I always loved the concept of Alchemy. I first learned about it through the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, an awesome story, 10/10, certainly one of my favorite stories ever across all types of media. So much so that I even got a tattoo of it. This story, this anime, opened my mind to all kinds of philosophical concepts and pushed me, pushed my curiosity, to new limits. But that’s beside the point.
Alchemy, something mystical, esoteric, became popular a couple of hundred years ago with European people trying to transform lead into gold. But alchemy is a much older concept. We can find traces of it in most ancient civilizations, the Chinese, the Indians, the Greeks, the old Muslims (when they cared about science and math a couple of millennia ago). But throughout human history, even though most of those civilizations were quite intelligent and able to build amazing things, they hadn’t mastered the small, the micro, the atomic, so alchemy was always something of luck, of trial and error, and with time, of mysticism, of the occult. Sadly.
Even in a more “recent” period, just a few dozen decades ago, people who wanted to go down the path of alchemy were always ostracized by both scientists and religious people. The new religions were banning alchemy as heresy. The new sciences were laughing at it, because only mad and crazy people would pursue those mystical arts.
Luckily for us, alchemy persisted. Even if not as a real scientific concept, the fact that it’s still here today, even as something out of fantasy books, means it’s still in our collective subconscious. And as I’ve said before, creativity doesn’t exist. It’s a mix of pre-obtained ideas. We just need the concept of alchemy to be in the minds of enough intelligent people, and they’ll start having similar ideas in their respective fields. And it’s already happening. Because alchemy is real! Alchemy is science! But we do need to strip it down first, remove all the mysticism and occultism and fantasy that it’s been buried under.
With enough money, time, and some advances in current technology, we can turn stone into steak.
Don’t leave yet! This isn’t crazy talk. Let’s look at the science behind it. And yes, I know it’s kind of impossible right now, but let’s see how alchemy is being used for real, just with other names.
Matter is made of atoms. All objects are just different arrangements of atoms. As someone very intelligent once said, “We are stardust.” Everything, everyone, is made of atoms. And if you rearrange them, you change what the object is. Simple as that. Well, simple in theory, at least. The only thing stopping us from turning an apple into an orange is complexity, and of course the technology to control and fine-tune this atomic modification.
But alchemy is used in real science! In nuclear physics, scientists have turned bismuth into gold by removing a few protons and neutrons in a particle accelerator, and it wasn’t even like a few years ago, it was decades ago. Isn’t that amazing? The Elric brothers would be so proud.
And CRISPR! Alchemy on living organisms, where you take DNA from one organism, insert it into another, and you create something new. (Wait… phrasing it like that sounds suspiciously familiar.)
But we also have nanotechnology, a big deal these days in sci-fi and even superhero movies. It’s about rearranging atoms, one by one, to build structures with new properties. Literally rearranging reality from the atomic level. Transforming something simple and mundane into something new, something different, something better. That is pure alchemy! Like the creation of graphene, you get some boring coal, do some alchemy with it (high-tech, real-deal science), and turn it into graphene, a material that’s super strong with amazing conductivity. Alchemy!
Incantations and equations aside, I look forward to more advances in alchemy. Of course, no one will call it that, at least not in the foreseeable future, where alchemy is still seen as something for the mad and crazy. But whatever name they give it, I welcome it.
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