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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: I wanted to start off today by thinking about containers. Um,

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Speaker 1: if you ever look around a chemistry lab, you will

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Speaker 1: notice that there are a lot of containers made out

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Speaker 1: of glass. Glass is often thought of as the chemist's friend, right,

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Speaker 1: And this is because silica, the stuff that glass is

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Speaker 1: made out of, is generally chemically inert, not much reacts

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Speaker 1: with it, and glass is insoluble in in most solvents,

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Speaker 1: so it's not going to be leeching off and contaminating

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Speaker 1: your sample. But this is not true in all cases.

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Speaker 1: For instance, there's a chemical we've talked about on the

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Speaker 1: show before called hydrofluoric acid, the solution of hydrogen fluoride

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Speaker 1: or HF in water. Hydrogen fluoride is known to actually

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Speaker 1: corrode even glass, and there's some pretty good videos of

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Speaker 1: this that you can look up, like the YouTube channel

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Speaker 1: called Periodic Videos has one you can find where they

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Speaker 1: dissolve a glass light bulb in hydrofluoric acid. I think

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Speaker 1: while it's plugged in by the way, at least when

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Speaker 1: when the glass finally does dissolve and break off in

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Speaker 1: the liquid, the the filament inside the light bulb, I

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Speaker 1: recall is like sparking in the solution in a in

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Speaker 1: a very weak and creepy and cursed way. But it's

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Speaker 1: kind of disturbing to see even glass, the ultimate non reactor,

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Speaker 1: just getting sort of cleanly sheared off of the top

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Speaker 1: of a bulb when it's dipped into this this stuff

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Speaker 1: and then falling away and eventually just dissolving into it

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Speaker 1: and becoming a liquid itself. Regular glass, of course, is

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Speaker 1: made of silica sand, which is made of silicon dioxide

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Speaker 1: or s I O two. And when you put glass

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Speaker 1: into hydrogen fluoride into hydrofluoric acid, the hydrogen fluoride breaks

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Speaker 1: the bonds between silicon and oxygen in silica to form

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Speaker 1: silicon fluorine molecules, and the result is the hydrofluoric acid

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Speaker 1: eats right through the solid glass. So here you've got

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Speaker 1: this material, this hydrofluoric acid, that cannot be stored in

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Speaker 1: regular glass containers, asked to be stored in special plastic

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Speaker 1: containers or it might eat right through the bottle and

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Speaker 1: spill everywhere. And this is a jumping off point for

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Speaker 1: today's episode, because we're gonna be looking at the question

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Speaker 1: of what if you were to imagine a material that

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Speaker 1: push the boundaries even farther, if there was a solvent

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Speaker 1: that that could dissolve everything it touched, a sort of

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Speaker 1: universal solvent. Yeah, this reminds me a lot of our

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Speaker 1: discussions in the episode on Hollywood Acid, the the way

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Speaker 1: that acids are sometimes presented in science fiction, especially where

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Speaker 1: you know, you you wound a xenomorph and it's so

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Speaker 1: it's it's acidic blood seems to just burn its way

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Speaker 1: through every floor, you know, all the way through the

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Speaker 1: hull of the ship. Yeah, precisely. So this will be

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Speaker 1: kind of a follow up episode to that, but but

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Speaker 1: going more into the history of alchemy and getting into

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Speaker 1: some of the metaphorical realms of these these high powered solvents. Now,

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Speaker 1: one thing this immediately relates to for me is a

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Speaker 1: thought experiment that I remember encountering from reading some of

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Speaker 1: the American philosopher Daniel Dennett's books, where um Dennett often

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Speaker 1: talks about a metaphor that he uses called universal acid.

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Speaker 1: It's basically exactly what we're describing here, but he doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean it in the pure material sense. Dinn It uses

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Speaker 1: the metaphor of universal acid to describe evolution. Uh And

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Speaker 1: and what he means there is that evolution is a

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Speaker 1: concept that is not just a theory in biology. It's

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Speaker 1: not just that when we discovered evolution by natural selection,

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Speaker 1: we could suddenly explain the diversity of species on Earth.

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Speaker 1: That was true, but it's also a sort of revolutionizing

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Speaker 1: world view that changes everything it touches. And so, to

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Speaker 1: quote from his summary of this idea from his book Intuition,

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Speaker 1: Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, then it writes, universal

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Speaker 1: acid is a liquid so corrosive that it will eat

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Speaker 1: through anything. But what do you keep it in? It

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Speaker 1: dissolves glass bottles and stainless steel canisters as readily as

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Speaker 1: paper bags. What would happen if you somehow came upon

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Speaker 1: or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the whole

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Speaker 1: planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake,

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Speaker 1: after everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid?

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Speaker 1: What would the world look like? Little did I realize

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Speaker 1: that in a few years I would encounter an idea,

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Speaker 1: Darwin's idea bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid. It

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Speaker 1: eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves and

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Speaker 1: it's ake a revolutionized worldview with most of the old

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Speaker 1: landmarks still recognizable but transformed in fundamental ways. Now there's

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Speaker 1: a thing here where the metaphor I think might not

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Speaker 1: be the best one because we get Hollywood acid in

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Speaker 1: our brains, and when we think about Hollywood acid, Hollywood

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Speaker 1: acid doesn't just change, it destroys. Right. You put the

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Speaker 1: Batman in the Hollywood acid, and then the Batman is

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Speaker 1: no more. Yeah, I mean a lot of this though,

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Speaker 1: comes down to what we I mean when you talk

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Speaker 1: about things being destroyed. This is a very human viewpoint.

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Speaker 1: This is a very um, you know, organism based view

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Speaker 1: of things. That the Batman is destroyed in the acid,

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Speaker 1: that the the car is destroyed in the crash, that

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Speaker 1: or that even something is destroyed when it is um

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Speaker 1: you know, when it's just you know, a metal or

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Speaker 1: something and it's melted or it's uh or it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's put into some sort of an acid or

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Speaker 1: a base. But you know, it comes back to the

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Speaker 1: basic principle that matter can neither be uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: ultimately created or destroyed. Everything can only be transferred into

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Speaker 1: different states or broken down into different components. That's a

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Speaker 1: very good point. Yeah, from the sort of like chemical

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Speaker 1: view of the universe, nothing has been destroyed. But I

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Speaker 1: think it'd be fair to say that if you put

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Speaker 1: a batman in a bunch of sulfuric acid and then

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Speaker 1: you liberate all the possible water molecules from him and

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Speaker 1: just leave a bunch of elemental carbon, you could say,

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Speaker 1: in some sense the Batman has been destroyed conceptually at least, yes,

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Speaker 1: But I mean part of that is the difficulty of

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Speaker 1: then recreating a Batman, right because I mean we would

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Speaker 1: have to recreate not only the batman's body, but the

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Speaker 1: batman's psyche, and and you know, they're huge hurdles, not

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Speaker 1: only in terms of of science and our understanding of psychology,

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Speaker 1: but also time. It's a huge time investment to try

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Speaker 1: and reproduce another Batman. Right. So, so I don't know

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Speaker 1: if maybe he could have used a slightly better metaphor

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Speaker 1: for what he means, because what I think he means

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Speaker 1: is not that the concept of evolution destroys everything it

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Speaker 1: touches in culture, but rather it reacts with everything it touches,

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Speaker 1: so it leaves the world we knew before populated with

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Speaker 1: the same questions and beauties and wonders, but each of

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Speaker 1: them sort of now upgraded by a chemical reaction, each

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Speaker 1: one sort of changed somewhat by our new perspective. You

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Speaker 1: have a new scientific way of thinking about everything that

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Speaker 1: you knew before. Yeah, you know, I think this this

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Speaker 1: argument it certainly applies to evolution very strongly, uh, but

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Speaker 1: you know, into evolutionary theory. But it also can apply

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Speaker 1: to even um hypotheses that we've discussed in the show before.

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Speaker 1: You know that take for instance, the bi cameral mind

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Speaker 1: hypothesis by Julian Jaynes. That's an example of of of

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Speaker 1: a very infectious idea that once you have, if you've

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Speaker 1: really gotten into it, you it kind of can change

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Speaker 1: the way you think about so many other things. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then there are even less you know, controversial ideas

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Speaker 1: you can think of where once you have, once you

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Speaker 1: were alert to say a oh, just you know, certain

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Speaker 1: sort of psychological ideas about how, uh you know, how

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Speaker 1: things like trauma work. You know, uh, it changes the

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Speaker 1: way you think about reality because you have a different

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Speaker 1: way of processing what is going on or maybe going

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Speaker 1: on with other people and other groups and throughout history. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the metaphorical sense, I mean, all kinds of ideas

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Speaker 1: I guess can become a mental universal solvent. I would say,

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Speaker 1: in some cases with with more use than in other cases,

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Speaker 1: Like sometimes we just start applying an idea to everything

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Speaker 1: because it's really fun. And in other cases we start

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Speaker 1: applying idea an idea to everything because we get we

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Speaker 1: we at least believe we're getting some kind of analytical

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Speaker 1: use out of it, like it's explaining more than, uh

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Speaker 1: than than other ideas that we had previously. Though, I

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Speaker 1: would say, be cautious of any lens that seems to

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Speaker 1: explain everything, because you know, I've been through phases in

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Speaker 1: my life where I sort of like learned a new

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Speaker 1: analytical lens and then it explained literally everything in the world,

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Speaker 1: and you like, you gotta be careful about those that

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Speaker 1: usually you're probably over applying it at that point. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Like if you if you just apply aliens to everything

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Speaker 1: and then it works, uh, you know, you're probably over

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Speaker 1: applying aliens. That There was actually a sample I hear

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Speaker 1: every now and then in a in a track where

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Speaker 1: someone saying, you know, listing off all these different things

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Speaker 1: and then saying you drop aliens in the middle of

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Speaker 1: this and everything makes sense. It's always true, it's always true.

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Speaker 1: So if there's anything like that, yeah, you could. You

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Speaker 1: can sub anything for aliens if if it feels like

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Speaker 1: it's a perfect fit, that it explains everything that it

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Speaker 1: that it absolutely dissolves all the mysteries of life. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's probably not the universal solvent you're

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Speaker 1: you're really looking for, but it can seem like that.

