approach to life.

we're not above tweaking something for the sake of a good story

That is a trait of all human endeavor. We're also not above "tweaking something" for the sake of good science.

Re:Science

[MtViewGuy]

You are correct. It wasn't until the work of Antoine Lavoisier almost 100 years after Newton's lifetime that we finally got chemistry as we know it today.

Re:Science

[supercrisp]

Nonetheless, the picture of alchemy offered in Stephenson's SF is more accurate than the popular version offered in the article. Alchemy dates from a period when the boundaries between matter and spirit were porous. There wasn't really a materialist conception of the universe. So there was no astronomy completely distinct from astrology. The trials of Galileo and Bruno demonstrate that any claims about the nature of the universe had huge metaphysical implications. Similarly, chemical reactions were understood as the material manifestations of obscure, invisible powers that, given the prevailing world-view, were attributed to the numinous. It's really best to understand alchemy as the chemistry and particle physics of its day, a day when god was real. That said, and I don't want to seem snide but just straight-up serious and helpful: Stephenson isn't the place to go, nor is (far worse, really!) is Jung. There are plenty of good history books that are very interesting reading. The one I'd suggest is The Queen's Conjurer; it's a popular history about John Dee. It's got some issues, but it's a good introduction. If you have the stomach for some metaphysics, you might read Daniel Tiffany's Infidel Poetics, which addresses the slow transformation of our understanding of the invisible processes of nature from numinous to material. He does a particularly good job exploring the implications of Leibniz's monads.

Re:Science

[Solarch]

While many historians may consider Lavoisier the father of modern chemistry, most chemists (I am one) consider Robert Boyle's book The Skeptical Chymist, which came over 100 years before Lavoisier, to be the turning point to modern chemistry.

Re:Science

[Muad'Dave]

We have osteopaths. My wife and I go to one when we mess up our backs. He usually does muscle stim or deep heat treatment and some form of manipulation. He also can prescribe muscle relaxers that help with the immediate pain while the knotted muscles relax.

Chiropractors can't prescribe 'real' medications, which to me seems like getting your car fixed by a mechanic that only has half his tools.

Re:Science

[JasterBobaMereel]

Just because someone gives good advice that works, it does not mean they believe some weird reason why, and it does not mean they will also give you very bad advice ....

The MD after someone's name is not just a title, it means they have studied what works and know how to apply it, and they are accountable if they mess up, and so you can be confident that barring human error will give you good medical advice ...

A chiropractor has none of this ...they will probably mostly give you non-dangerous advice simply because they care and want you to recommend them ....but I would not trust them myself

Re:Science

[shadowofwind]

Hall was a Theosophist, a follower of Blavatsky. Her teaching, like that of those after her, was inspired but objectively is about half bullshit. Where her ideas obviously conflicted with scientific understanding, rather than adjusting her views or trying to understand how to reconcile the apparent contradictions, she responded with misinformation and by attacking the credibility of science. That's a pretty serious problem for anyone claiming to value 'the truth' in my view. No matter how much a person or culture knows, they'll eventually regress into superstition and stupidity if they can't approach questions honestly and admit mistakes.

That said, there was a lot that fell under the heading 'alchemy' that was true and which is not appreciated or understood by the scientific community, in my opinion.

H. W. Percival, who was president of the New York Theosophical Society for most of his life, wrote what I regard as by far the most interesting book in that tradition, Thinking and Destiny. The same criticisms apply here though.

Re:Science

[Tack]

Actually, yes, you can throw out the entire field, because the entire field is based fundamentally on pseudoscientific quackery.

I think what you maybe wanted to say is you can't dismiss all chiropractors as idiots because the field is fundamentally nonsense and because most chiropractors believe in fairytales. I think I'd tentatively grant you that claim.

One thing alt med does seem to do decently is personal attention to patients. This is almost certainly the largest factor for people feeling better after visiting their naturopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, chiropractor, etc. It's extremely fortunate for your wife that you happened upon a chiropractor who wasn't a complete quack and referred her to a proper specialist, because I believe a non-trivial number of chiropractors would insist the problem was merely a vertebral subluxation that could be treated through manipulation (and, of course, life-long maintenance).

If you weren't happy with the diagnosis of your MD, the proper course of action would be to consult one or two other MDs, not to consult a witch doctor. There are certainly going to be idiot MDs too, not to mention, more likely, overworked, stressed, and fallible MDs who will offer a misdiagnoses. But this fact doesn't legitimize alternative medicine. It means we need more MDs, because at least their practice is primarily based on evidence with the science to back it up.

Re:Science

[Daetrin]

A Neal Stephenson book/series with a bungled ending? Say it ain't so!

Re:Science

[owlstead]

I'm as anti-religious as it gets (although I'm still tolerant to the people coaxed into religion). But even I think that is misrepresenting the facts. I do think that a lot of people want to give money instead of actually doing the good thing. It's more buying off the fact that you don't do a whole lot of good. What I've seen, if you help other people get along, it is basically thought of as good (well, as long as it doesn't go against either scripture or "common practice").

I've seen some religious text in the train that said that even if you did a lot of good but did not convert people then you would still go to hell. But I don't think that is the consensus, or even close to it.

Re:Science

[MightyMartian]

The way the Coalition is slicing into everything, I'd wager not much longer. Their expert panel has come out and said "alternative medicine doesn't work".

Re:Science

[IICV]

Exactly - this is a classic case of confirmation bias. How many other people did that chiropractor send to an MD, convinced they had multiple sclerosis when really all they had was a stomach flu or something? How many people who actually had multiple sclerosis did that chiropractor not send to an MD (probably none given how rare that condition is, but still).

I mean, the exact same thing happened to me once - my mother took me to a acupuncturist several years ago, because apparently sticking needles in your ear helps with something or other. As we were leaving, my mother started asking the guy if there was anything they could do for my weight and the symptoms of depression I was having back then. He mentioned that I might have Cushing's syndrome. On the car ride back home, my mother literally screamed with relief (she's kind of crazy) - we finally knew what was wrong with me! At home, she immediately set up an appointment with an endocrinologist (and ended up screaming again later that week in the middle of the hospital, because their appointment system had eaten the consultation she scheduled - maybe she shouldn't have said that I was being referred directly to an endocrine specialist by an acupuncture clinic? I really can't say I blame them, and I wouldn't be surprised if the first endocrinologist did that on their own.)

Next week, the second endocrinologist took one look at me and immediately said "fuck no, you don't have Cushings, just change your diet, get some exercise, and maybe see a therapist".

See, referring people with vague symptoms to MDs with a diagnosis of some rare disease works very well for alt-med practitioners. If they're wrong, people just say "oh well, it was a mistake" - but if they're right, people like you come around and say "the chiropractor knew my wife had MS even though the MDs said there was nothing wrong with her!"

Funny how we never hear people saying "my MD diagnosed the multiple sclerosis immediately, even though my chiropractor didn't get it". I guess it's because it's amazing when a chiropractor does that, but absolutely normal when an MD does.

Re:Science

[suman28]

Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it mumbo jumbo. People of old were a lot smarter than the many morons of today. There is belief that "unknown powers" gave the arc the magical powers it possessed, and science has yet to understand many things around us that have been used in homeopathy for ages, like turmeric, ginger, and garlic. Don't mock it, till you can say "I know everything about everything, and I know that is absolute rubbish"

Re:Science

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Tell that to every pastor/priest/elder of every church I've ever been to. It has always been "Donate or you aren't a good Christian and deserve to go to Hell."

And I've been to more than forty churches in several states on both sides of the country.

Re:Science

[Johnny5000]

Don't forget that there's a strong thread in most forms of Christianity that being a generally good, charitable person who helps do God's work makes you more likely to be accepted into heaven rather than being damned to a rather unpleasant eternity spent in hell. This turns "just asking for charity" into "extracting money with (vague, ill-defined) menaces" in my book.

Disclaimer: I'm an atheist.

Most forms of Christianity teach that faith in Jesus is the way to salvation, not charitable works.
However, if you're truly faithful and a follower of Jesus, then you're going to love your fellow humans and want to do good works for them. It just shows that you really got the message about loving your fellow man and whatnot.

What's the saying, works without faith are empty and that faith without works is dead?

Re:Science

[mr_mischief]

I didn't get a diagnosis from the chiropractor. I got a diagnosis from an MD (an orthopedist in one case) who sent me to a chiropractor. The MD asked which school of chiropractic he went to and which state he was licensed in before he'd let me settle on which chiropractor to go to.

Some of them actually study things like kinesiology and tell you never to have anyone adjust your spine without x-rays telling them what is actually wrong. Some of them actually claim only to be able to help with the spine being out of place and the muscle, nerve, and disk problems that can directly cause. They want you to see a medical GP regularly and come to them if you need the type of therapy they can offer. I've had this type of chiropractor, and will only see this type.

Others believe in reflexology and all sorts of hokum. These are dangerous. I've heard of people like this actually advising against seeing an MD. That's even more dangerous.

So yeah, it's a troubled field. So is mainstream Western medicine in some ways, too, though. Some MDs will give you pain pills and never send you to physical therapist, chiropractor, orthopedist, or even a radiologist to find out what's actually wrong with your back, neck, or hip. Sometimes it takes six months to get an appointment if you decide to change GPs. Sometimes you end up in a hospital for a week in traction twice a day because they didn't want to do traction outpatient (although there are outpatient traction programs some places). Sometimes the MDs, DOs, and PTs cost four or five times as much and take two or three times as long to break down and give you the same relief -- sometimes the same way -- as a good chiropractor.

Would I go to a chiropractor for foot pain, the flu, a rash, or anything other than joint and muscle pain in the back, neck, hips, and maybe thighs or upper arms? No. Am I careful to find one who believes his niche of treatment is small and in conjunction with an MD or DO? Yes. Has this worked for me? Yes.

