Can someone explain me the concept of the “alchemy” subject?
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The word “alchemy” means “the process of transmutation of material to join it with the divine”. Before modern science and the notion of atoms there was sort of a branch of philosophy where they would think about the nature of materials — why do some things mix or not mix, why are they the colors they are, why do some things burn but others melt, and so on. Different traditions had come up with all sorts of ideas, but consistent was the notion that things were basically configurations of a handful of basic elements or properties, like air, water, fire, and earth — and these were also connected to more fundamental supernatural properties.
For example, the notion that metals could be “rearranged” to form different metals came from an Arabic guy named Jabir ibn Hayyan. He noted that lead and gold had many properties in common, but gold was more rare, never tarnished, and had the warm and color of the sun — it was the purer and more divine form of lead. If one could learn to remove the properties of lead that would make it gold, then the same could be applied to living things to cure disease, or souls to obtain immortality (Jabir was convinced that man could create life where there was none).
By the 18th century, there was already quite a bit of practical alchemy in that there were knew of a variety of chemical reactions that did useful things and the mysticism of it went out of fashion — it was a practical art, even if it wasn’t fully understood what was going on. from that point, the empirical study of chemistry replaced alchemy. We came to understand what the elements were, how they shared certain properties and could be grouped by the way they interacted with other things. We became more methodical and advanced instruments that helped us learn about atoms, molecules, and how reactions worked.
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