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Speaker 1: But before we get back into the fully metaphorical space,

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Speaker 1: but what it means to to think about the world

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Speaker 1: in terms of universal solvents. I want to actually consider

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Speaker 1: the the real material possibility of a universal solvent, especially

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Speaker 1: as it has figured into the history of alchemy, because

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Speaker 1: you probably know, even if you only have passing familiarity

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Speaker 1: with alchemy, that one of the endeavors of of alchemy

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Speaker 1: was this search for these sort of dream materials, these

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Speaker 1: holy Grail materials. What an author I'm going to be

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Speaker 1: quoting extensively in this episode, Lawrence Prince you pa calls

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Speaker 1: chemical arcana or I guess singular chemical arcanum. Uh, these

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Speaker 1: objects that are sort of the mcguffin's of alchemy, that

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Speaker 1: alchemists were requesting after. So one of these things might

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Speaker 1: be like the Philosopher's stone that could allow you to

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Speaker 1: transmute base metals into gold in the process known as chrysopoeia,

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Speaker 1: or other ones might be Actually I talked about one

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Speaker 1: in an artifact episode and it did not too long ago. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's an idea that you can find going all the

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Speaker 1: way back to ancient Roman times, and that's the concept

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Speaker 1: of bindable glass. The vitrum flexile or vitram malley abel

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Speaker 1: that you could have glass that could be soft like

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Speaker 1: dough and shaped into into different you know, in whatever

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Speaker 1: form you needed. But another similar arcanum in alchemy was

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Speaker 1: the concept of alcahest a, a substance that would act

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Speaker 1: as a universal solvent that could break down anything. Now,

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Speaker 1: discussing alchemy is always a little bit difficult because alchemy

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Speaker 1: is somewhat controversially defined, like different people try to insist

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Speaker 1: on different historical understandings of exactly what alchemy was. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you can't say it's a it's the general output of

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Speaker 1: a group of certain scholars who, you know, we're kind

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Speaker 1: of secretive about their beliefs, and we're working with materials

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Speaker 1: in some way. I mean, it's a kind of slippery concept.

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Speaker 1: In English, the term has been used to refer to

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Speaker 1: a huge range of beliefs and behaviors, with special emphasis

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Speaker 1: on things done that that sound in some way related

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Speaker 1: to sorcery, the hermetic, and the occult, and these associations

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Speaker 1: are absolutely not without foundation. Like that they much of

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Speaker 1: alchemy does have a cult and and and supernatural connections.

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Speaker 1: But another way to understand alchemy, for the purpose of

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Speaker 1: today's discussion at least, is that it is sort of

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Speaker 1: the proto scientific study of the dynamics of matter, particularly

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Speaker 1: concerned with transforming one type of matter into another, or

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Speaker 1: of isolating the constituents of a material, refining that material,

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Speaker 1: or enhancing its alleged properties, many of which were perceived

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Speaker 1: to be medicinal properties. I know a lot of people

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Speaker 1: in the modern era when they think of alchemy, they

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Speaker 1: think about people trying to turn lead into gold, and

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Speaker 1: and then that was a preoccupation of some people in

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Speaker 1: the world of alchemy. But also a huge part of

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Speaker 1: alchemy was a quest for medicine. Yeah. I guess to

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Speaker 1: two points to make here. One is that we do

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Speaker 1: often think of that when we think of alchemy, we

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Speaker 1: may think of a very Western context and we think

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Speaker 1: of people who look like wizards, you know, or even

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Speaker 1: specifically someone who looks like John d or Merlin, Uh,

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Speaker 1: toying around with science stuff. You know. Alchemy is science

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Speaker 1: stuff what wizards do. Uh. But it is also important

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Speaker 1: to note that that alchemy and things that we think

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Speaker 1: of in English and in the end in the Western

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Speaker 1: world as alchemy, you also find that in the in

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Speaker 1: the Arabic world, you find it in in ancient India,

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Speaker 1: you find it in ancient China. Uh. You know. So

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Speaker 1: alchemy can very broadly speaking, be seen as kind of

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Speaker 1: a global effort of learned individuals trying to learn more

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Speaker 1: about the world. UM. I think one way to think

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Speaker 1: of it too is think about geographic discovery. You know,

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Speaker 1: people setting out on on voyages trying to find distant

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Speaker 1: lands that they know to exist or that they have

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Speaker 1: heard to exist. Sometimes those lands do not exist at all.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes they are you know, islands of the imagination. But

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Speaker 1: in the quest to find those play pass, they find

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Speaker 1: real places, and ultimately this leads up to a a

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Speaker 1: more accurate and more refined understanding of the world. Own

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Speaker 1: interesting parallel between alchemy and your geography example, during ages

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Speaker 1: of exploration, where people were trying to get away from

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Speaker 1: their home country and figure out what else was out

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Speaker 1: there that they could find. They're going to be different

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Speaker 1: levels of perspicacity and reporting, you know, because like whatever

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Speaker 1: you've discovered, you may think of this as, oh, this

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Speaker 1: is knowledge I want to share with the world, but

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Speaker 1: you may also very much think of it as like

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Speaker 1: kind of a trade secret or a personal you know,

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Speaker 1: this is something I've discovered for me and my my,

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Speaker 1: my buddies, and we need to keep this secret and

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Speaker 1: not let everybody else get in there before we've had

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Speaker 1: a good go at it. Yeah, and then you have

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Speaker 1: the pesky situation of discovering the real but keeping it

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Speaker 1: secret or only holding on to it because of your

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Speaker 1: quest for the unreal. And we've touched on this before

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Speaker 1: on the show before um when we were talking about

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Speaker 1: urine at point Urine's role in alchemy, and uh, I

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Speaker 1: forget that the exact chemical episode who were discussing this,

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Speaker 1: But the history of alchemy is full of such scenarios,

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Speaker 1: you know. I was reading actually a Washington Post article

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Speaker 1: from January eighteen by Ben Guarino that interviews Lawrence Princeipe,

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Speaker 1: one of the one of the authors who's an expert

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Speaker 1: on alchemy that we're gonna be talking about in this episode.

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Speaker 1: And this article ends up talking a lot about p

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Speaker 1: And there was one part I found very funny. It's

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Speaker 1: talking about how in Prince ships lab he will try

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Speaker 1: to recreate some some old alchemy experiments as they are

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Speaker 1: described from these these texts, and so the artifacts of

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Speaker 1: these experiments are all all around his lab. And and

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Speaker 1: the article here describes on the counter sits a large

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Speaker 1: jar labeled flim of acidified urine. More than one alchemical

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Speaker 1: recipe calls for human p. Prince Ship said. An old

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Speaker 1: Arabic text used the phrase the secret is within you,

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Speaker 1: probably meaning well, reader, you go figure it out, and

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Speaker 1: then it quotes Prince Bay saying, but some people took

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Speaker 1: that more literally, so they ended up using vast amounts

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Speaker 1: of urine. Oh that's wonderful. Yeah, and and that now

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Speaker 1: that they've had a second to reflect. It was our

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Speaker 1: our invention episode or episodes on the match stick. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're we're talking. I can't read. So we talked about

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Speaker 1: multiple people who used urine. At least one of the

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Speaker 1: main people who was big into two urine experiments. Was

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Speaker 1: was the seventeenth century alchemist Hinnig Brund who who really

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Speaker 1: specifically wanted urine from beer drinkers. So it was like,

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Speaker 1: go to the bars, get the drunks to p in

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Speaker 1: a bucket, and I will create a huge, a gigantic

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Speaker 1: vat of beer drinker p. Yes, yes it was brand

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Speaker 1: He was in search of the philosopher's stone um, but

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Speaker 1: in doing so made these discoveries that ultimately tied into

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Speaker 1: our understanding of a phosphorus and matches and you know,

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Speaker 1: or matches being the one of the the actual real

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Speaker 1: world and world inventions to come out of this quest

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Speaker 1: for the fantastic. But it's so funny also about like

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Speaker 1: misinterpreting the line the secret is within you two mean

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Speaker 1: like literally in your bladder, because that that seems just

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Speaker 1: just perfect for the world of alchemy, because there was

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Speaker 1: a lot of sort of metaphors and secret keeping, kind

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Speaker 1: of coded language. A Prince Pay talks in in one

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Speaker 1: interview I was watching about how you know, in some

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Speaker 1: alchemical texts, the author will not say the conventional names

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Speaker 1: of the chemicals that he's talking about. He might instead

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Speaker 1: of saying nitric acid. He will say the red dragon,

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Speaker 1: and instead of saying, um, you know, like add nitric

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Speaker 1: acid to this solution, he would say something like allow

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Speaker 1: the red dragon to consume the white eagle or something. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of you have to like dig

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Speaker 1: through and figure out what all of these code words

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Speaker 1: refer to, not in every case, but in many. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So it it makes looking back on some of these

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Speaker 1: recipes and ideas oftentimes confusing because like I'm reminded of

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Speaker 1: of the recipe that I looked at once for the

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Speaker 1: creation of a homunculous and it has this kind of

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Speaker 1: coded language in it. So sometimes it's hard to determine,

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Speaker 1: you know, how much of what you're looking at is

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Speaker 1: just abject occultism and in sorcery, and how much is

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Speaker 1: coded material referring to something more closely related to to

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Speaker 1: the world of chemistry and reality. Oh right, So like

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Speaker 1: is it actually asking for like a bat swing or

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Speaker 1: is it or is that a code for like saltpeter

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Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, And I guess you can you can

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Speaker 1: look at similar situations throughout our you know, the world

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Speaker 1: of language and spirituality and all. But um, I guess

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Speaker 1: one of the things to drive home with with alchemy

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Speaker 1: is that, yes, we're talking about ultimately a proto scientific sphere. Uh. One.

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Speaker 1: You know, this is one though, in which scientific considerations

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Speaker 1: are either inherently mingled with philosophic and supernatural ideas, or

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Speaker 1: at the very least are heavily susceptible to flowing into

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Speaker 1: those subjects. And as the author um Mercia Eliade put

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Speaker 1: it in the Forge and the Crucible quote, alchemy posed

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Speaker 1: as a sacred science, whereas chemistry came into its own

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Speaker 1: when substances had shed their sacred attributes. Oh that's interesting,

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, One thing I do want to talk

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Speaker 1: about as we go on is the ways that different

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Speaker 1: uh practitioners of the alchemy period didn't They weren't just

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Speaker 1: looking for chemical formulas, but they really thought chemicals meant something. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And you you can imagine too where this gets. You know,

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Speaker 1: we can't look at something without working without you know,

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Speaker 1: without our brain beginning to ponder over the possible metaphors there.

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Speaker 1: You know, how does this relate to me? Um? And

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Speaker 1: maybe we're we get we're a little further from that now,

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Speaker 1: but you know, we have to sort of put ourselves

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Speaker 1: in the mindset of of older Uh, you know, experimentors.