I'd invite more scientific investigation of the field. If I had to make my own hypothesis for a study, it's that within the very narrow issues of the muscle spasms, out-of-place joints, and stretched or compressed nerves and the pain and mobility problems those can directly cause, careful chiropractors who don't violently pull the body out of shape to adjust it are just as effective and safe as a manipulative DO or a physical therapist. I'd also hypothesize that any other issue a chiropractor might claim to treat is far better handled elsewhere even if they have some small record of success with it.

I treat chiropractors as a very particular specialist. They are back and neck care specialists, and only those who realize that themselves will I go to. I can get in and out from the chiropractor faster and have relief faster for very specific issues.

Osteopaths were once thought of very much like chiropractors are today. You might also remember that your dentist, if you see the common DDS, is not an MD or DO, although there is a medical dentistry degree called the DMD. A DDS or DMD can be qualified in certain surgeries, too, but a good one who isn't very confident with surgery or who is busy with more standard dental care will not be afraid to refer you to a maxiofacial surgeon for dental surgery. An optometrist is not an MD or DO, but an opthamologist is. A physical therapist is not an MD or DO, although they can get a PhD. Most clinical therapists are MS in psychology or MS in counseling and not doctors specializing in psychiatry.

If you really want to talk about a field with difficulty proving its methods scientifically with a lot of quackery in the history of the field, ho about those therapists and analysts? Why is it that people jump on chiropractors all the time but not on psychologists?

Re:Science

[plasticsquirrel]

Yes, this! The real European alchemists knew that it was to be understood as spiritual transformation, not a crude physical science. In their books, some of the real ones even stated this quite bluntly that it was a spiritual science. Even at the time, there were naive people who didn't understand it and also assumed it to be a physical chemical process. The symbols such as lead and mercury were just that, symbols, and they have meaning as well. For example, mercury is the aspect of thought, which scatters when people try to control it.

Newton was still a Christian, but we could say that his real spiritual aspirations were in the form of the "spiritual science" of alchemy. Isn't it fitting that his spiritual practices would also be patterned on science?

The real archaic and naive ones are the modern people who just write off his alchemical pursuits without even understanding the subject on the most superficial level.

Re:Science

[mr_mischief]

Most MDs are practitioners of medicine and not themselves medical researchers. They use the fruits of scientific research to inform what is taught in medical schools, but other than diagnostic specialists very few working doctors treat their patients' conditions as a hypotheses.

Chiropractors go to about as much school as MDs and DOs and more than many PTs. If there's a scientific weakness to what they teach, then medical doctors and osteopaths should be doing research to help correct that flaw. They could then properly judge the work and not just the verifiability of the claims.

Don't forget that the mainstream medical physicians in the Western tradition started out with very little proof for their work, and actually for thousands of years did as much harm as good. They weren't a field born scientifically sound. Introducing science into the field is what made the difference. Someone should do that with chiropractic.

If enough anecdotal evidence adds up, you don't dismiss it as anecdotal. You form a series of hypotheses and test them. That's science. Discounting something as unproven is fine when it's unproven. Saying it's necessarily bad because it's unproven has as little merit as saying it's necessarily good without proof.

Re:Science

[Tack]

I'd invite more scientific investigation of the field.

There's been quite a lot already. There is no science behind the core tenants of chiropractic, nor is there any verifiable evidence to support their more wacky claims. The practices of chiropractors that actually work are already done by physical therapists and related specialists.

Reminds me of Tim Minchin's Storm when he says: You know what they call "alternative medicine" that's been proven to work? Medicine.

So I suppose if you're educated and experienced enough to find a chiropractor who is only going to practice a sensible therapeutic intervention on you, then you might get some reasonable medical care. But then you still have to wonder why they aren't already a DPT.

Why is it that people jump on chiropractors all the time but not on psychologists?

Well, I agree that there's probably a lot of crap in practicing psychology, and there's also a lot of argument and controversy. But generally psychology practices trend along with the evidence. Cognitive therapy does actually have some evidence to show efficacy in certain circumstances, for example.

Re:Science

[Coren22]

I would also add, Stevenson in these historical fiction books (Baroque Cycle, Anathama) is basing much of the story on historical fact, he talks about what the major figures of the day were working on, and describes the thoughts behind them. It is the overarching storyline that makes it fiction, as Waterhouse is not in any history book to the best of my knowledge. I have not read Anathama yet, in fact I thought it was one of the books in the Baroque Cycle, but I will have to check that one out.

Re:Science

[mcornelius]

Nah, they're reducing everything but the EU budget, but it's pretty even across the board. Their expert panel recommended against continued funding for quackery but Parliament are the experts at patronage, and kept it in.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

The transmutation of metals was most certainly NOT a 'ruse' to throw off the Inquisition; the Inquisition was opposed to science and Alchemy would have been just the type of Devil's Work they were seeking to destroy.

Yes, but the "making of gold from lead" was right up the Inquisition's alley. Remember who the inquisitors ultimately worked for: the pope, who has this thing for gold. They were willing to let the alchemists do their thing if there was a pot of gold at the end.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

Her teaching, like that of those after her, was inspired but objectively is about half bullshit.

More than that, I'd say.

The thing I like about Hall's work is that it's a survey of occult teachings. You'd be foolish to use it as a serious and completely factual and objective history, but it's a common (and useful) starting point for understanding the occult.

The thing about learning about the occult is that most of the books and resources are flawed and downright misleading, but that's sort of the idea, I think. Developing a critical eye for it is the real goal, not sitting down with a book and learning how to "do it". Everything you read about the occult is off-the-mark. That's why they call it "the occult". You can't learn about it from a book any more than you can learn to play the piano by reading the Hanon Exercises. I

You make a very good point about H.W. Percival. When I wrote my initial post last night I was tired or I'd have listed his work. Thanks for the reminder.

Re:Science

[juhaz]

Homeopathy is a catch-all phrase which essentially boils down to "Remedies which have been passed down by word-of-mouth but have not been subjected to modern testing".

No, it isn't. The term you're looking for is "folk" or "traditional" medicine. Homeopathy is a very well defined term for a specific brand of quackery, and while some people may (ab)use it in the way you mean, it's a very ambiguous term at best, and mixing the two makes a huge disservice for both traditional medicine and modern medicine.

Re:Science

[dcw3]

Yeah, there are frauds out there who claim they can cure cancer with magic charms, and that's dangerous.

Just come out and say what you really mean...male enhancement

Re:Science

[shadowofwind]

The thing about learning about the occult is that most of the books and resources are flawed and downright misleading, but that's sort of the idea, I think.

While I don't disagree with your observation, personally I have a pretty low regard for that sort of thing. Crowley famously said that it doesn't matter if occult ideas are true, what matters is that given certain acts, certain results follow. Well, if you don't know the truth of the ideas, in the long run you don't actually know what results follow either. A person could save time and just cut their own throat directly. I think Crowley was an f-ing moron.

Another result of the dishonesty in occultism is relatively little new content gets developed that way. People recycle the same half-ridiculous ideas in different forms, while trying to obscure their sources so that it looks like they've got something original. Its a stupid game, and it gets boring. Studying the history of stupid games gets boring too. Let's break some new ground, and repair some things that are broken. But I guess the good thing about corrupt pseudoscientists is their ignorance makes them less dangerous than they would be otherwise.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

I think Crowley was an f-ing moron.

I absolutely agree.

Re:Science

[Man Eating Duck]

In short, you're talking about two different sets of people who both get called "chiropractors."

Exactly. My brother got his degree at the University of Southern Denmark, where it is called Clinical Biomechanics. They educate physicians as well, and the three first years are almost identical, except for that the biomechanics students take additional courses in anatomy and practical treatment. After three years you can in fact switch to the MD education if there are vacancies. The classical delutions and philosophy of chiropractics is not touched upon *at all*.

When the soon to be MDs start focusing on diagnostics the biomechanics students continue with anatomy and practical treatment. In fact a modernly educated "chiropractor" knows a lot more about anatomy than the vast majority of MDs. He also knows where his knowledge ends, and a physician is needed. In short, a non-quack chiropractor is "only" an extremely competent physical therapist.

The results my brother achieves might seem like magic in some cases, but they stem from a hard won and insanely detailed knowledge of how your joints, muscles and tendons interact, and how to manipulate them to rectify physical problems and physical problems only.

Re:Science

[cerniagigante]

homeopathy is not healing method, it's a tax on the mentally impaired who go to a pharmacy and buy sugar pills. i fail to see any spiritual endeavour (expect for the marketing gurus behind it).

Re:Science

[shadowofwind]

Probably a vain exercise, but here's a critique of Thinking and Destiny:

In Percival's scheme of things, desire 'fell', under spell of the senses, but true reason and knowledge remain pure in a higher realm. This premise gives everything that he imagines the authority of truth, if he has agreement from his 'higher self'. As a practical matter, this allows for no discernment between fact and fiction as long as everything seems to fit together internally. Contrary evidence is dismissed as superficial and misleading, since it is 'of the senses'. And any criticism of what he 'knows' is felt and dismissed as intemperate and uncivil, since it would force against what has no accommodation for it. Ironically, this characteristic is shared by theistic religions, which Percival dismisses as nature worship.

Percival's physical description of 'The Way' is borrowed almost exactly from a 19th century science fiction story called Etidorhpa, written by a 'pharmacist', and taken literally. It seems silly even to say it, but the earth is not hollow.

