{"id":358,"date":"2005-07-02T12:25:55","date_gmt":"2005-07-02T07:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/?p=358"},"modified":"2005-07-02T12:25:55","modified_gmt":"2005-07-02T07:25:55","slug":"the-alchemist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2005\/07\/02\/the-alchemist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alchemist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Of all the fascinating things in the history of science, probably the most fascinating was <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alchemy\">alchemy<\/a><\/strong>.<br \/>\nThrough the ages, scientists of all types tried their hand at converting lead to gold. In hindsight it may look like a foolish endeavour. but, hindsight is always 20-20.<br \/>\nin the process of trying to convert lead to gold &#8211; a number of interesting scientific discoveries were made. But alas, lead remained lead. And gold it did not become!<br \/>\nSo, why all this on a dead science!<br \/>\nWell, yesterday came the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/education.guardian.co.uk\/higher\/research\/story\/0,9865,1519335,00.html\">revelation <\/a><\/strong>that <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isaac_Newton\">Sir Issac Newton&#8217;s<\/a><\/strong> diaries on Alchemy were found &#8211; in some dingy old library, locked away safely.<br \/>\nI was pondering about all those seemingly impossible things that scientists through the ages attempted. And wondered, what kind of a society we would live in, if they bowed down to social\/religious pressure and didn&#8217;t try what they did.<br \/>\nIt must have been so much more difficult at that point in time to have been different.<br \/>\nHaving said that, intolerance towards new ideas &#8211; or even old &#8211; seems to be creeping back into all our societies and religous dogma seems to be overpowering scienctific inquiry.<br \/>\nAre we once again moving towards the dark ages. Or is there a reformation in sight?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of all the fascinating things in the history of science, probably the most fascinating was alchemy. Through the ages, scientists of all types tried their hand at converting lead to gold. In hindsight it may look like a foolish endeavour. but, hindsight&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1437,1500],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-science","tag-society"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Alchemist - A PoV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2005\/07\/02\/the-alchemist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Alchemist - A PoV\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Of all the fascinating things in the history of science, probably the most fascinating was alchemy. 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