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Speaker 1: And uh, this is where I want to bring up

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Speaker 1: some of the some of the thoughts that Terence McKenna

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Speaker 1: brought to the table concerning alchemy. Um and and I

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Speaker 1: think he I think he made he made some good,

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Speaker 1: good points on the topic. He gave a series of

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Speaker 1: lectures on alchemy in the late nineties um and touched

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Speaker 1: on this. And I want to read a quote from

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Speaker 1: it from a transcription. In this he is citing Iliade,

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Speaker 1: but also putting his own spin on things. Quote. The

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Speaker 1: shaman is the brother of the smith. The smith is

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Speaker 1: the metallurgist, the worker in metals. And this is where

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Speaker 1: alchemy has its roots. We who take this for granted,

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Speaker 1: have no idea how mysterious and powerful this seemed to

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Speaker 1: ancient people, and in fact, it would seem so to

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Speaker 1: us if we had anything to do with it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: how many of us are welders or casters of metal.

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Speaker 1: It's a magical process to take, for instance, cinnabar, a

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Speaker 1: red soft ore, and by the mere act of heating

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Speaker 1: it in a furnace, it will sweat liquid mercury onto

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Speaker 1: its surface. We have unconsciously imbibed the ontology of science,

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Speaker 1: where we have mind firmly separated it out from the world.

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Speaker 1: We take this for granted. It's effortless because it is

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Speaker 1: the ambiance of the civilization that we've been born into.

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Speaker 1: But in an earlier age, some writers would say, a

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Speaker 1: more naive age. But I wonder about that mind and

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Speaker 1: matter were seen to be alloyed together throughout nature, so

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Speaker 1: that the sweating of mercury out of cinnabar is not

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Speaker 1: a material process. It is a process in which the

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Speaker 1: mind and the observations of the metal worker maintain an

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Speaker 1: important role. Well, I don't know what to think about

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Speaker 1: that claim about the idea the role of the mind

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Speaker 1: in the transformations, but I think he's absolutely right that,

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Speaker 1: Like you know, it's one of the frustrations of the

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Speaker 1: modern world is that we rely so on so much

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Speaker 1: um science and technology in the background of our lives

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Speaker 1: that we can lose sight of the sheer wonder that

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Speaker 1: that is on, you know, visible if you're actually watching

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Speaker 1: these processes unfold in firsthand. Yeah, I mean, we talked

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Speaker 1: about technological metaphors all the time on the show. How

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Speaker 1: how often we think about our own cognition in terms

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Speaker 1: of computers and cameras and digital recordings and so forth,

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Speaker 1: uh and photoshop, etcetera. You know, and and these can

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Speaker 1: all be useful, but they can also distort and create

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Speaker 1: a a distorted version of of what's actually going on

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Speaker 1: inside the mind or outside of it. And yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think you know, if you were to put yourself in

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Speaker 1: someone who day in and day out, was not using

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Speaker 1: an iPhone, was not using a PC or a GO

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Speaker 1: or a Mac or whatever, but was instead, uh working

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Speaker 1: with the base materials and with metals and chemicals and

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out their properties. Like this would be

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Speaker 1: the primary way that they would also think about the mind.

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Speaker 1: I mean it, it makes perfect sense to me, Like

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Speaker 1: these would be there, This would be their telephone, their television,

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Speaker 1: their computer. These would be the ways that they might

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Speaker 1: then self reflect. Well, yeah, I mean it's it's apparent

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Speaker 1: that witnessing chemical reactions suggested to people some kind of deep,

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Speaker 1: underlying spiritual reality that was like more than just an

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Speaker 1: idea about like different types of atoms and how they

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Speaker 1: can fit together, but suggested like like big truth so

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Speaker 1: that applied to everything. You know, that that alchemy could

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Speaker 1: in its own way become a one of these metaphorical

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Speaker 1: universal solvents, that it explains everything about about God and

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Speaker 1: the universe and humankind in our minds. Now, since I

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Speaker 1: did mention McKenna, one might easily say, well, for Terence McKenna,

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Speaker 1: surely mushrooms, psychedelics were kind of the universal solvent. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think I can certainly that can you can certainly

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Speaker 1: make a case for that, especially within certain works of

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Speaker 1: his you know, the Food of the Gods, etcetera. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of a case where you can say, oh,

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Speaker 1: you drop mushrooms in the middle of this and everything

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Speaker 1: makes sense. Um. Oh, did he suggest that Paracelsus took mushrooms? Uh? No,

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Speaker 1: Actually he in these lectures, he he really took quite

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Speaker 1: the opposite approach. And that's why I want to share

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Speaker 1: one more, uh snippet from from this lengthy lecture series,

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Speaker 1: which by the way, you can find online um in

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Speaker 1: several places, either in you know, audio form or transcribed.

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Speaker 1: But this is what he had to say. Quote. I

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Speaker 1: will not claim and do not in fact think it

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Speaker 1: is so that there was anything overtly psychedelic in the

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Speaker 1: sense of pharmacologically based about alchemy. When we look back

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Speaker 1: through the alchemical literature, there's very little evidence that it

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Speaker 1: was far pharmacologically driven. Only when you get to the

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Speaker 1: very last adamirations of the out of the alchemical impulse

429
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: in someone like Paracelsus, do you get use of opium.

430
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:52,800
Speaker 1: It is interesting that the great drugs of modern society

431
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,400
Speaker 1: were accidentally discovered by alchemist in their research distilled alcohol

432
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: as a product of alchemical work, and as I mentioned,

433
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:03,439
Speaker 1: opium was very heavily used. Um of the Paracelsian school.

434
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: But what they possessed was an ability to liquefy their

435
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: mental categories and then to project the contents of the

436
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 1: mind onto these processes and read them back. Now, um,

437
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: real quick, uh, Paracelsus. We'll we'll get back to Paracelsus

438
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:19,360
Speaker 1: in a bit. But this was an individual of four

439
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:24,399
Speaker 1: or four through fifteen forty one, a Swiss physician and

440
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,119
Speaker 1: alchemist of the German Renaissance, and he made a number

441
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:29,919
Speaker 1: of contributions to modern medical science. And he's come up

442
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: before on the show, I think in our episodes on

443
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:36,719
Speaker 1: the Trident, on dangerous foods, on Frankenstein, and on blood drinking,

444
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:38,680
Speaker 1: which I guess are all areas where you might well

445
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: imagine that the realms of chemistry and UH and alchemy

446
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: might come together to some degree. Yeah, Paracelsus is considered

447
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:51,440
Speaker 1: one of the sort of granddaddy's of alchemy. Um. Paracelsis

448
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: is his nickname. By the way, it's worth mentioning his

449
00:25:54,400 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 1: real name, which was Philippus Areolas, the Ephrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

450
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: I like that Bombastus. Yeah, I think there's some question

451
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:09,640
Speaker 1: about whether the word bombastic comes from his name because

452
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,359
Speaker 1: he he would throw down like Paracelsis would get into it.

453
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to read a a a passage

454
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: from a book that that I'm going to be referring

455
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: to for the rest of the episode. That is by

456
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: Lawrence in Prince Shop called The Secrets of Alchemy that

457
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 1: was published in by the University of Chicago Press. Prince

458
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: HP is professor at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in the

459
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: history of science and technology, and he's written a ton

460
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: about alchemy and and its role in the development of science.

461
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 1: But um, there's a passage from his book where he

462
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: briefly introduces the figure of Paracelsus, and he does it

463
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: like this. He says Paracelsis spent much of his life,

464
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: wandering from town to town, generally stirring up trouble wherever

465
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,679
Speaker 1: he went with his iconoclastic and quick tempered ways. It

466
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: has been claimed erroneously that the word bombastic in the

467
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 1: sense of pompous beach derives from his name. Okay, so

468
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: that was he's saying. No, that is not where it

469
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 1: comes from. But I have encountered that erroneous claim. Bridge

470
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:12,360
Speaker 1: Bay goes On. Paracelsis is best known as a vociferous

471
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: critic of traditional medicine. His writings, frequently imitated in style

472
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:21,360
Speaker 1: by later followers, are filled with vitriolic and sarcastic condemnations

473
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: of physicians, apothecaries in the entire medical establishment. It is

474
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 1: reported that he publicly burned the medical writings of Ibben Sinah,

475
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 1: standard texts for medical education at the time, as a

476
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:38,200
Speaker 1: sign of his contempt. Paracelsis's other provocative habits included lecturing

477
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: for the short time he gave medical lectures in Basle

478
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:44,399
Speaker 1: and writing in his native Swiss German rather than Latin,

479
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: and promoting the use of German medicinal plants over more

480
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:51,679
Speaker 1: established classical Mediterranean ones. He was a strong advocate of

481
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: alchimia but only as one of the pillars of medicine,

482
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 1: that is to say, for its ability to prepare pharmaceuticals

483
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: and to explain body the functions. He showed no interest

484
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: in chrisopoeia and occasionally wrote contemptuously of it. And again,

485
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: chrisopoeia is the is the attempt to transmute base metals

486
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:14,680
Speaker 1: into gold. It's interesting, all these are our attributes of

487
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: someone who very much wanted to dissolve the rigidity of

488
00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: the of of the establishment. You know, you could you

489
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: could look at them acting as a kind of trying

490
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: to act as a kind of universal solvent within their

491
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: own culture. Yeah, And I guess that should bring us

492
00:28:35,560 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: to the concept of the universal solvent itself, because Paracelsus

493
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 1: wrote of something called alcohest, but Paracelsis meant something different

494
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 1: by it. Paracelsis wrote of alcohest as a type of

495
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: medicine for treating a bad liver. But in the wake

496
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: of Paracelsis, some later alchemists would take the idea of

497
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: alcohest as a universal solvent and really run with it.

498
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 1: I remember, again, as I said earlier, alchemy is often

499
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: concerned with the search for these particular chemical arcana in

500
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 1: princeps terms. So again, this might be a method for

501
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: transmuting base metals into gold doing the process of chrysopoeia. Uh.

502
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: It turns out that this is despite the fact that

503
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 1: some people are still trying to do this today. This

504
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: is not really possible by conventional chemical means. Like gold

505
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: as as we have it here on Earth is forged.

506
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: It's it's a product of nucleosynthesis that occurs in some

507
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: of the most violent phenomena in the universe, like neutron

508
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 1: star collisions or exploding you know, stars at the end

509
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: of their lifespan. Uh. Like, you can't turn lead into gold.