Percival regards sex not merely as a bad distortion of something essential, but as a mistake entirely. Where, in his vision of perfection, do individual identities intersect or make contact creatively, in relation to physical things? In my mind, all contact at any level is creative and conceptive. To Percival, it seems its all wrong, identity is confined to a single individual, a single 'unit', complete unto itself.

In the original Word Magazine version of Adepts, Masters, and Mahatmas (I'm not certain its in the later version), Percival speaks of egoistic and egotistic mahatmas. The egoistic ones perceive themselves as gods through all the worlds, and are at the center of religions. The egotistic ones withdraw into themselves. But by the time Thinking and Destiny was written, the concept of a delusional mahatma is gone. The gods of religions are entirely of nature, thoughts created collectively by men, while our 'heavenly fathers' of knowledge and reason are eternal and perfect. Is this division between 'nature' and 'intelligence' real? How can a single 'unit' be intelligent, or 'receive impressions'? These seem to me to require a very large number of interrelated units. Percival's distinction between the 'nature' and 'intelligent' sides of the zodiac is central to his entire argument, but it looks to me like another form of the same distinction he makes between the 'unmanifest' top and 'manifest' bottom. Its inspiration seems akin to the theistic division between god and demon, where gods are forever trying to hide from the offspring of their own lies by pushing them away as 'other'.

Percival's organization of all of his thoughts around a circle with twelve points gives them a consistency and coherence that they would not have otherwise. But very many distinctions he makes between things are particular to that framework, and much can not be understood that way. How does he have so much confidence in details about cosmology, prechemistry, and the formation of a thought that seem to be contrived and largely imagined? It appears that he doesn't even know that he's working with a mental model. It would be like someone driving a car that had a cartoon of the outside world projected on the windshield, and thinking that the cartoon is the real world. The cartoon does have connections to the rest of the world, but its a cartoon.

Percival describes mythical cycles of civilizations at length, borrowing from other unnamed sources. But his trigonometric model of reality does not allow him to place 'where' these places are. He places them in the historic past, separated by cataclysms. That puts him at war with science, which puts him at war with reason. This is a large part of what has rendered his work largely unknown, not simply that people are too primitive to appreciate it.

In Percival's mind, complete beings reincarnate (or 're-exist') cyclically as a chain of 12 individual human fragments, having 'past lives'. But since he has

Re:Science

[c6gunner]

Sorry, but the problem being people being too credulous would cause a recursive witch-hunt into the history of mankind. The problem is not people being too credulous. The problem is people being manipulated and lied to.

FTFY ;)

Or, you know, maybe it's a combination of the two factors, and I chose to emphasize the more important aspect. After all, if I were to say that the reason rape happens is because some men have no morals and are willing to use force to get what they want, you could say that I'm wrong. You could then go on to explain that the real reason it happens is because women are just too damn weak, and they like to wear skimpy clothes. And you'd be partly right, just like you were partly right in your earlier response to me. You'd also be a dick, and your observation would do little to help us work towards solving the problem.

Re:Science

[PopeRatzo]

Not a "vain exercise" at all. Thank you.

Re:Science

[Thing 1]

If I didn't need food, then the creatures that used to provide the food would be taking up resources I could put to better use. Be careful what you wish for...

Re:Science

[AdamWeeden]

Excellent read.

Science

[MightyMartian]

Even in Newton's time, science hadn't really fully evolved. Certainly the methodological underpinnings were well on the way, but it was really another 50-100 years after Newton that we saw science blossom. Guys like Galileo and Newton stand on the threshold, and Newton took some big steps in the right direction, but there was still a lot of mumbo-jumbo out there, some of which persisted in some sciences into the late Victorian era (take Victorian racial "theory", for instance).

The Alchemists

[b4upoo]

Most people are unaware that the alchemists created a fairly accurate periodic chart of the elements before the science of chemistry took over. Obviously they did not know about the more exotic nuclear elements which are still being discovered from time to time.

Re: The Alchemists

[pmc]

No they didn't - they started off with the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. Then they realised that there were maybe a score of "elements" (even the concept was vague), and there was no systematic organisation or predictive value from it. This took a few hundred years. Most importantly they did not realise the that properties of the elements repeat themselves (which is where the concept of the periodic part of the name comes from).

The comment that they created a "fairly accurate periodic chart" is risible.

Re: The Alchemists

[Centurix]

Ladyboyarium springs to mind, with its unexpected extra Boson.

Re: The Alchemists

[whitesea]

Mendeleev, who came up with a periodic table (the story goes that he saw it in his sleep) was not an alchemist. He is a bona fide chemist. Besides periodic table, he has two more claims to fame. He invented vodka and he was able to pour liquids from a pail into a test-tube without losing a single drop.

Re: The Alchemists

[je ne sais quoi]

I think this is still off. My impression is that they considered that different elements and different substances like air, earth, fire, water, gold, lead, etc. were all composed of differing amounts of a single substance. This is what's known as the "ether", i.e. some sort of form of matter that everything existed in and moved through. The odd thing about it is that Lorentz and Abraham in the 1890s were trying to come up with a theory of the electron in part to discover why efforts to detect the Earth's movement through this ether failed (reference). It wasn't until Einstein & Co. came up with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics was discovered that the nature of atomic elements really begun to be understood.

The point is that while the alchemists' conception of the element was not very good, a truly better concept didn't really arise until the 20th century. Nobody seriously challenges quantum mechanics now, but it's easy to forget just how recent this understanding was really arrived at.

Re: The Alchemists

[Rewind]

I don't think he invented Vodka, just was in change of regulating it in Russia for a while. Or am I mistaken?

Re: The Alchemists

[LongearedBat]

No they didn't - they started off with the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. Then they realised that there were maybe a score of "elements" (even the concept was vague)

Given that the "concept was vague", I think the alchemists had a point. What they termed as elements we term as states:
- earth - solid
- water - liquid
- air - gas
- fire - reaction (plasma?!?)

Aside from that, yeah, they were off on the wrong track. But how were they to know that? We know that thanks to them.
They were the chemists of their time, before chemistry was formalised. And you know...
we all start becoming knowledgeable from a state of ignorance.

Re: The Alchemists

[lawpoop]

It wasn't until Einstein & Co. came up with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics was discovered that the nature of atomic elements really begun to be understood.

A snipple, but the basic structure of an atom, with negatively-charged electrons surrounding a positive core was basically understood by 1896 (the "plum pudding" model), several years before quantum theory and relativity.

Re: The Alchemists

[JasterBobaMereel]

They knew of many elements, many of which they had identified as basic (a few they got wrong) but they had no system to put them in ....

The Periodic Table was the first system that worked and made predictions (Missing elements)

Re: The Alchemists

[shadowofwind]

I would like to see the term 'aether' resurrected, minus the characteristics that have proved to be false. A lot of the properties now referred to with words like 'vacuum energy', 'quantum foam', etc seem to me to be an improved version of the old aether, but usually not explained well.

Not that it makes much difference.

It is *now* becoming clear?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has literally been known .. well, since Newton. Hardly a secret he spent more time on alchemy than on what's subsequently been regarded as real science.
Many 'scientists' before science-as-we-know it dabbled in pseudoscience and nonsense, e.g. Kepler did astrology as well as astronomy.

Newton heralded the modern age of science, but he _wasn't_ the first scientist in the modern sense, he was 'the last magician', as James Gleick put it.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[MightyMartian]

Nope. Pseudo-science is basically claims that use science-like nomenclature to make BS sound like it's supported by science. Intelligent Design is an example of pseudoscience.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[grouchomarxist]

Exactly. I remember reading about this when I was in high school, which is over 20 years ago.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[mr_mischief]

If it's BS then prove that it's BS. (Hint: you can't disprove anything based on lack of evidence. You can only say it's not likely and is unsupported.)

I really hate how so many people are anti-supernatural, anti-deity, anti-religious, and ridicule anyone who has any inkling there might be some purpose to life, yet they blindly claim that because there is no proof that there is disproof.

You really should understand the logic of proof before calling yourself a scientist. Just because you can see no reason to believe in something and there's no objective evidence for it does not give you the right to tell people they are idiots. Objectivism vs. subjectivism is a decision all to itself, for one thing.

Just because you practice science doesn't mean you have to believe in it blindly. There's more to the world of thought than one method.

Use science for what it's good for, and let the religious who aren't bothering you live their lives. Use science to make the ones who are bothering you stop bothering you. ;-) ... And no, believing something different from what you do and talking about it in public doesn't count as "bothering" you. Trying to force it on you is.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[MightyMartian]

If there's no evidence for it, then it isn't science. What's more, if there's alternative explanations that are simpler and demonstrable, then there's little point for the claim at all. Specific claims of ID have perfectly reasonable explanations that do not require aliens, gods or anything of the kind.

I know what you want, you want science to support your superstitions. It doesn't work that way. You may want to believe that Thor causes thunder, but that does not bind science to your explanation, nor does it give you license to redefine words to try to win debates or make points.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[quenda]

If it's BS then prove that it's BS. (Hint: you can't disprove anything based on lack of evidence.

Easy. He is not talking about the conclusions, but the process - the (lack of) logic - being BS.
A number of real scientists choose to believe "God" created the universe, but they don't claim scientific proof.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[mr_mischief]

I'm not claiming science supports anything of the kind. I'm saying you can't prove a negative. Occam's Razor says you should accept the simplest possible explanation for science. It doesn't say nor could it say and still be correct reasoning that if there was really something outside of your frame of reference that it couldn't also have some unseen effect.

When people make scientific claims that are false, you can prove them false with science. When people make claims that aren't testable by science, you can neither confirm nor disprove their claims. With no testability, there is no experiment, no data, and no chance at a scientific explanation other than, "Hm. Maybe. Now let me get back to things I can test."