510
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: That is just not a human power, I guess, unless

511
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 1: you're talking maybe about I don't know, like like tiny

512
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: amounts of it in particle colliders or something, you know,

513
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: atomic experiments that accelerate protons to extremely high speeds and

514
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: collide with things. And even in that case, I'm not sure.

515
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: I just can't rule it out there by conventional chemical means,

516
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: if you're talking about significant amounts of matter, you cannot

517
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: turn base metals into gold. That would require rearranging the

518
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: nucleus of an atom, which we just don't have the

519
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: power to do right, and maybe if you were John

520
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: d and you could actually um, you know, if you

521
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: were actually going to capture or utilize an angel and

522
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 1: you could somehow tap into their powers. Uh, they're they're

523
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:25,680
Speaker 1: just like base energy level. Then okay, maybe maybe it

524
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: would be possible, but but not without any like additional

525
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: supernatural add ons to the chemical understanding that we have. Right,

526
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 1: and so, while the transmutation of base metals like lead

527
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: into gold is probably the best known quest of alchemy,

528
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: Prince Bay writes a lot about how alchemy is so

529
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: much bigger than that it. Alchemy was not just the

530
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: greedy gold slog of people who had you know, Mida's brain,

531
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: uh like, it was generally the study of chemical change.

532
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: And the study of chemical change is a really important

533
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 1: and fascinating subject that you understand, sort of unlocks all

534
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,560
Speaker 1: of the other physical sciences. I already mentioned the idea

535
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: of of recipes for bendable glass. I think this is

536
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: a much more obscure one, but I just bring it

537
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: up because I did an episode on it. A big

538
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 1: part of alchemy, as we've already mentioned, was concerned with

539
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 1: refining and improving medicines. But of course another holy grail

540
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: of alchemy was the universal solvent alcohest. And so the

541
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: place where alcohest really comes into the picture is in

542
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 1: the work of the influential Flemish chemist and physician Jean

543
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: Baptista van Helmont, who lived fifteen seventy nine to sixteen

544
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: forty four uh, and of van Helmont is responsible for

545
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: has more of a legacy than you might expect. Van

546
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: Helmont is responsible for coining the English word gas. Uh.

547
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: He was one of the first people, maybe the first

548
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,479
Speaker 1: to identify a gas other than general air, when he

549
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: differentiated carbon dioxide as a distinct form of matt from

550
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: the rest of the gas in the atmosphere. Apparently the

551
00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: word gas that he coined comes from the Greek word chaos. Now,

552
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 1: Prince Bay writes that Van Helmont is the is the

553
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: origin of this search for alcohest as the as the

554
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 1: universal solvent, but notes that Paracelsus, as I already said,

555
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: had used the word alcohest previously, and this was again

556
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: for a very special medicine for the liver. But Van

557
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: Helmont would take that word alcohest and start using it

558
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 1: to describe a hypothetical substance that would be able to

559
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: dissolve any other substance the universal solvent, and apparently a

560
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: Paracelsus had a similar idea for a universal solvent that

561
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,240
Speaker 1: would have been a material called circulated salt or cell

562
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 1: circulatum um. But but for van Helmont, alcohest became not

563
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: just something that you wanted to be able to make,

564
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: but something that was fundamental in understanding the very nature

565
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 1: of matter. Because Van Helmont held a fascinating and mostly

566
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: wrong but maybe not entirely wrong, at least sort of

567
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: in the direction of being right in some interesting ways

568
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 1: a view of matter that had these qualities, and it

569
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: brought in ideas from medicine and theology and previous studies

570
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: of chemicals. But the idea was that Van Helmont believed,

571
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: basically everything is made of water, that water is quote

572
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: the basic material substratum of all substances. You drop water

573
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 1: in the middle of this and everything makes sense very good. Um.

574
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 1: So this was a departure from previous ideas about the

575
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: the constituents of matter. Again, Paracelsus had written about something

576
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: called the Tria prima, which means the three primary things,

577
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: and Paracelsus he did not originate this idea fully either,

578
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,840
Speaker 1: he was building upon the pre existing chemical knowledge, mostly

579
00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: passed down from Arabic scholars who had written that some

580
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: metals and minerals could really be reduced to fundamental constituents,

581
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 1: which were mercury and sulfur. Uh. This was not correct,

582
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: but it did show a tendency of thinking that was

583
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 1: scientifically useful, which was the idea that matter could be

584
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:21,520
Speaker 1: decomposed into its constituent parts, different chemical parts that would

585
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: come together to make molecules of familiar substances, which is

586
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: very true and the basis of what would become the

587
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 1: real science of chemistry. And so Paracelsus is picking up

588
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 1: on this idea. Uh. And he concluded that it was

589
00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: not just that some metals and minerals were could be

590
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: broken down into mercury and sulfur. He concluded that basically

591
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 1: all material could be broken down into three things mercury, sulfur,

592
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: and salt. Again factually wrong, but a a but trending

593
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,959
Speaker 1: in a useful direction in terms of ways of thinking

594
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:58,319
Speaker 1: about matter. Yeah, kind of coming back into what we're

595
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 1: talking about with destruction, Like, if you were to destroy anything,

596
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 1: what would remain? What are the things that make up

597
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: the whole? Sure? Uh, and I actually wanted to go

598
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: into a brief digression on paracelsus is mingling of theological, metaphysical,

599
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 1: and protoscientific thinking from a paragraph in prince Ship base

600
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 1: book that that I found really interesting. So in writing

601
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: about Paracelsus is idea of the Tria prima, prince ship

602
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: A writes quote. These three chemical principles provided a terrestrial

603
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:32,520
Speaker 1: material trinity that reflected the celestial immaterial trinity as well

604
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: as the human triune nature of body, soul, and spirit. Further,

605
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: Paracelsus endeavored to generate an entire world system embracing the

606
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: whole of theology and natural philosophy as an alternative to

607
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:50,200
Speaker 1: and he no doubt hoped ultimately a substitute for prevailing

608
00:35:50,239 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 1: contemporaneous systems. For him, chemical processes provided the fundamental model

609
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: for explaining natural processes in the physical universe as well

610
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 1: as with the human body. For example, the cycle of

611
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:06,759
Speaker 1: rain through sea, air, and land was for Paracelsis a

612
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: great cosmic distillation. The formation of minerals underground, the growth

613
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: of plants, the generation of life forms, as well as

614
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: the bodily functions of digestion, nutrition, respiration, and excretion, where

615
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: for him inherently chemical processes, God himself is the master chemist.

616
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: His creation of an ordered world out of primordial chaos

617
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 1: was akin to the chemist's extraction, purification, and elaboration of

618
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 1: common materials into chemical products, and his final judgment of

619
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 1: the world by fire, like a chemist using fire to

620
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 1: purge impurities from precious metals. Paracelsis system has been called

621
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: a chemical world view, and it proved remarkably influential in

622
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: succeeding generations. So for Paracelsis, not only did he inspire

623
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 1: the later search for a literal universal solvent that we're

624
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about, but it seems very much again

625
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: in the metaphorical, in the mind space, alchemy was his

626
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: universal solvent. It it explained everything. I remember. Van Helmont

627
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:13,839
Speaker 1: would go on to break with Paracelsus in believing that

628
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:18,800
Speaker 1: matter could be reduced beyond the tria prima ultimately always

629
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:21,399
Speaker 1: down to what it was made of at bottom, which

630
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,719
Speaker 1: was water. So why would van Helmont think that ultimately

631
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 1: everything was made of water? Well, his reasoning was partly theological.

632
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: Part of it was the primacy of water in the

633
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,799
Speaker 1: genesis account of creation. Uh and this also calls to

634
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: mind how in the recent Nile episode we discussed the

635
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: prominence of water not just in the Biblical creation story,

636
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: but as probably at least in the estimation of the

637
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 1: scholar David Leming, the single most common theme in creation

638
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 1: narratives around the world, if you like, compare all of

639
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 1: the world's religions creation myths. He says, the thing that

640
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 1: is in the most of them is water. You know,

641
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: primordial cosmic oceans. Yeah. Yeah. And then oftentimes, like we

642
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:06,920
Speaker 1: discussed in that episode, we even would think of the

643
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:10,839
Speaker 1: cosmos as ocean. Uh so, I mean you would if

644
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: it's not in the beginning there's some void or some

645
00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 1: just empty space of darkness, which I guess to a

646
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 1: large point, you could be a large part point you

647
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: could say is derived from our modern popular understanding of

648
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 1: of what outer space is. They've never been to space,

649
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: they didn't know what space was. Yeah, the the vast

650
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: emptiness was the ocean. That was the that was the

651
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: vast mystery, the vast primordial body. But it wasn't just

652
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: these theological influences. Van Helmont also based this belief in

653
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: the material primacy of water on physical experiments that he

654
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: conducted in the lab. So here's an example, as described

655
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: by Prince you Pay. In Van Helmont's most famous experiment,

656
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: he planted a willow tree sapling that he had weighed beforehand.

657
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,839
Speaker 1: The willow tree was five pounds, and he planted it

658
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,520
Speaker 1: a container with two hundred pounds of soil. Then he

659
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: watered the tree for five years, and at the end

660
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: of five years the tree had grown from five pounds

661
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty nine pounds. It had gained about

662
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: thirty three or thirty four times its original weight. But

663
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: he also measured the soil that the tree had been

664
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,600
Speaker 1: planted in, and he discovered that the soil weighed almost

665
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:28,360
Speaker 1: exactly the same as it did when he planted it. Thus,

666
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:33,720
Speaker 1: Van Helmont concluded that water alone had been transformed into

667
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: all of the substances that make up the tree, the wood,

668
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 1: the leaves. This is all just water that has been

669
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 1: somehow transformed into higher forms of water, more solid forms

670
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: of water. And in a way he was he was

671
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,720
Speaker 1: partially correct. I mean, much of the bodies of living

672
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:56,600
Speaker 1: organisms is made of water. Uh. But also without understanding

673
00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: the science of photosynthesis, Van Helmont didn't realize that the

674
00:39:59,719 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: car been content of the tree which is the bulk

675
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: of its non water weight, was actually from carbon dioxide

676
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: from the air, which is absorbed from the atmosphere by

677
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: the leaves, and then a chemical reaction powered by energy

678
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: from the sunlight breaks apart the CEO two so that

679
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: it can be used to make these carbon molecules that

680
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 1: the tree needs to make its body. Again, We've talked

681
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:23,479
Speaker 1: about this on the show a million times, but it's

682
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:26,320
Speaker 1: one of the most astounding facts that you know, trees

683
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: are made out of air. But without this knowledge of

684
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: photochemistry and botany, it was somewhat reasonable for for Van

685
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: Helmont to believe that what had gone into the tree

686
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:40,280
Speaker 1: was simply what he had put into it, which was water.

687
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 1: That's the only thing he'd added to it. So how

688
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:46,400
Speaker 1: did this system of this this protean water based matter

689
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: work well to read a section from from Prince Pay

690
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:54,280
Speaker 1: describing Van Helmont's thinking quote, The various transformations of water,

691
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 1: he argued, are managed by semina or seeds capable of

692
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:04,080
Speaker 1: organizing water into other substances. Most materials can be turned

693
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:08,839
Speaker 1: back into primordial water through heating and cold, thus establishing

694
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:13,839
Speaker 1: a continuous cycle of creation and destruction. Fire destroys substances

695
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: by turning them into gas again, a word Van Helmont

696
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 1: coined from chaos. A non condensable substance more subtle than

697
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: any vapor. Gas rises to the upper parts of the atmosphere,

698
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:30,280
Speaker 1: where exposed to extreme cold, it returns to elemental water

699
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:34,760
Speaker 1: that falls with the rain. The alcohest performs this return

700
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 1: to water more quickly and usefully, so it base everything

701
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 1: is made of water, and we're just seeing different forms

702
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 1: of water. And if you get something really hot in

703
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:49,359
Speaker 1: a fire, it will transform. It will transform not only

704
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,760
Speaker 1: into liquid water, but sort of beyond this point into

705
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,919
Speaker 1: a gas that floats up into the atmosphere. Then when

706
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: it's up in the atmosphere, it cools down, turns back

707
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: into liquid water falls as rain. So it's sort of

708
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: water to water, wet to wet worldview. And then the

709
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: alcohest comes in as a universal solvent because it seems

710
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 1: to serve the function of reducing all matter back down

711
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,560
Speaker 1: to the state of liquid water without degrading it in

712
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: the process. So, according to Van Helmont, if you were

713
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: to heat a substance mingled with alcohest, it will first

714
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: be reduced to its proximate ingredients. These would be sort

715
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 1: of the middle constituents. Right before you get all the

716
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 1: way to water, it will break down into some other

717
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,400
Speaker 1: things first, and these would be comparable to Paracelsis idea

718
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: of the Tria prima. But then further heating with alcohest

719
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:44,440
Speaker 1: will reduce even these proximate ingredients to the ultimate base material,

720
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,879
Speaker 1: which is water. So from Van Helmont's point of view,

721
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 1: the alcohest was was not a chemical arcanum because it

722
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:53,839
Speaker 1: would turn your lead into gold and make you rich.

723
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: It was actually desirable as the ultimate research tool. Alcohest

724
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 1: would have been the ultimate implement for studying what every

725
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:07,439
Speaker 1: type of matter is made of. And there's a there's

726
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,439
Speaker 1: a sentence from Van Helmont that's quoted in print based

727
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,520
Speaker 1: book where he writes, there is no more certain genus

728
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: of acquiring knowledge than when one knows what is contained

729
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: in a thing and how much of it there is.

730
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 1: So how would you do this? Well? Van Helmont thought

731
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 1: that if you could stop the reaction between alcohest and

732
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: the material in question at just the right time, and

733
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: then distill the alcohest to remove it, you would be

734
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: left with what was called the first essence or the

735
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: ends prem um. And this ends primum would be there

736
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: in the container left behind as a kind of crystalline salt.

737
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 1: And so you could make better medicines this way, for instance,

738
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: because the this ins prem um would have the medicinal

739
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: powers of whatever substance that you had been working on,

740
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: but it would remove all of the toxic or noxious

741
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,480
Speaker 1: uh sort of side effects and impure at ease that

742
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: could be caused by the original medicinal thing. And thus,

743
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: in Van Helmont's view, the alcohest was a tool for research.

744
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: It was a tool for what was called kimi atria,

745
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:14,360
Speaker 1: or the development of medicines through chemistry. Now Van Helmont

746
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 1: claimed that he had been able to make alcahest. He's like,

747
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: I figured it out, I know how to do it.

748
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 1: I can prepare it. But he never revealed his secret recipe,

749
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:27,439
Speaker 1: and many other scholars struggled in vain to discover Van

750
00:44:27,480 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 1: Helmont's formula for the universal solvent. Some at various points

751
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: believed they had found it. For example, Princepa sites a

752
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 1: laboratory notebook entry by the seventeenth century Colonial American alchemist

753
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: George Starkey, who wrote quote at Bristol on twentieth March

754
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty six. God revealed to me the whole secret

755
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: of the liquor alcohest let. Eternal blessing, honor and glory

756
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:54,280
Speaker 1: be to him. So I'm not sure exactly what he discovered,

757
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 1: but I do not think it was a real universal solvent.

758
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 1: I like that it's described as the liquor alcohest I

759
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 1: imagine if alcohoest was a liquor, would it be impossible

760
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: to make a cocktail with it? Would it always like

761
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 1: break the cocktail back down into its uh it's primary ingredients.

762
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 1: I mean you probably wouldn't want to drink it. Yeah,

763
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:15,319
Speaker 1: if you would just melt, you just become water. Right,

764
00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be water. It's the ultimate in

765
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 1: refreshment though. Right, that's good marketing. Now. I was looking

766
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 1: at another book by Lawrence prince pay about alchemy called

767
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: The Transmutations of Chemistry, And this is chemistry spelled with

768
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,759
Speaker 1: a an intentionally archaic spelling c h y M I

769
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,239
Speaker 1: S t r y, which is uh to distinguish it

770
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:40,840
Speaker 1: from the modern science of chemistry. Uh. This was published

771
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: in by University of Chicago Press, and in this case

772
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: Prince pa is discussing the efforts of alchemists like Jan

773
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: von Helmont to perform chemical analysis of materials such as

774
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: the bodies of plants, where the idea was, yeah, you

775
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:59,760
Speaker 1: can use fire to break materials down into their constituent parts.

776
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 1: But the problem is that fire, while it will decompose

777
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: the materials into the approximate constituents, fire was deceitful as

778
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: it would corrupt to those constituents in the process. And

779
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,760
Speaker 1: of course the solution was alcahost, which could break things

780
00:46:14,800 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: down without corrupting them in the process. And there's a

781
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:22,160
Speaker 1: part here where alcohost is referred to as better than fire.

782
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,840
Speaker 1: It is the fire of Gehenna, which that's a Biblical metaphor.

783
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: It's a metaphor for ignominious destruction that is used in

784
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:34,399
Speaker 1: the Bible. That is often a little little Bible interpretation note,

785
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: often translated into English Bibles as hell. Uh. The previous

786
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: show guest bart Erman, who's a secular Bible historian. He

787
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: explains that this translation is actually really misleading. It's actually

788
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: reading later theology about the afterlife into the original text. Uh.

789
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: And he argues that Gehenna in the original text is

790
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: not supposed to refer to a place of eternal suffering

791
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 1: after life. But in fact it was a real place.

792
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 1: It is basically a desolate valley that was um It

793
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: was historically associated with human sacrifice. And so, according to Irman,

794
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: being sent to Gehenna, as is often discussed in the

795
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 1: New Testament, has nothing to do with an afterlife of

796
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: eternal suffering, but rather as a sort of it's a

797
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:22,959
Speaker 1: squalid and unceremonious annihilation. It's sort of equivalent to telling

798
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,479
Speaker 1: somebody that they're going to die and be thrown into

799
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: a garbage dumpy. Not nice either way, but but somewhat

800
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,320
Speaker 1: different than the idea of everlasting suffering in Hell. Yeah.

801
00:47:33,640 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 1: So ultimately, if you're putting a garbage dump, and I

802
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: guess in the right conditions, you are going to break

803
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: down and become a part of the natural world again,

804
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: get to become your tria prima and then and then water,

805
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. But in Gehenna it sounds like it

806
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:52,359
Speaker 1: would have been It wouldn't be like a modern garbage dump.

807
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 1: That would be a place where you break down or

808
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:58,240
Speaker 1: probably partially consumed by scavenging beasts that you know, ultimately

809
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: you know pretty could anyway that that was just a

810
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 1: Bible nerd side note. So it probably doesn't figure in

811
00:48:06,520 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: here because I would guess Van Helmont is is referring

812
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,879
Speaker 1: to the supernatural hell interpretation. So alcahest is much better

813
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: than earthly fire. It's like a holy supernatural fire. But

814
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:21,200
Speaker 1: again Van Helmont writes about how the alcahest could decompose

815
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 1: matter into its tria prima, or its constituent parts, and

816
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: then eventually back into water with no compromise or destruction

817
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,560
Speaker 1: of the properties along the way. And uh, and Principe

818
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: writes about how, again we mentioned earlier, this could be

819
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:38,799
Speaker 1: used to make better medicines, and in this section he

820
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: actually mentions what a couple of these medicines would have

821
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: been quote. Van Helmont describes several pharmaceuticals he claims to

822
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,839
Speaker 1: have prepared using the alcohest, most notably a cure for

823
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: kidney and bladder stones made from a mineral he calls lutus,

824
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:57,240
Speaker 1: and an elixir of life prepared from Lebanon cedar wood.

825
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: The only obstacle in this glorious royal road for chemistry

826
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:10,160
Speaker 1: was that no one knew how to prepare Van helmonts alcohestan.

827
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:15,280
Speaker 1: I guess the obvious is is that is the truth

828
00:49:15,360 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: that if the Alcohest was possible. If there was a

829
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: universal solvent to be found, then surely modern chemistry would

830
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: have found it in the wake of alchemy. Yeah, and

831
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:28,880
Speaker 1: so here we revealed that there are several flaws to

832
00:49:28,960 --> 00:49:32,760
Speaker 1: the fundamental assumptions on which the the Alcohest was based.

833
00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing is that Van Helmont's conception of

834
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:38,760
Speaker 1: all material ultimately being based on water is not true.

835
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,800
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that modern chemistry is is without

836
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: some really exceptional, exquisite dissolvers that will, maybe while maybe

837
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:52,800
Speaker 1: not being universal solvents, will break down lots of stuff,

838
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: a shocking amount of stuff. Uh So, a couple that

839
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 1: are worth mentioning. One I wanted to talk about is

840
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 1: the chemical known as aqua regia, which the name literally

841
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: means royal water in Latin. It's made with one part

842
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 1: nitric acid and three parts hydrochloric acid. It is extremely corrosive.