Science can't be used to prove what the IDers believe, or the Christian creationists, or the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, the Buddhists, those neopagan Wiccans and Wittans and wanna-be Druids. What they believe isn't scientifically testable. Since it's not testable, though, you can't disprove it either.

Ever heard of falsifiability? If you could disprove it, it means there'd have to be a way if the data was different to prove it, too. You have no data. It's just not relevant to the scientific method if it can't be tested.

It's not science, it's not part of science, it's not in the purview of science, and it's totally irrelevant to science. Scientists who try to disprove supernatural religions with science are committing the very same errors of thought as religious people trying to prove one of them with science.

So stop being an asshat and telling me what I want. What I want is for religious idiots wanting scientific proof they can't get to stop bothering you, and people like you to stop bothering them.

If you really wanted to be helpful to both groups, the scientists and the believers, you could turn them away saying that what they want to discuss is orthogonal to science and you really can't help them. Remind them that according to their own beliefs their faith is rewarded for being faith without proof, anyway, and to please let you and other scientists get back to actual science.

Re:It is *now* becoming clear?

[mr_mischief]

This. This is what I've been saying on Slashdot for years.

Do the IDers really claim scientific proof for the Christian God? Or do they claim that that's their belief and it wouldn't hurt for people to know that in the context of where it contradicts science? I'm sure there are wackos who think they have scientific evidence, but I'm talking about the way they actually want it presented after all their political and social calculations.

Personally, I think there's a great deal of good scientific evidence for evolution. I think it's mostly sound work, although there will be a couple of cranks in any field of course (see the guys saying the LHC will destroy the universe and such). In fact, if there's an unprovable God who put the creation of life into motion, I think it's pretty apparent evolution was a tool of choice.

Now, I've heard Christians say that the evidence of evolution was put there as a test of faith by God because they believe the exact genealogy given in the Bible, but if that's the case then how kind of a God to provide enough data for us to discover all this useful and testable theory about genes that actually works. At the same time, how awful to have a "compassionate" God who would intentionally deceive his own children. Now I've also heard the evidence was put there by the devil, but why would he also make it useful?

Maybe it's best to just leave the science to the scientists and the theology to the theologians. Which is exactly what I've been saying on here for years. The scientists, unfortunately, seem to be more vociferously anti-religion than the religionists are anti-science, and very few of either seem to have the idea to keep them separate.

His Alchemist Title

[Monkey_Genius]

Falling Apple Alchemist.

Re:His Alchemist Title

[gmuslera]

Wet (or burned) alchemist instead... is not wise to play with dangerous liquids when apples are falling around.

Re:His Alchemist Title

[jameskojiro]

F=MA Alchemist

Which is funny because F=MA is the second law of motion that Issac created and FMA is an acronym for Full Metal Alchemist...

Re:His Alchemist Title

[abigsmurf]

Pfft, Isaac Newton has already been the main villain of one series, he doesn't need a minor part in another!

And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, it certainly isn't pseudoscience to turn elements into other elements. Nuclear reactions can do this, just not in large quantities. Their methods were incorrect, but the idea itself is not ridiculous.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[fractoid]

Exactly. And most importantly, science is about testing your assumptions in order to verify them. If Newton made a systematic, scientific study of alchemy, then he was practicing science, not "a totemic pseudoscience". He may not have managed to turn lead into gold but I'd bet he learned a lot.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[shawb]

I have heard a tale from times long ago, about an alchemist and the philosopher's stone.

This alchemist, he sought the truth, with an inkling that experiment would lead to proof. To get support from nobles and kings the alchemist spoke of untrue things. "I seek a way to form base lead into gold and an elixer that will keep you from every growing old." Popes and priests said truth comes from the bible, that silly games played in labs are just not reliable. The alchemist just smiled and gave them a nod, and told them that gold represents heaven and God. Upon hearing this the alchemist was found without guilt, for churches look so much better when covered with gilt.


What of the claims that life could be extended? And that the infirm would swiftly be mended? What of the claims of untold power? And of wealth unknown to all at that early hour? The philosopher's stone became much like an orange, for difficult to rhyme is the scientific method.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[bm_luethke]

Sadly this is lost to so many today. For the most part put lots of math, create a model, and talk about it and you have "science" never mind that the process leaves you with nothing better than "inconclusive" because there are MANY different ways to interpret what went on. Science is a process, you can apply science from religious beliefs to trouble shooting your automobile's engine not running and you can do so without a single piece of traditional math (you will need logic however). You can create the worlds most sophisticated model replete with math only three other people on the planet can understand and you no more gave evidence towards you hypothesis than if you flipped a coin to choose between two guesses.

If you learn to read scientific articles you can read and critique *any* scientific paper out there - there is no need to understand the underlying principles. You will not be able to verify or critique those principles, but you certainly can the process used (and if the math is something you are familiar with you can look for proper practices there too even if you do not really know what it implies). That is, however, a dying skill and even in our worlds top facilities few are able to do that (I was lucky enough that the group I worked with at Oak Ridge National Labs was sticklers for doing that) - most are enamored either with the math or with funding - mostly the latter. It is difficult to teach and mostly makes other "scientists" mad at you because, well, you hurt their funding.

For myself there is no bigger fear for our future than this as it goes down to our ability to understand and verify what is going on - our inability to do this (especially coupled with out ability to affect changes) means that we are truly working on nothing more than guesses, and not even really educated ones at that. This goes well beyond science too, we have lost our underpinnings in being able to verify that something works and instead are - to use a vulgar phrase - so enamored with our belly-buttons that we can see anything else (otherwise known as navel gazing). If you can get the equation to balance then it *must* be true and then both sides square off for a battle when *neither* side is remote accurate. We are all 10-20 years from total anihilation from so many sources that are totally natural and could never harm us we should either all be finding Jesus or Allah within the moment or we will live forever. What this means is that we have degenerated into who has the best media sources - is CNN or FoxNews who you prefer? Neither one of them are worth a flip if you want real news, however for those that really like staring at their navels this is a truly important question and the answer affects so many other things.

Sadly both sides are navel gazing and forgot what real science is - it is no longer a contest of who is the closest to being correct but who can be the most persuasive with their propaganda. I do not care if you a thinking if religious/atheist, global warming/deniers, or whatever other dichotomy you are picturing me railing against (each side always figures I'm a card carrying member of the other) chances are you are correct. To use another vulgar (with the popular sense of the term instead of the traditional this time): they both suck donkey balls.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[Trogre]

Dammit, I'm going to have to go re-watch Second Reality now.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[geminidomino]

Just makes sure you avoid the cheaper, inferior Fig Leibnitz from WalMart. They're kinda mealy and they go stale fast.

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[sqldr]

Exactly. Without alchemy, there would have been no chemistry. It was an alchemist who discovered oxygen and went on to help identify the elements. Phlogiston theory was proven wrong by alchemists. The author of TFA needs to read about the history of chemistry before writing about the history of chemistry.

Alchemists meticulously kept logs and charts and books of data of their discoveries. They were also expert practical scientists and some were even well practiced glass blowers (those phials don't make themselves..).

Re:And lead CAN be turned into gold...

[Phoghat]

Astronomy began as Astrology, Chemistry and Physics as Alchemy. The only difference was that the forebears of modern science was looked at as dabbling in the black arts.

Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[Bertie]

I mean, Bill Bryson talks about it at some length in his eminently readable Short History Of Nearly Everything. As well as being into alchemy, he "spent endless hours studying the floor plan of the lost temple of King Solomon in Jerusalem (teaching himself Hebrew in the process, the better to scan original texts) in the belief that it held mathematical clues to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world."

Bryson also reports that John Maynard Keynes bought a load of his papers at auction, only to find that the great majority of them were about alchemy, rather than optics or astronomy.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[MaskedSlacker]

It is widely known, but everyone except the /. editors.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[DesScorp]

More than mathematics or alchemy or anything else, he greatest love was theology. He spend more time writing about religion than any other subject. He was a non-Trinitarian Christian, probably Arian in his theology, a position I'm somewhat sympathetic to. He had to keep this quiet during his life... there were serious consequences in Britain at the time for dissenting from Anglican doctrine... but he wrote effusively on religion and professed his deep love and awe for God and his works. Newton wouldn't be very sympathetic to Stephen Hawking's "no need for a God" reasoning:

"

Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

Modern scientists would largely consider his beliefs an embarrassment, but I admire the man a great deal. He was the very picture of a full life, mentally, physically, and spiritually. He accomplished more and blazed more trails than most of us will ever dream of doing. He was a polymath that did everything from improving the state of telescopes to serving in Parliament.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[mr_mischief]

I don't see why his beliefs would be an embarrassment at all. A little cognitive dissonance doesn't discount his science unless it distorts his method and findings.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[pjt33]

He didn't exactly do much in Parliament - according to a biography I read he spoke precisely once, to ask that a window be closed because there was a draft. His work for the Royal Mint is a lot more impressive.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[Tarsir]

I don't see why his beliefs would be an embarrassment at all.

Perhaps not, but judging from your other posts in this discussion, you are much more tolerant and reasonable than most slashdotters.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[mr_mischief]

Well, on some things some of the time I am. Thanks for noticing.

Re:Didn't realise this wasn't widely known

[flashingcurser]

He was the very picture of a full life, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

He was probably bi-polar and died a virgin. I'll stick with my half-empty life.

Not news...

[Anonymous Coward]

PBS did an episode of NOVA on this several years ago.

Re:Not news...

[aka1nas]

One of the dead tree science mags did an article about this a month or two ago as well (I think it was American Scientist).

Re:Not news...