843
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: It's a liquid with a reddish orange color that can

844
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 1: not only cause severe burns if you touch it, it

845
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 1: can literally dissolve otherwise nonreactive metals like gold and platinum.

846
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:27,040
Speaker 1: Aqua Regia briefly came up in our episode on heavy Water.

847
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: I think because we were talking about the historical anecdote

848
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 1: where the chemist George to Heavish, she had to had

849
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 1: had to quickly find a way to hide the Nobel

850
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,319
Speaker 1: Prize medals which I think we're made of gold in

851
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:43,439
Speaker 1: the laboratory of nils Bore when the laboratory was being

852
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: captured and searched by the Nazis, and he ended up

853
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: dissolving the metals in Aqua Regia to prevent them from

854
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: being found out. So Aqua Regia sounds refreshing. Is not refreshing, though,

855
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: do not buy a bottle of it at your local

856
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:03,160
Speaker 1: convenience store. Not a good lacroix flavor, maybe better than coconut. Oh,

857
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: I love coconut. Coconut coconut is a good lacroise you

858
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: do for me at least at the beach, and as

859
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 1: long as it's cold. But if it warms up and

860
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 1: I'm not at the beach, then uh yeah, it's certainly

861
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: both of those are true. Then yeah, I don't want

862
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: any part of it. I'm a picky so I do

863
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,480
Speaker 1: love the soda waters, I like the lacroise, I like

864
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 1: most flavors, uh and and I like real coconut stuff,

865
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: but the coconut lacroise something about it. It's like, for me,

866
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,760
Speaker 1: it's like drinking sunscreen. It's something's wrong. I think maybe

867
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:33,000
Speaker 1: that's why I like it, because it kind of tastes

868
00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: like what sunscreen historically smelled like. And so it's like

869
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:41,959
Speaker 1: it's like drinking the the you know, the alchemical truth

870
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:45,600
Speaker 1: of the beach um while at the beach. So I

871
00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: can go on even better on these uh, these dissolvers.

872
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:52,800
Speaker 1: There's one thing I've been reading about called Piranha solution.

873
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: This is this is a class of industrial and laboratory

874
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: grade cleaning solutions colloquially known as per Ranna solutions, and

875
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: you can guess how they got their name. They are

876
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: typically used as a ruthless and very dangerous way to

877
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: strip all residue of organic molecules from a container, surface,

878
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: or substrate. Now, it's interesting that it has it is

879
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:18,799
Speaker 1: it is getting closer. It sounds like to what we

880
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: think of as as Hollywood acid, but in doing so,

881
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:26,840
Speaker 1: it invokes Hollywood piranhas. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah yeah. So

882
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: it's making you think of what's the James Bond movie

883
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 1: where you only live twice? Right with the bridge that

884
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: goes over the piranhas and if you like, that's your

885
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: bad performance review means that your fish food. Yeah, that's

886
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: the one with Donald pleasants is blowfeld. Oh yeah. So

887
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:47,399
Speaker 1: a common formulation of Piranha solutions extremely dangerous material would

888
00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: be three parts sulfuric acid or H two S O

889
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: four and one part hydrogen peroxide, which is H two

890
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: O two. Piranha solution is, from everything I read, extremely temperamental.

891
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 1: Seeing the elements in the wrong order, or in the

892
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 1: wrong ratio, or in the presence of the wrong contaminants

893
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:09,879
Speaker 1: can immediately lead to explosions. It seems like there are

894
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: just lots of ways that using it can lead to explosions.

895
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,399
Speaker 1: More on that in a bit. So I was trying

896
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:18,959
Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, how exactly does this stuff work? Um,

897
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,879
Speaker 1: there was a helpful podcast episode I found. The Royal

898
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: Society of Chemistry has a podcast called Chemistry and Its Element,

899
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: though sometimes I see it referred to just as the

900
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: Chemistry World podcast. Chemistry World is their magazine, their publication.

901
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 1: But this podcast episode was hosted by Sam Tracy and

902
00:53:36,640 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: it's about Piranha solution and I appreciated the way Tracy

903
00:53:39,520 --> 00:53:43,080
Speaker 1: explained what the solution does at the molecular level. First

904
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 1: of all, I wanted to point out Tracy notes that

905
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 1: it's not just named Paranha solution for its ability to

906
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: to dissolve all organic matter that it comes into contact with,

907
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 1: but perhaps also for its tendency to boil vigorously when

908
00:53:57,120 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 1: it's in the presence of organic matter. So like in

909
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:01,760
Speaker 1: that scene and you only live twice, where the piranhas

910
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:04,239
Speaker 1: started attacking somebody, it looks like the water has been

911
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: put on the boilers, bubbles everywhere. Yeah, almost as if

912
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:12,400
Speaker 1: um a bubbling mechanism was placed underwater to create the

913
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:16,240
Speaker 1: illusion of a horde of piranhas um, you know, tearing

914
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:19,359
Speaker 1: something apart in movie fashion. Actually, here's something I want

915
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: to see, Uh, answer this question if you were actually

916
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: attacked by a school of piranhas. I don't know if

917
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:27,719
Speaker 1: they even swarm like that in reality, I kind of

918
00:54:27,760 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: doubt it. But if you were, would it would it

919
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:32,359
Speaker 1: would the water boil like that? Or would it look

920
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 1: very calm on the surface. Well, I think we should

921
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,399
Speaker 1: answer this question into an episode on piranhas. I don't

922
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: know that I've i've ever we've ever devoted an episode

923
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: to piranhas. So let's let's come back to it. They're

924
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: they're beautiful fish. Okay, So how does it work well?

925
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 1: Piranha solution again, as I mentioned as two main ingredients

926
00:54:48,920 --> 00:54:51,800
Speaker 1: as sulfuric acid H two S O four and hydrogen

927
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: peroxide H two O two. So if you imagine a

928
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 1: glass container with organic residue of glucose and sugar stuck

929
00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: to the inside, uh, and imagine this is exposed to

930
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: a Piranha solution for cleaning. Each of the two ingredients

931
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 1: plays a different role in cleaning the sugar away. So sugar,

932
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:13,720
Speaker 1: of course, is an organic molecule. It's a carbohydrate molecule

933
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:16,279
Speaker 1: with the formulas C six H twelve O six. At

934
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: least that's glucose. Different types of sugar have different chemical compositions,

935
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 1: but it's got carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and when exposed

936
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 1: to concentrated sulfuric acid, this acid acts as an aggressive

937
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:35,320
Speaker 1: dehydrating agent, so it will chemically react to remove water

938
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: molecules as much as it can, so the sugar molecules

939
00:55:39,640 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 1: will get broken apart and the sugar will lose hydrogen

940
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: and oxygen atoms in the form of water vapor. H

941
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 1: two O and so if you have a molecule like

942
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:52,399
Speaker 1: sugar that's based on carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and you're

943
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 1: rapidly pulling hydrogen and oxygen off of it, what are

944
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 1: you going to have left over a lot of carbon? So,

945
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen this experiment where you douse sugar

946
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 1: and sulfuric acid, there there are a lot of videos

947
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:07,759
Speaker 1: you can look up online. Um usually you will have

948
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 1: like a beaker with a bunch of sugar in it.

949
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,080
Speaker 1: Somebody douses it and sulfuric acid and then stirs it

950
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: up with a glass pipette. Uh, the sugar will first

951
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: turn brown and then black and then give off all

952
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:20,440
Speaker 1: of these fumes. I think it's giving off both water,

953
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: vapor and noxious fumes of sulfur dioxide. So you shouldn't

954
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:27,680
Speaker 1: do this experiment without you know, supervision of somebody who

955
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,279
Speaker 1: knows what they're doing, because it gets very hot and

956
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:32,880
Speaker 1: it puts off these fumes. It can be dangerous potentially.

957
00:56:32,920 --> 00:56:35,879
Speaker 1: But but what eventually ends up happening is that the

958
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: carbon residue that's left over from the reaction of the

959
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 1: acid with the sugar, This carbon residue will start to

960
00:56:42,719 --> 00:56:45,880
Speaker 1: climb out of the beaker in a looming column like

961
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:48,839
Speaker 1: a giant tube worm or snake that is made out

962
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: of charred sit uh. And you can find a whole

963
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:57,200
Speaker 1: genre of carbon snake pictures online from demonstrations of this reaction.

964
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: They're pretty great. Yeah, they can be quite impressive. Yeah,

965
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 1: all praise be to the carbon snakes. But Sam Tracy

966
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: in in this podcast, I was talking about mentions that

967
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 1: the role of sulfuric acid is twofold quote. It's acidity

968
00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:15,080
Speaker 1: catalyzes the reaction and being a hygroscopic substance, it combines

969
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:18,320
Speaker 1: with the water, releasing a great quantity of heat, meaning

970
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:21,439
Speaker 1: the reaction cannot go in the reverse direction and can

971
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: only proceed to completion. But of course this alone would

972
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 1: not make a cleaning agent, because sulfuric acid alone would

973
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:32,440
Speaker 1: tend to simply eat up organic molecules, strip them of

974
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: what water can be pulled out of them, and leave

975
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:37,840
Speaker 1: a ton of black elemental carbon in its wake. And

976
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:40,720
Speaker 1: that is not clean. Like, you don't want black elemental

977
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,240
Speaker 1: carbon stuck to your glass surfaces or your electronics or

978
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:46,960
Speaker 1: your you know, your wafer chips, whatever whatever it is

979
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:49,680
Speaker 1: you're trying to clean. So this is where the hydrogen

980
00:57:49,720 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: peroxide comes in. Hydrogen peroxide serves to eat away the

981
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: remaining carbon byproduct that would have been left over from

982
00:57:56,600 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: the acids attack on the carbohydrate. Uh So, hydrogen oxide

983
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: H two O two will react with the elemental carbon

984
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: by donating oxygen atoms to the carbon, which combined to

985
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 1: produce carbon dioxide gas, which floats away in the air,

986
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: eventually leaving your substrate clean of all organic material. So hypothetically,

987
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:18,920
Speaker 1: you you have and again I'm not advising to do this,

988
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 1: it's extremely dangerous, but what would happen is you have

989
00:58:22,040 --> 00:58:25,920
Speaker 1: a glass container or an electronics part, whatever it is

990
00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:27,920
Speaker 1: you're trying to clean off. It's got a little bit

991
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:30,160
Speaker 1: of organic material on it, maybe some sugar or some

992
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:33,640
Speaker 1: other kind of carbohydrates something like that, and you add

993
00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 1: this solution to it. It is uh the organic materials

994
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: are ripped apart by the acid and then the remaining

995
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:45,160
Speaker 1: carbon is just removed and evaporated by the hydrogen peroxide.

996
00:58:45,680 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: I was reading about many ways that the Piranha solution is,

997
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: as I've said several times now, extremely dangerous. This is

998
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 1: not one to try it with a home chemistry set,

999
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:57,240
Speaker 1: as it can easily explode and cause severe injuries and burns.

1000
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:01,280
Speaker 1: I was reading a story that was sent to UH

1001
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:04,040
Speaker 1: in a letter to Chemical Engineering News by a couple

1002
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:06,680
Speaker 1: of researchers in the year nineteen nine. That was about

1003
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 1: multiple accidents that had occurred in university labs with Piranha solutions.

1004
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 1: One where a container of Paranha solution was sitting stored

1005
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 1: in a fume hood and about a week after it

1006
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:21,120
Speaker 1: was mixed, it just spontaneously exploded. Another one they talked

1007
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,800
Speaker 1: about is UH it occurred at Cornell University where I

1008
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:28,240
Speaker 1: think what happened is that some Piranha solution was accidentally

1009
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 1: and very unfortunately mixed with ascet tone and this caused

1010
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:35,400
Speaker 1: a violent explosion that like ripped apart the hood that

1011
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,600
Speaker 1: it was under, severely injured the person who was working

1012
00:59:38,600 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 1: on it. They ended up, you know, covered in this

1013
00:59:40,560 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: corrosive liquid with a bunch of glass embedded in them.

1014
00:59:43,520 --> 00:59:46,160
Speaker 1: So it is not something to screw around with. So

1015
00:59:46,280 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 1: not literal alcohost, not a literal universal solvent, but but

1016
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: Paranha solution will get you a lot of the way there.

1017
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know, at this point we're reaching

1018
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast, and I think the only

1019
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 1: only way to really go at this point is to

1020
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:04,720
Speaker 1: at least briefly discuss New Age occult thinking and um

1021
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 1: also uh tech doz lingo. Okay, let's let's start with

1022
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 1: with the with the New Age, New age and occult

1023
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 1: psych and psychedelic thinking, basically discussing universal solvent as a metaphor. Now.

1024
01:00:19,760 --> 01:00:21,960
Speaker 1: Earlier in our discussion, I brought up Terrence McKinnon his

1025
01:00:22,040 --> 01:00:24,520
Speaker 1: lectures on alchemy, and again McKenna said that he didn't

1026
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: see much of a connection between alchemy and psychedelics. Uh.

1027
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:31,520
Speaker 1: Those certain important pharmacological discoveries would come out of alchemy.

1028
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:34,880
Speaker 1: For the most part, psychedelics were the domain of the shaman.

1029
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:38,800
Speaker 1: But of course other schools of thought would later on

1030
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:41,919
Speaker 1: in human history come back to alchemy uh, and it's

1031
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:45,680
Speaker 1: sacred and obscure dimensions and find new meanings there. So,

1032
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:49,200
Speaker 1: for instance, we see that with the unions, and we

1033
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:52,680
Speaker 1: also see that with psychedelic and New Age thinking as well. Again,

1034
01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: you know, you're dealing with with recipes that are dealing

1035
01:00:55,560 --> 01:00:59,240
Speaker 1: you know, talking about the red dragon and using code words,

1036
01:00:59,640 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 1: but all so dealing in philosophical and magical ideas. It's

1037
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:08,280
Speaker 1: irresistible to come back and sort of um, you know,

1038
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 1: and view your own meaning into it and uh and

1039
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:15,680
Speaker 1: and perhaps even rediscover aspects of your your your current

1040
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 1: your contemporary system by breathing it into this archaic apparatus. Yeah,

1041
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:25,480
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, I think alchemy. Concepts from alchemy

1042
01:01:25,520 --> 01:01:28,120
Speaker 1: were very popular to be played around with by like

1043
01:01:28,160 --> 01:01:30,440
Speaker 1: a lot of the uh, the sort of new religious

1044
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 1: movements of the late nineteenth century. Yeah. Yeah, and and

1045
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: really this ultimately fits the basic format of alchemy throughout history.

1046
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 1: Like a lot of alchemy even you know, you know,

1047
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:45,200
Speaker 1: in the old days, revolved around looking back at old texts,

1048
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,360
Speaker 1: piecing together bits from old texts, and trying to to

1049
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:52,160
Speaker 1: break new ground, understand what these these other authors were

1050
01:01:52,200 --> 01:01:55,920
Speaker 1: talking about and uh and creating some new frame of

1051
01:01:55,960 --> 01:01:58,960
Speaker 1: meaning around it. You know. Something that alchemy also has

1052
01:01:58,960 --> 01:02:03,360
Speaker 1: in common with religious texts is pseudonymous writings. Uh so

1053
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:07,040
Speaker 1: in in for example, in the early centuries of Christianity,

1054
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:09,040
Speaker 1: a huge thing that would often go on is like

1055
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:11,240
Speaker 1: you would write a new book that you know, you

1056
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:13,440
Speaker 1: would want to be taken as scripture that would advance

1057
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: your view of the correct theological interpretation of Christ. But

1058
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:19,439
Speaker 1: you'd be like well, and nobody knows who I am,

1059
01:02:19,480 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 1: so I'm going to say that this was written by St. Peter,

1060
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 1: and so you know, this is the Gospel of Peter. Like,

1061
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:28,640
Speaker 1: this is definitely not written by Peter. Um. The people

1062
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:30,000
Speaker 1: were doing this kind of thing all the time. The

1063
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:33,880
Speaker 1: same thing happened with alchemy. People would write pseudonymously as like,

1064
01:02:34,160 --> 01:02:37,200
Speaker 1: you know, as one of the great masters of alchemy. Yes,

1065
01:02:37,520 --> 01:02:40,080
Speaker 1: this was by Paracelsus, but it actually wasn't. It was

1066
01:02:40,160 --> 01:02:44,400
Speaker 1: just some somebody well, you know, in in in dealing

1067
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:46,680
Speaker 1: specifically with it with alcohoest and the idea of a

1068
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:49,480
Speaker 1: universal solvent. You know, I looked through some of the

1069
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:52,800
Speaker 1: writings of uh and and lectures of McKinnon. I looked

1070
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 1: through uh iLiad's work, and uh, you know, it's possible

1071
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:00,280
Speaker 1: I miss something, but I didn't find any case where

1072
01:03:00,320 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 1: either of them specifically spoke or wrote about the algohoest um. However,

1073
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: you do see the alcohoes pop up in New Age

1074
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: and psychedelic literature as a metaphor in some cases for

1075
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:15,480
Speaker 1: psychedelic compounds. Um, you know, a way of thinking about

1076
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: what something like the psilocybin can do in the mind.

1077
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:21,480
Speaker 1: But it reminds me a little bit of McKenna's arguments

1078
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 1: of the argument that psychedelics in the West may have

1079
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:28,280
Speaker 1: enabled Buddhism to spread more thoroughly through Western thought. I'm

1080
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: not sure I agree with them completely on that, but

1081
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:31,760
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a valid point that as

1082
01:03:31,800 --> 01:03:35,720
Speaker 1: a culture's understanding of consciousness changes, it does open them

1083
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 1: up to the discovery and rediscovery of various spiritual concepts. Okay, So,

1084
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: in if you're thinking in the Terence McKenna type vein,

1085
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 1: the idea is that, uh is that the use of

1086
01:03:48,080 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: psychedelics would have broadly enabled sort of reduced the mind

1087
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:54,760
Speaker 1: to its trie a prima or to its more proximate

1088
01:03:54,800 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: constituents without degradation, allowing uh more different types of states

1089
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:04,280
Speaker 1: of mind to be accessed, as opposed to the narrower

1090
01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:06,760
Speaker 1: window of different ways you can think based on your

1091
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 1: cultural upbringing. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And and yeah,

1092
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 1: I like this idea. I like the idea of using

1093
01:04:12,560 --> 01:04:14,720
Speaker 1: alcoholst as a as a kind of metaphor for anything

1094
01:04:14,760 --> 01:04:20,680
Speaker 1: that like breaks down unuseful rigidity and thought or culture. Um. Yeah,

1095
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:23,760
Speaker 1: and and and I also like the idea of of

1096
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:27,760
Speaker 1: of psychedelics being seen as some sort of universal solvent potentially,

1097
01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: and and and again you know you then the breaking

1098
01:04:30,760 --> 01:04:32,440
Speaker 1: down of things that I think it also drives home

1099
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:34,400
Speaker 1: that it's a delicate process and you know what you're doing,

1100
01:04:34,840 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: and you don't want to you know, to to go

1101
01:04:36,600 --> 01:04:40,160
Speaker 1: too far and dissolve too much. Uh but uh, you know,

1102
01:04:40,360 --> 01:04:44,080
Speaker 1: breaking down the mind that's too rigid to melt right. Um.

1103
01:04:44,240 --> 01:04:47,040
Speaker 1: The one point mckinna does point out that there's this, um,

1104
01:04:47,120 --> 01:04:52,560
Speaker 1: this alchemical aphamism that in in in Latin is dissolutio

1105
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:58,960
Speaker 1: at coagulato, which we were just discussing this off mic. Uh,

1106
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: like this basically break down to the dissolving and m

1107
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:06,960
Speaker 1: and the coagulation of things to break things down and

1108
01:05:07,000 --> 01:05:10,440
Speaker 1: then things build back up. Um, and that that ultimately

1109
01:05:10,520 --> 01:05:12,560
Speaker 1: this is all one needs to know about like the

1110
01:05:12,640 --> 01:05:15,880
Speaker 1: nature of reality. Uh, you know, the the alchemical truth

1111
01:05:15,960 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: of things. And uh, I think this is you know,

1112
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:21,600
Speaker 1: this is this is a basic idea that you can

1113
01:05:21,600 --> 01:05:24,120
Speaker 1: apply to the physical world. But also too you can

1114
01:05:24,160 --> 01:05:26,640
Speaker 1: you can see how readily one could take to this

1115
01:05:27,200 --> 01:05:31,480
Speaker 1: as a as as a psychological concept as well, and

1116
01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: certainly a psychedelic concept. You know, the idea of breaking

1117
01:05:34,200 --> 01:05:36,600
Speaker 1: things down. But then but then that rigidity is going

1118
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,840
Speaker 1: to is going to return. There's gonna be some coagulation

1119
01:05:40,080 --> 01:05:42,480
Speaker 1: that's going to take place again, you know, I do.