[mattack2]

Yup, that was my first reaction too. I think people often say 'not news' too quickly... But maybe they're all right.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[MightyMartian]

It's true that things tend to happen in a continuum. Still, the Principia stands out even in a quick run through of recorded history as one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. Newton certainly stood on the shoulders of his own giants, but that is definitely a moment in time in which our entire view of the Universe changed in fundamental ways. Yes, Copernicus, Galileo and Leibniz, among others, pointed the way, but there's an incredible gravity (pun intended) to the publishing of the Principia. It remains one of the undisputed watershed moments in time.

Interesting biographical resource -

[spads]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/newton/about.html He seemed by no means to be the sort of founding fathers-esque square-head, as he is often depicted (eg. portrait in linked article). Not only did it describe his alchemical endeavors, but also that he was seeking physical proofs for things written in the bible. Interesting how true geniuses are frequently true eccentrics.

Re:Interesting biographical resource -

[phantomfive]

There is nothing wrong with seeking physical proofs for things written in the bible. In fact, there are physical proofs for some things written in the bible, such as the ruins of the city of Jericho. But that's besides the point. The problem isn't looking for scientific proof of things, the problem is when you don't accept the evidence that contradicts what you expected. Newton was living at the dawn of scientific investigation, he could have investigated almost anything and found something worth writing a paper about.

There is nothing wrong with seeking physical proof for even astrology. The only problem is when you ignore the evidence that shows it's useless.

Re:Interesting biographical resource -

[turing_m]

Interesting how true geniuses are frequently true eccentrics.

What else is eccentricity but deviation from the norm? There are loads of things the average person would probably do differently if he was smart enough to be in the top 0.1% of people, because the better way to do a particular task would then be obvious. Of course, his compatriots are doomed to never understand why his ways are better, because they aren't smart enough to do so. Thus, they label him eccentric.

If you are a genius, even the conventional wisdom of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" can be flouted, because then you would be smart enough to figure out exactly what sort of un-Romanlike things you can get away with. The extent to which you do the un-Roman things depends on how much you value social approval. The thing is, someone recognized as a genius will care more about implementing a better way of doing whatever it is they want to do, than social approval. When that better way catches on, that is how they get recognized as a genius. So it is no accident that perceived geniuses are eccentrics, some just hide it better than others.

Re:Interesting biographical resource -

[Jaime2]

I think you're talking more about sociopaths than geniuses. Most career criminals would match your second paragraph. I think it goes the other way. You really don't have the time to realize the full potential of your genius unless you withdraw from some social customs. Rather than your model of a genius who finds a way to find time to be a genius, I'm talking about a scenario where a well-adjusted potential genius simply spends his time watching football and getting drunk instead of accomplishing anything at all. On the other hand, the social-outcast potential genius has plenty of time to fulfill his destiny.

Re:Interesting biographical resource -

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking for meaning in astrology is similar to looking for meaning in mathematics. Maths is only useful insofar as we can construct a concrete model for an axiomatic system.

This is not useless. Let me explain. We could describe a mathematics about almost anything. Suppose we describe one based on the interactions between tables, chairs, and beer mugs. We could postulate certain attributes, or "axioms," of these "undefined terms." These "axioms" interact to "prove" "theorems." None of this exists in reality, though.

Or we could postulate the existence of certain "planets" and "houses" in the sky. These "planets" each have rules, or "axioms" which describe how they interact with "houses" based on their position in the sky. These rules interact to give insight into themselves.

Astrology is a primitive form of axiomatics. It has some small predictive power if we don't look too closely, and it's easy to find counterexamples to all of its axioms. But, like axiomatics, what we see in the contradictions is as meaningful as what we see in the confirmations. Both reveal the world to us through what they are not. Sure, it's not as rigidly codified, nor even remotely scientific, but it forms a backdrop of order against which we can evaluate the chaos in our lives.

Re:Interesting biographical resource -

[tehcyder]

What else is eccentricity but deviation from the norm? There are loads of things the average person would probably do differently if he was smart enough to be in the top 0.1% of people, because the better way to do a particular task would then be obvious. Of course, his compatriots are doomed to never understand why his ways are better, because they aren't smart enough to do so. Thus, they label him eccentric.

Oh, cobblers, most eccentric people aren't geniuses, they're just selfish and/or scatter-brained and can't be bothered to try to fit in with the rest of society.

More than a physicist...

[JoeRobe]

If I recall, according to his assistant's writings, the night that Newton gave his final edition of The Principia to the messenger to go out for printing, he immediately went back into his lab and fired up his alchemy furnace. Alchemy was one of his passions, and he was sincerely attempting to discover the philosopher's stone, and even an "elixir of life". Sounds silly now, but chemistry was so young at that time, nobody knew its potential. He was also passionate about biblical passages. He thought that one could extract important scientific information from the bible, ancient texts and architecture, allowing him to predict the apocalypse and other "insights". Supposedly he wrote more about this than science (in fact I remember hearing 90% was on the occult, 10% "scientific. No reference for that, though).

The wikipedia page is actually pretty insightful.

If you ever have a chance to read even a chapter or two of The Principia, you should. It's an amazingly different perspective on what we now know as "Newtonian Mechanics". Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...

Re:More than a physicist...

[Cussin_IT]

You have a piont there, and that's realy what I was thinking too, but more along the lines of how future scientists will see us. The scientific comunity poured a huge amount of time and recorces into developing cold fusion -for instance- that we now now to be either imposible or nearly so. The piont I'm trying to make here is that you realy don't know if somthing is imposible or not untill you actualy try it.

As a case in piont here, it is actualy posible to change a lead atom into a gold atom, using a special atomic laser to shave off extra protons. Asumming you don't mind having an extramly unstable and radioactive ingot. The Alchemests where sure this was posible, they just didn't know how to do it.

Re:More than a physicist...

[excelsior_gr]

Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...

You nailed it just there... Even relatively modern works, such as those of Gibbs on thermodynamics, much derivation and calculation is based on geometry.

Re:More than a physicist...

[CheshireCatCO]

Geometry was clearly the tool of scientists as the time...

Yes. Descartes had only introduced analytic geometry about a generation prior and Euclid had been around for 2000 years. Hardly surprising, given that. (Annoying as sin, though, I will say that.)

He was also passionate about biblical passages. He thought that one could extract important scientific information from the bible, ancient texts and architecture, allowing him to predict the apocalypse and other "insights".

I have biography of Newton on my desk at work that suggests that he was just the opposite: firmly non-Christian, but he couldn't say anything because he was a professor at Cambridge (which usually required being clergy) and society was not friendly to non-Christians.

Re:More than a physicist...

[dbIII]

It should only suprise those followers of Christianity-Lite that foolishly think science is a rival religeon. You lot started the war against science after you had finished off with your fight with any sort of educated clergy.

Re:More than a physicist...

[CheshireCatCO]

You're right, he needn't have been Christian to have studied the Bible. But the lengths he went to hide his (purported) non-Christianity aren't really that amazing, as you claim. He was given a special waiver to be Lucasian Professor without being clergy, so he was already somewhat in the religious hot-seat. Stepping too far out of line would have been a bad career move. And then, as Warden of the Royal Mint, he had even less reason to want to do anything to cause question of his views.

Re:More than a physicist...

[JasterBobaMereel]

He wrote the Principia in geometrical terms mostly without diagrams for the same reason he wrote it in Latin

That's how people wrote and read science in those days, he actually worked most of it out using calculus (which he invented for that purpose) and then rewrote it in geometrical terms in Latin so other people could understand it

Re:More than a physicist...

[JoeRobe]

Do you have a reference for that? His calculus in the Principia is certainly geometrical, with abundant figures (for me as a reader, at least) and makes sense as calculus, but it's just in geometric terms. I mean, he invokes the notion of infinitesimal and limits as delta -> 0. Do you mean that in his head (or notes) he understood it differently than how it is written in the Principia? As I read it I recognize it as calculus...

And for what its worth, Galileo had already written in colloquial Italian, so Newton could have as well (written colloquially). Newton just didn't write in a style that a commoner could understand, whereas Galileo had to reach the masses if his ideas were going to catch on, so he wrote in the form of dialogues.

Re:More than a physicist...

[dbIII]

So says the one that called us all slashdorks.

Re:More than a physicist...

[JasterBobaMereel]

The calculus in Principia is as you say is Geometrical, this is not as he originally formed it, in other papers he used it in the form he originally formulated it ...

The diagrams are the standard simple geometrical diagrams as used at the time

He was writing for the educated man, not the common people, the only common language they had was Latin, English was not widespread...

Galileo was writing for the common man of italy and so wrote in their language

Re:More than a physicist...

[JoeRobe]

I understand that Newton wasn't writing for the common man (as I said), and that he was writing for the educated man (as I said) and that the diagrams are geometrical (as I also said), but do you have a reference for Newton's original view of calculus? To what other papers are you referring? Even the equals sign was something that people were still getting used to at the time, so calculus in geometric terms which relied on ratios was much more rational and easy to understand. I really am interested in how he originally thought about infinitesimals and the notion of limits. Thanks!

Re:More than a physicist...

[JoeRobe]

Also, for England in the mid-to-late 1600's, early modern English was the commoner's language. The King James Bible was written in it, and Shakespeare as well as Milton wrote in it. At this point in England, if you wanted to reach the common man, you could have written in early modern English. If you wanted to reach the scholar across Europe, Latin was the way to go. Newton, as most scientists at the time, had no interest in reaching the common man. Galileo wrote for the common Italian because he knew his message was sacrilege, so unless his ideas reached outside of the church, they would be suppressed.

And in the end he was right

[greg_barton]

You can transmute one element to another. It's called nuclear chemistry.

:O

[cjseealf]

This is extensively cover by Morris Berman in "El reencantamiento del mundo". Long ago.