1120
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:44,520
Speaker 1: Before we end, though, I want to come back to

1121
01:05:44,600 --> 01:05:47,320
Speaker 1: something that I think we touched on earlier, which is

1122
01:05:47,400 --> 01:05:51,240
Speaker 1: the potential dangers of of seeing the world in terms

1123
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:53,560
Speaker 1: of universal solvents. I mean, one thing we learned as

1124
01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:57,120
Speaker 1: alchemy passed away and gave way to modern chemistry is

1125
01:05:57,160 --> 01:05:59,120
Speaker 1: that there is in fact no such thing as a

1126
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:01,960
Speaker 1: as a universe solvent in chemistry. I mean, there are

1127
01:06:01,960 --> 01:06:05,240
Speaker 1: solvents that will dissolve lots of things, but but there

1128
01:06:05,320 --> 01:06:08,760
Speaker 1: is no universal acid in the Daniel Dennett sense. And

1129
01:06:08,800 --> 01:06:10,760
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is also a lesson that should

1130
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:13,240
Speaker 1: be applied in in the metaphorical way, sort of coming

1131
01:06:13,280 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 1: back against everything we've talked about in this episode, because I,

1132
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:20,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I really do believe that a huge amount

1133
01:06:20,520 --> 01:06:24,960
Speaker 1: of trouble and confusion in the world comes from people

1134
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:28,720
Speaker 1: getting overly attached to a certain lens of viewing the

1135
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:33,000
Speaker 1: world or or analytical tool or new strategy and thinking

1136
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:37,040
Speaker 1: that it will solve everything, uh, that it will answer

1137
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:40,440
Speaker 1: all questions that it will solve all your problems, you know,

1138
01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:43,040
Speaker 1: like I feel like that that that is something that

1139
01:06:43,120 --> 01:06:47,080
Speaker 1: we all have a tendency for, but it's it's very

1140
01:06:47,160 --> 01:06:49,800
Speaker 1: dangerous and something to watch out for in yourself. And

1141
01:06:49,920 --> 01:06:51,800
Speaker 1: one of the weird ways I was thinking about this

1142
01:06:52,360 --> 01:06:56,240
Speaker 1: is actually pulling us away from the the mysterious worlds

1143
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,600
Speaker 1: at the intersection of you know, theology and metaphysics and

1144
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:03,360
Speaker 1: science in chemistry. I was thinking about this in terms

1145
01:07:03,440 --> 01:07:07,720
Speaker 1: of tech business because I was just thinking about all

1146
01:07:07,760 --> 01:07:10,560
Speaker 1: of the different universal solvents that we have witnessed come

1147
01:07:10,600 --> 01:07:14,720
Speaker 1: and go over the years working in digital media, and

1148
01:07:14,760 --> 01:07:16,760
Speaker 1: they come and they go, and they come and they go,

1149
01:07:16,880 --> 01:07:19,840
Speaker 1: and so I'm thinking about the universal solvents of search

1150
01:07:19,880 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 1: engine optimization. You remember when like everything on the Internet

1151
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:25,840
Speaker 1: suddenly had to change to be search engine optimized, and

1152
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 1: it kind of ruined a huge amount of content that

1153
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:32,880
Speaker 1: was good previously and then was just destroyed by optimization

1154
01:07:32,960 --> 01:07:35,320
Speaker 1: for Google search results. And then that kind of and

1155
01:07:35,360 --> 01:07:37,600
Speaker 1: then you know, they change how their search results are

1156
01:07:37,600 --> 01:07:41,240
Speaker 1: calculated anyway, so it becomes obsolete later on. And then

1157
01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:44,520
Speaker 1: I remember the the u GC revolution. At some point

1158
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:47,600
Speaker 1: it was like, well, everything's got to be user generated content,

1159
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:50,560
Speaker 1: you know, and everything is Wikipedia now, yeah, and so

1160
01:07:50,720 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 1: and that sort of destroyed everything in its path, and

1161
01:07:53,080 --> 01:07:55,840
Speaker 1: then that kind of went away, and you know, the

1162
01:07:56,200 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: various pivot to videos and the optimization for the Facebook

1163
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 1: news eat and then that, and then the pivot to

1164
01:08:01,880 --> 01:08:05,280
Speaker 1: blockchain and everything. You know. It's like every every few

1165
01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:08,480
Speaker 1: years in our business space, we we see a universal

1166
01:08:08,520 --> 01:08:13,520
Speaker 1: solvent come along that maybe changes some things, maybe destroys

1167
01:08:13,600 --> 01:08:16,280
Speaker 1: some things, and maybe maybe hopefully there are some things

1168
01:08:16,280 --> 01:08:18,960
Speaker 1: that are relatively unscathed by it. But then it just

1169
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,800
Speaker 1: goes along on its own way. And and usually h

1170
01:08:22,200 --> 01:08:24,800
Speaker 1: these things do not actually solve all the problems and

1171
01:08:24,840 --> 01:08:27,120
Speaker 1: do not will not last forever. Well, I guess it

1172
01:08:27,200 --> 01:08:32,240
Speaker 1: ultimately comes down to who is applying a supposed universal solving, right,

1173
01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:36,080
Speaker 1: and it generally comes down to these these businesses of disruption.

1174
01:08:36,400 --> 01:08:40,080
Speaker 1: It is about dissolving the rigidity of the of some

1175
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 1: aspect of the industry. But it comes back to that

1176
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 1: that that alchemical truth that we just laid out right,

1177
01:08:47,120 --> 01:08:50,840
Speaker 1: the dissolution and coagulation there, And it's not so much

1178
01:08:50,880 --> 01:08:54,640
Speaker 1: the dissolution that they're into. It is the eventual coagulation

1179
01:08:54,720 --> 01:08:57,120
Speaker 1: because they wish to be the masters of that coagulation.

1180
01:08:57,520 --> 01:08:59,439
Speaker 1: You know, I want I don't want to make everything

1181
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,320
Speaker 1: free so that it remains free. I want to make

1182
01:09:02,320 --> 01:09:04,720
Speaker 1: everything free because I have a new model of how

1183
01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:07,559
Speaker 1: to charge for it, you know. Uh. And that's what

1184
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:10,720
Speaker 1: we see time and time again with these different disruption

1185
01:09:10,800 --> 01:09:14,680
Speaker 1: strategies you want to disrupt, they take uh, you know,

1186
01:09:14,760 --> 01:09:18,400
Speaker 1: cable television, right, I mean, it's just it's it's it's classic.

1187
01:09:18,439 --> 01:09:20,880
Speaker 1: You know, all these uh, these services that came along

1188
01:09:20,920 --> 01:09:25,040
Speaker 1: to cut our costs and cut our chords, and you know,

1189
01:09:25,200 --> 01:09:27,040
Speaker 1: and we're at the point now where, yeah, if you

1190
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:29,759
Speaker 1: want to watch everything that everyone's talking about, you're spending

1191
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:32,639
Speaker 1: as much money as you were as you were probably

1192
01:09:32,640 --> 01:09:35,400
Speaker 1: spending in previous decades on your your cable and your

1193
01:09:35,439 --> 01:09:38,360
Speaker 1: satellite and so forth. So it's just but just the

1194
01:09:38,400 --> 01:09:40,840
Speaker 1: structure of it and the masters of it having some

1195
01:09:40,920 --> 01:09:43,519
Speaker 1: cases changed. Yeah, I mean, I guess it is often

1196
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 1: that you're just finding that you go through destruction and

1197
01:09:45,920 --> 01:09:48,400
Speaker 1: then there's some kind of return to a new equilibrium.

1198
01:09:48,520 --> 01:09:50,920
Speaker 1: But um, but along the way, I would just say,

1199
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:53,120
Speaker 1: be careful not to be led astray or to lose

1200
01:09:53,160 --> 01:09:57,280
Speaker 1: too much to something that seems like it. I guess

1201
01:09:57,320 --> 01:09:59,920
Speaker 1: anything that seems like it does anything the universal solve

1202
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:02,960
Speaker 1: and where the panacea, I mean, nothing actually works in

1203
01:10:03,080 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 1: every case. And even if something is good, it's something

1204
01:10:06,560 --> 01:10:09,920
Speaker 1: it's it's not good at everything, right, It just might

1205
01:10:10,040 --> 01:10:14,840
Speaker 1: just reduce your product um to a to a carbon husk. Right,

1206
01:10:17,240 --> 01:10:19,599
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close the

1207
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:23,559
Speaker 1: alchemical books on this one. But I'm sure we will

1208
01:10:23,600 --> 01:10:25,880
Speaker 1: return to alchemy in the future when we deal so

1209
01:10:26,000 --> 01:10:29,439
Speaker 1: much with the history of of science and uh, and

1210
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 1: you know in the history of religion and spiritual concepts

1211
01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:37,800
Speaker 1: as well, that inevitably, uh, alchemical topics will arise once more,

1212
01:10:38,120 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: and and I look forward to it. And hey, uh,

1213
01:10:40,439 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 1: maybe we'll do an episode in Piranhas in the near

1214
01:10:42,479 --> 01:10:46,320
Speaker 1: future as well. I love a good a good biology

1215
01:10:45,920 --> 01:10:48,840
Speaker 1: exploration as well. In the meantime, if you like to

1216
01:10:48,920 --> 01:10:50,880
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

1217
01:10:51,120 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: you know where to find them. There in the Stuff

1218
01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:54,760
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, where you can get

1219
01:10:54,800 --> 01:10:57,360
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. You'll find Core episodes on

1220
01:10:57,360 --> 01:11:00,759
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, you'll find Artifact episo. It's on Wednesdays.

1221
01:11:00,800 --> 01:11:04,439
Speaker 1: Listener mails. On Monday's Fridays, you'll find episodes of Weird

1222
01:11:04,479 --> 01:11:06,439
Speaker 1: House Cinema. That's where we just talk about a weird

1223
01:11:06,479 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 1: movie with little or no concern for science or alchemy,

1224
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:13,800
Speaker 1: uh either. And then on the weekends we air a

1225
01:11:13,840 --> 01:11:16,600
Speaker 1: little bit of a repeated form of a Vault episode.

1226
01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:19,720
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1227
01:11:19,800 --> 01:11:21,960
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1228
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:24,160
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

1229
01:11:24,240 --> 01:11:26,599
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,

1230
01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:29,479
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1231
01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:39,760
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1232
01:11:39,800 --> 01:11:42,479
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

1233
01:11:42,520 --> 01:11:45,600
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

1234
01:11:45,600 --> 01:12:03,120
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. First The Town

1235
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:04,160
Speaker 1: by a Father