Re::O

[cjseealf]

in a holistic way

A bit harsh

[turing_m]

"He was brutal," said Mark Ratner, a materials chemist at Northwestern University. "He sentenced people to death for trying to scrape the gold off of coins." Newton may have been a Merlin, a Zeus, the finest scientist of all time. But make no mistake about it, said Mr. Ratner. "He was not a nice guy."

There is no civilization as we know it without currency. If people start debasing the currency, they are robbing from the rest of the populace - everyone has to work that bit harder to support them. Make enough to never have to work again, and you have effectively caused the rest of the society to chip in a lifetime worth of slavery just so you can sit on your ass. The crime is not really any different to counterfeiting, and every country takes that very seriously for that reason. So meh.

Newton may or may not have been personable, but it is difficult to argue that he contributed far more to the world than he took from it, and from that perspective he was one of the nicest guys to have ever lived.

Re:A bit harsh

[turing_m]

Saying he "may or may not have been personable," doesn't seem relevant when you're talking about a death sentence for what should be at most a slap on the wrist.

IIRC, he was a fairly prickly character, that's what I was referring to more than anything with the comment about him not being personable. And I suspect that Ratner was understating things when he talked about "trying" to scrape gold off coins. I'd be willing to bet that they did more than "try".

We are also judging Newton from our 21st century standards of respect for life, which is just a tad rich. These days we don't even have the death penalty in a lot of the western world, but back in those days a simple death by hanging was more lenient than sentences involving torture before death.

Re:A bit harsh

[deodiaus2]

Well, we have perfected the art of scraping off gold and selling it.
Isn't that what most financial analysts do. They have gotten so good that they don't need to deface the physical currency.
Now, we have taken it to a new high in that we will bail out AIG or banks [more so in 1993 for pushing laws which allow them to get into ever moreso highly speculative and highly rewarding endeavors] if they fail. But we let them keep their nice profits when they are successful.
Prior to money, goods and services were exchanged by bartering. Money and financial contracts is the media which allows governments to play this game on its society and to everyone who deals with its currency, and to centralize the decision making to a few individuals. By issuing more money then they collect, governments are able to finance projects which might have been unobtainable in the past.
Gold held its value. If you scraped off some or mixed it with lead, you had less gold.

Re:A bit harsh

[dbIII]

we should string up all the quants and financial engineers?

If some accountant is calling themselves an engineer, then maybe follow it up with their head on a pike as a warning. MSCE was supposed to be the ridiculous thick edge of the wedge.

Re:A bit harsh

[Artifakt]

...interest...subscribe...newsletter...

Re:A bit harsh

[Steauengeglase]

Then the next Newton needs to hurry up and get here.

Re:A bit harsh

[91degrees]

As far as crimes go, this is essentially the same as counterfeiting. You're stealing from the state and destabilising the economy. Some countries have considered this treason even. At the time, the death penalty for such a crime was typical. Even now you'll get more than a slap on the wrist.

The ancient Chinese were so concerned about it that the penalty was death, and all your property would be awarded to the person who turned you in.

Re:A bit harsh

[tehcyder]

Don't forget you could get sentenced to death for a wide range of less serious offences at that time, including (amusingly) the practise of alchemy.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[skelterjohn]

...

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[blackraven14250]

Why are most scientists Catholic

What the fuck are you smoking?

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you smoking?

Some holy shit!

Unacceptable.

[BlitzTech]

By the modern standards of today, "alchemy" is considered a pseudoscience. Why do new "researchers" (and I use the term VERY liberally) continue to apply modern context to historical figures? Newton was a pioneer of his day. Alchemy was considered a real science, one he spent quite a bit of time furthering, and to condemn 30 years of his life for searching for a way to turn lead into gold is insulting to his memory and legacy as well as insulting to researchers and historians who actually understand that modern opinions, ideas, and knowledge don't always apply in the past.

I am getting very tired of "researchers" making claims with unpublished data that cannot be verified for accuracy (Gliese 581 g possibly a hoax), making 'groundbreaking' claims about history without even considering historical context (this and about 50% of similar posts on /.), and a total failure to understand basic statistics (most 'shocking' studies posted on /.). These idiots give the rest of us researchers a bad name.

Re:Unacceptable.

[kale77in]

+1 Acceptable

"Lo, for had we but lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have gone with them into astrology/nomy and alchemy and phlogiston chemistry..."

History is one of science's best safeguards; it ensures at least a measure of humility and humanity.

Re:Unacceptable.

[komisar]

What I find entertaining is that while Newton was spending most of his time working on on alchemy and theology, he still had enough spare time to write/invent/discover the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newtonian mechanics, universal gravitation, infinitesimal calculus, optics, binomial series and Newton's method.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[TapeCutter]

He was an odd character that crammed a lot into his life, some were great scientific/mathematical achivements, some were great social achievments (gold standard) and some were just batshit crazy by our current standards. For example; he wrote almost a million words on the numerology of 666, stuck pins in his eyes to investigate the nature of light, claimed jesus was sent to earth to "operate the levers of gravity", and sucked down mecury fumes from the alchemist's bowl. But by shear volume his most prolific work was not as a scientist or alchemist but as a theologan.

I found it kinda sad when I went to see his grave at Wesminster Abbey, I asked one of the attendents where Newton's grave was and he said "Ahhh, a Davinci code fan, eh?", I replied a little indignantly - "No, I'm a Newton fan".

Hindu in, NYT out

[ljhiller]

Congrats on finally getting your submission posted after going halfway around the world to find a copy not at the New York Times. Seriously.

Re:Hindu in, NYT out

[TomHandy]

I was wondering about that - read this story in the NYT, and seemed odd to me that the summary talks about the writer writing in "The Hindu" rather than where this was actually originally published.

It only sounds weird from today's point of view...

[yet-another-lobbyist]

Of course, when you know science as we do today, it's easy to say that this was an obvious dead end. However, imagine how much was known about anything such a long time ago. How could he have known that these experiments would not lead to success? Many other experiments were done at the same time (and much later) that seem much more esoteric, and which ultimately lead to scientific breakthroughs. What comes to my mind right now are Faraday's electrical experiments with frog legs...
So from that point of view, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Newton trying to "cook" some chemical elements seeking for new insights.

poor description of alchemy

[Anonymous Coward]

here are some references for other perspectives on alchemy

Masquerade of the dream walkers: prophetic theology from the Cartesians to Hegel
  By Peter A. Redpath
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=VIBS+73
Chapter 1 talks about Newton and alchemy

Restoring Paradise: Western Esotericism, Literature, Art, and Consciousness
  By Arthur Versluis
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-3958-restoring-paradise.aspx
Alchemy and more

Causation does not equal ... the perfect cover!

[Rooked_One]

42? I think that's right. Let me double check my math.... yup!

Lets see - a person surrounded by intolerant people who's main focus in life is money... So "saying" you were doing all these "weird" experiments (to produce gold from a worthless substance) would be the perfect cover for carrying out studies that might be looked at as heresy. Just as someone who knows nothing about programming sees you code and, maybe, lets say a vision of a malicious hacker comes into their mind - you are demonized. This, of course, is parallel to Mark Twain's adage - "Better to say nothing and have people assume you are a fool than open your mouth and confirm it."

Re:Causation does not equal ... the perfect cover!

[LongearedBat]

Mod parent insightful, please.

the perfect cover for carrying out studies that might be looked at as heresy.

...which would partly be why he wrote so much based upon the bible!

Re:Causation does not equal ... the perfect cover!

[Rooked_One]

Funny... never have read it! :)

A couple of things...

[Fantastic Lad]

A couple of things:

1. Alchemy has little to do with chemistry. It's about the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings, and as Newton was learning Hebrew, I'd guess he'd probably figured out some of the fundamentals in play re Gnostic Christianity and similar. "Lead into Gold" is a metaphor, as was much else about alchemy. But I don't know much about Newton, so whatever. Maybe he really was trying to generate a money mill.

2. Not knowing something isn't a crime. Exploration of ideas and the world should never be punished if the person searching is doing so out of an honest desire to learn and isn't hurting anybody in the process. People are far too hard on each other for being ignorant, and too defensive when their ignorance is pointed out. Learning shouldn't be a punishable offense.

-FL

Re:A couple of things...

[Angst Badger]

Alchemy has little to do with chemistry. It's about the purification of the soul through repeated heatings and coolings, and as Newton was learning Hebrew, I'd guess he'd probably figured out some of the fundamentals in play re Gnostic Christianity and similar. "Lead into Gold" is a metaphor, as was much else about alchemy.

That is indeed one branch of traditional alchemy, but a lot of alchemists were very serious about transmuting literal lead into literal gold. Once you get used to the jargon, it's fairly easy to separate the texts of one branch from those of the other. (There's a third strand in alchemical writings: lofty-sounding gobbledygook cranked out and sold to turn an easy profit, much like the get-rich-quick TV infomercials and spam of the present day. Theophrastus Paracelsus was one of those, complete with miracle cures for all that ails you and an extra helping of the-Lord-works-in-mysterious-ways if it didn't work.) It's worth noting that the less-than-noble physical alchemists, denounced as "puffers" by the spiritual alchemists, were the ones that stumbled their way into the beginnings of modern chemistry.

As for the Gnostics, they were largely unknown in Newton's time, having been completely suppressed more than a thousand years before his time. The rediscovery of the Gnostics by the lay public came later. In any case, Hebrew would not have helped Newton understand the Gnostics: all their writings were in Greek, just like the rest of early Christian writings before the rise of the church in Rome. Newton may have been influenced by Christianized versions of the Kabbalah that were much admired by alchemists and other occultists in the early modern period, but that's just speculation, as documentary evidence is lacking.

Re:A couple of things...

[maxume]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, at some point your Fantastic Lad went off the deep end and found his navel.

Re:A couple of things...

[Fantastic Lad]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, at some point your Fantastic Lad went off the deep end and found his navel.

My navel in the deep end? I would have thought that was for those dozing in their deck chairs.

But yeah, I can understand the hesitation. Still, you won't see the wonders if you let the sharks scare you off. Not for weak swimmers.

-FL

Re:A couple of things...

[Fantastic Lad]

Yeah, I must take the time at some point to study Newton beyond his contribution to physics. I don't even know what period he lived in.

Always so many blank spots to fill...

-FL

Re:A couple of things...

[Angst Badger]

Newton lived from 1643 to 1727. If you're looking for smart people with feet in both worlds at that critical juncture, Newton is a good one: he was also into astrology at least as much as alchemy. Johannes Kepler came immediately before Newton (1571-1630) and is best remembered for having figured out the basics of planetary orbits, which Newton's laws later helped explain. Kepler was originally looking for an idealized heaven based on the Platonic solids and only later, reluctantly, came to realize that the real solar system was much messier and less regular than that. He was also an astrologer, though it's not entirely clear that he believed much in it; it may have just been a way to pay the bills. Newton, on the other hand, vigorously defended the validity of astrology.

If you want to read about the mystico-religious influences on both, you can do worse than to read the works of Pico della Mirandola, who was one of the major proponents of Renaissance humanism and was involved in popularizing the Corpus Hermeticum, and influencing everyone from mostly-scientists like Newton and Kepler, to mostly-magicians like Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake for, among other things, proposing intelligent life on other planets), the physician-philosopher Robert Fludd, the full-blown but covert magician Cornelius Agrippa, and magician-mathematician Dr. John Dee, who was court astrologer to Elizabeth I and coined the expression "British Empire", and whose sidekick Edward Kelley was one of the puffers. The end of Renaissance magic goes back to Pico's much-vaunted Corpus Hermeticum, which was widely believed to be the work of ancient Egyptian sages, but which was revealed to be a later Greek forgery by Meric Casaubon.

All in all, it's a very interesting time period, with the last of the magicians on one end, the first of the scientists on the other, and religious fanatics of all stripes fighting each other tooth and nail before being blindsided by the rise of the modern nation-state.

Re:A couple of things...

[Fantastic Lad]

Damn.

That sounds truly amazing. My first thought was, "What a great period for somebody to set an adventure story!"

Pico della Mirandola's works on the Gutenberg Project are, of course, in Italian so my lazy bones need to visit a library. But thanks for the details. I think I've just found my latest subject to study.

Cheers!

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[pieisgood]

From the contents of his post, I'd wager DMT.

An assumption based on lack of evidence

[LongearedBat]

Some things may wrongly appear to be mumbo jumbo, because we have not researched them properly yet.

Re:An assumption based on lack of evidence

[mcornelius]

Or because they're bullshit, well researched (and debunked), and spuriously claimed anyway by malevolent or ignorant and naïve charlatans.

Yellow journalism

[Angst Badger]

How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy [...]

There's an amazing amount of sensationalism and cluelessness tightly packed in that one clause.

First of all, Newton was hardly "the ultimate scientist". He was a very good scientist and a brilliant mathematician, but his achievements and fame have a lot to do with being one of the first modern scientists. He wasn't the only early scientist working on the problems of optics or, for that matter, gravity, and Leibniz developed calculus independently around the same time. Had Newton decided to go into alchemy full-time, someone else would have discovered the same things before long. Calling him the ultimate scientist is just pseudo-journalistic puffery.

And secondly, alchemy wasn't obvious bullshit when Newton was working on it. It's only obviously bullshit now that we have an understanding of real chemistry and -- even more recently -- nuclear physics. More to the point, one of the most important bullshit detectors in the arsenal of science is modern statistics, which rests upon a foundation of calculus, which Newton (along with Leibniz) invented! To stand today on the shoulders of Newton and complain about his lack of perspective pushes the outer limits of irony.

another rumor about Newton

[Anonymous Coward]

His most famous invention, the Fig Newton may have been a recipe from his girlfriend's mom.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[paedobear]

He only ever mentioned standing on the shoulders of giants because Sir Robert Hook, his great rival, was - famously - a midget.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[Zorque]

We need a "-1, Schizophrenic" moderation option.

Covered before...

[NotQuiteReal]

I am sure Neal Stephenson did all the same research.

Only he presented his findings in a far more entertaining way via The Baroque Cycle books.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[phantomfive]

stuck pins in his eyes to investigate the nature of light,

Wow, seriously? I have more respect for the guy than ever, that takes serious guts; I have trouble even touching my eyeball.

Oh, the wonders of chronocentrism

[Fjodor42]

Which part of this isn't blindingly obvious to anyone having taken even cursory introductions to History of the Sciences? *sigh*

Re:Oh, the wonders of chronocentrism

[mcornelius]

Thank you. I thought I was going crazy.

scientism vs. belief

[nido]

Some people are mentally wedded to a certain philosophical overview, and reject technology which use different philosophical overviews a-priori.

Definition of A PRIORI:

1a : deductive
1b : relating to or derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions — compare a posteriori
1c : presupposed by experience

The person you responded to has deduced that there is no merit whatsoever to chiropractic or accupuncture or homeopathy based on his experiences. Others have different experiences, and find value (some a little, some a lot) to these modalities.

Plenty of research has been done on acupuncture. Most of it is positive... But it's easy to be selective about the research one pays attention to...

HTH.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[mcornelius]

No, there is no health benefit to acupuncture, homopathy, or chiropractic. There is no research indicating these modalities are as effective or more effective than conventional medicine.

Alternative medicine that works is just called medicine.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[nido]

Thanks for making my point exactly. The NIH is slowly investigating acupuncture, maybe you should start there.

from one of my recent emails:

One point should be noted: that the energy phenomena involved are as complex and variegated as are all the physical flesh-and-organ-and-chemical structures of the meat body. Different programs and different disciplines with their different traditions and histories are working with different aspects of this life force energy, so you will find descriptions as different as those coming from specialists working with the epidermis and those working with joints or those working with some aspect of the digestive tract. We know, in fact, as scientific fact that at least some of this energy is "real," because no living organism can live without chemical process and all chemical processes are electrical in nature - what's controversial there is whether those electrical processes or any field effects can be tangible.

HTH, HAND.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[mcornelius]

I don't care what crackpots send you emails, but what linked to does not refute anything I said. It says that it may be useful for mild post-operative pain (similar to placebo). (My preferred post-operative pain treatment is bourbon, but pick your own poison.) if acupuncture is so effective for pain relief, try using it during an operation. Try having a tooth pulled with acupuncture and gas or novacaine.

If I'm going to get a placebo for something, I'll take a pill rather than be a pincushion for some nutjob that rejects germ theory for some vitalistic prescientific bullshit.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[nido]

James Randi gets off on prostrations of the faithful, such as your own.

At least the guy in my last slashdot conversation I had was lucid and intelligent.

Good luck with living. Try to not get too sick.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[mcornelius]

James Randi, hallowed be his name, is irrelevant. Congratulations. You know how throw in non sequiturs.

Re:scientism vs. belief

[nido]

You know how throw in bait.

There, fixed that for you.

I'm done with this thread. HAND.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[tverbeek]

Why are most scientists Catholic

Because the Pope shits in the woods. Q.E.D.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[TapeCutter]

Yeah, it made me wince when I first read about it.

John maynard keynes said Newton was last magician

[shoor]

I just recently happened to read a book pulled almost at random off the public library shelf, Magic and Superstition in Europe, A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present by Michael Bailey. It's a historian's look at magic. The author seemed particularly interested in things like the statistics for witchcraft trials, and how the mania would go from one region to another in Europe. He even offers a conjecture that it was the reaction to the witchcraft trials, when they started to ask how they could know if someone was a witch, that that was a big boost to the scientific approach. Anyway, he portrays Newton as being in the 17th century tradition of alchemy and magic more than the 18th century enlightened tradition, and cites John Maynard Keynes that Newton was not the first of the scientists but the last of the magicians. I looked for that quote here on the internet and found this: In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason. I do not see him in this light. I do not think that any one who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child bom with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

• http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html

Somewhere I also read (maybe in the same book) that when Newton went to work at the mint, his knowledge of metals from his alchemical experiments helped him a lot in that job.

Evolution's development parallels this path as....

[da_dude_abides]

...well. The original idea of the missing link doesn't come from Evolution, but from a mythological belief in the continuity of the world. A missing link between man and ape was assumed because a spectrum of intermediary forms was believed to exist as an expression of the completeness of God's creation. Evolution then is a temporalization of this idea. I think it's ironic so much conflict between science and Americanized religion is built around evolution, when historically evolution signifies a continuity between the two.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[Nutria]

It does a better job of explaining stuff than does "bearded sky man says so".

I've got on order this video, which I saw once two years ago and want to see again.

Was it obvious back then?

[iamacat]

Transmutation of a cheap material into one, for whatever reason, valuable in society is a worthwhile pursuit. It was not impossible in Newton's era and it is possible/practical today - think of U238 to Pu239 breeder reactors. To say that he should have envisioned that he should have given up and left the work to future generations is very unscientific. As it is he made important discoveries while working onto ultimately unsuccessful project.

F=MA Alchemist

[jameskojiro]

Issac was the best, I hear he even battled several personifications of deadly sins and tried creating life which led him to trouble as he had to get a replacement arm and leg built for him.

Err, what?

[Arancaytar]

"The ultimate scientist?" Is anyone really not aware of how much mystical bullshit he wrote?

Re:Err, what?

[irp]

"The ultimate scientist?" Is anyone really not aware of how much mystical bullshit he wrote?

Exactly! As my physics teacher once said: Newton was not the "first scientist" he was the "last alchemist".

Not news

[lawpoop]

This was the thesis put forward in Issac Newton: the Last Sorcerer.

The idea we sometimes get of these "first scientists" ushering in an era of rational thinking in an age of superstition is revisionist history. Science and reason as we know it today did not exist back then. If you looked at 'scientific' work of the day, you'll find a lot of odd ideas and theories that would strike us as superstitious or mystical. Isaac Newton was an occultist, and alchemist, and dabbled in all kinds of esoteric things. That he made great contributions to math and physics is more or less a bonus for us. Advancing the human body of knowledge or understanding the world through reason was not his project. He was a mystic and an occultist. Science and progress are modern-day inventions.

this is stupid

[circletimessquare]

alchemy is laughable, in 2010

alchemy is respectable, in 1710

what exactly is the point of applying 2010 standards to 1710?

"The Eight"

[Demablogia]

"The Eight" novel , by Katherine Neville, told about this question :-)

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[julesh]

[...] wherever there are no Catholics to spread those methods they are Freemasons in their place, and wherever the Freemasons have no standing then you see Jews importing muslims to induce the native population to join a club that eventually gets absorbed into Freemasonry?

Why is there no moderation -1, Batshit Crazy?

Re:this is dumb

[h4rm0ny]

Air is an element . Water is an element . Earth is an element and fire is an element .

Only in the Classical sense. In modern terminology, Water is two elements bonding together to form a molecule called "Water". Fire isn't an element or a molecule - it's a process called "combustion" (though the flame is normally glowing-hot carbon). Air and Earth are both a great big mass of elements.

Today we know what atoms are.

Some people do. Fewer still are those that can give you modern theories as to what the protons, neutrons and electrons that comprise atoms are "made" of.

How do i turn junk into money?

Money is an expression of confidence or faith (lower case) if you like. You merely have to convince people that the junk has value and it can become "money".

How do i live forever

Realise that "I" represents much more than your biological processes, but comprises your beliefs and ideas and actions (unless you really think that by removing these things, the lump of flesh remaining would still be "you"). So long as these non-biological aspects of you are out there being remembered or repeated or continue to influence people's actions at however many degrees of remove, then you persist.

What is the truth about reality ?

There is no more a single "truth" about Reality than there is a single "truth" about my table. There's the truth that my table has four legs, or the one that it's made of wood or that it needs a wipe right now. Which truth you see depends on which question you ask. How could this be true of a table, but not Reality?

alchemy is just science by another name

No. Science is a methodology, an approach. You can approach Alchemy in a Scientific way and once upon a time some people did and they were scientists in that respect. But to say that Alchemy is Science is to say Science is Alchemy. Is doing research on the brain by MRI alchemy? Is splicing foreign genes into plants alchemy? Modern Alchemy is a system of thought and meditation that may or may not be useful to you. But it's not Science any longer. That's Chemistry.

Newton, the Mad Man

[crow_t_robot]

"Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics"

Sir Isaac Newton did A TON of crazy shit. Two events in particular led to his famous paper, "Opticks":
1. He stuck a letter opener in his eye socket next to his eyeball and would turn it to put pressure on his eye to change its shape. This gave him some insight about lenses.
2. He stared into the sun so long one time that he had to remain locked in his completely blacked-out room for 3 days for his retina to recover. He was nearly rendered permanently blind from this stunt.

Did this really take any research?

[in10se]

I did a 6th grade term paper on how alchemy was the precursor to modern chemistry (and other sciences), and decades later this is front page news?

Video of the talk at the Perimeter Institute...

[Bart Baboo]

...will soon be here: http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/Outreach/Public_Lectures/View_Past_Public_Lectures/

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[dylsexia]

You forgot to mention his earlier work in mechanized farming equipment, which he gave up in order to "suck down mercury fumes". In doing so, he became an ex tractor fan.

historical shortsightedness

[argStyopa]

I have to admit it's one of the more tiresome aspects of today's discourse that most people can't be bothered to try to understand historical context before they pass judgement on historical personalities.

It's terrifically naive to say that someone pursuing Alchemy was a wierdo, or that trying to prove physics based on the bible was goofy, or that examining the floorplan of the Temple of Solomon for mathematical insights was silly. Yes, it's silly to US, in the 21st century, with our (nearly) universal understanding of biology, chemistry, physics, etc. that were all complete mysteries to people of that time. They didn't KNOW about germs, about atoms, electricity, or even what stars were.

Alchemy was AT LEAST as valid a 'science' as any other in Newton's time. It's through their brilliance and insight that we are able to separate actual science from fantasy today.

"Ubi sunt", indeed. :\

Re:this is dumb

[mcgrew]

The meaning of "element" has changed since ancient times. What the ancients described as "elements" were actually states of matter - "earth" = solid, "water" = liquid, "air" = gas, "fire" = energy/plasma.

But alchemy was not science any more than astrology was astronomy. The aims were the same or similar, but the methods were not.

Best Slashdot Quote

[bill_mcgonigle]

Even in Newton's time, science hadn't really fully evolved.

I actually have a Slashdot comment in my bugzilla quips file:

    Alchemists became chemists when they stopped keeping secrets. -Tom Felker

It ought to be in the Hall of Fame.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[Daetrin]

"and some were just batshit crazy by our current standards. For example; he [...] stuck pins in his eyes to investigate the nature of light"

Given that he's one of the founders of the whole field of optics, sticking pins in his eyes (or rather his eye sockets) to study how they worked may have taken an insane amount of guts on his part, but it definitely led to great scientific achievement so i wouldn't call it exactly "batshit crazy."

Re:John maynard keynes said Newton was last magici

[trout007]

And Keynes was the last economic magician.

Oh, I'm shocked to learn this

[whitroth]

As opposed to having it mentioned in classes 35-40 years ago. And in most books and encyclopedia articles about Newton, where this is mentioned.

The ignorance of most Americans (or rather USans, not to be confused with Canadians or Mexicans, who are also Americans....)

Then, of course, there's the almost complete lack of understanding of alchemy: it only drifted to chemistry during the Age of Enliightenment (which, given the Tea Partiers, show us that we've abandoned it); before then, it was mystical. Any actual research into it shows that the real, hidden purpose was not lead into gold, but rather that all of that was a metaphor for "perfecting the soul", which could be rephrased as become enlightened, or an avatar, or, at least in Europe, becoming the New Messiah, or a demiurge.

Oh, sorry, this is slashdot, that's all too complicated. I'll just go back to the hoodeck and play the Matrix VW....

                  mark

Re:Oh, I'm shocked to learn this

[cerniagigante]

i think the lecture took place in Canada. ps: Why did you stop at Mexicans what about Mayans, Guatemalans, Guaranyans, Quechuans, Incans, Aymarans, Mapuches, Inuit, etc.? They're American too.

Re:Oh, I'm shocked to learn this

[Teunis]

While my copy of Al Kemi has disappeared, this is it exactly.

My father was that kind of alchemist. It also turns out that in alchemical studies a lot of farming practices and improvements were developed. Many take more effort and time to get going - but they also take a lot less work later.

Also, the violin comes out of alchemy. I have the first one my father made. It's beautiful.

Age of Unreason

[Kelson]

Another good one is Greg Keyes' Age of Unreason series (written as J. Gregory Keyes, but newer editions use the shorter version of his name). It starts out with Newton succeeding in making alchemy work, which leads to a very different kind of industrial revolution in the late 17th/early 18th century. A young Benjamin Franklin is one of the main characters in the four-book series.

Re:this is dumb

[Coren22]

I believe the point AC was making is that our modern view of atoms came from the Alchemists of Newton's time. They are the ones that discovered many of the atoms by "transmuting elements" into base elements. The Baroque Cycle by Stevenson talks quite a bit about Newton's time as a fiction book, but much of the book came from research into what Newton was really like. One of the elements alchemy found by "transmuting" in the story was phosphorus, they boiled down urine and the phosphorus condensed out. To someone with no knowledge of atoms at the time, this was transmutation, the conversion of urine (water) into a glowing substance that catches fire easily (fire).

Where are all the WoW jokes?

[RichM]

He would have made more gold with Jewelcrafting.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[An ominous Cow art]

Frankincense and myrrh?

Natalie misquoted in this post

[zenpickle]

This article unfortunately distorted the question by misquoting Natalie Angier. The question was not by Natalie as Hugh stated.but was instead a quote from Dr. Newman which he asked rhetorically only to answer it. Nothing in the article criticized alchemy. Doesn't anyone read sources. It is amazing how much hot air slashdot can generate over a simple misquote, taken out of context..

This story repeats a stupid fallacy

[rkinch]

"... white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens".

White light splits into colors because of dispersion in the prism. Passing dispersed rays through another prism just disperses them more, it does not recombine them. This fallacy is famously repeated in public school science textbook diagrams of paired prisms. Newton never performed any such demonstration. He was able to demonstrate recombination in Opticks, but with something much more complicated than a pair of prisms.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[fonske]

Observations of Halley's comet (not named Halleys comet at the time) lead Hooke to believe that the hyperbolic path could be partially explained by inverse proportionality with the square of the distance between comet and earth.

Re:Explain why Science ASSUMES Evolution as true.

[Thing 1]

Thanks! Added to my cart as well. (By the way, used to wanna kill all humans back in high school; these days, I still want to take everyone with me, but into the Singularity/nanotechnology future where we only die when we want to. Strange how things change, and thanks for reminding me of it! :)

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[TapeCutter]

LOL, pity the mods missed that.

Re:Human experience is not quantized

[TapeCutter]

A sane researcher would stick pins in other people's eyes. ;)