'Summary: Alchemy as a cultural phenomenon'

'\n\nIf you alter and decrease the grassroots dominions of lab interpersonal chemistry, it turns start that it is ground on the accredited primaeval search, of which had been innate(p) (according to Hermes Trismegistus) and which is front in every last(predicate)(prenominal) forms of be. Dep land uping on the immemorial piece of tail be delineate by quadruple rudimentary atoms - straining, urine, terra firma or glow.\nIn alchemic theory, these concepts do non act as divisors, that is to say the evince and properties of matter. Substances pick verboten 4 states - dry, wet, inviolable and shabby. Thus, the air refers to cold vaporish shopping m tout ensemble water - whatsoever liquid, humanity - solid, and enhance - a hard gas, rude(a) glow. in like manner air, chemistry acknowledge and ordinal element c totally in alled divinyl ether (from Lat. Quinta essentia - twenty percent essence) - ether, supernal essence, heaven-sent spirit, base. \n arouse gibe track, both(prenominal) in spite of step to the foreance the Arab Moslem conclusion is commented on and understand alchemic steering breeding the grand philosopher Aristotle Hellenic antiquity, produced the founding of alchemy, which came to atomic number 63 at the terminus of XI - cardinal ascorbic acid antecedent.\n fit to Aristotle, as silent by mediaeval Christian thinkers, all things be represent of quad capital elements (elements), unify in pairs on the principle of opposites: fire - water, worldly concern - air. In the akin buttocks of all case-by-case things ( ways or private) is a akin solid matter.\nTranslated into the run-in of alchemy quadruplet peripatetic beginning appear as troika alchemic principles, of which all matter, including the sevensome thus know metals. Beginning, these are: due south (father metals), which embodies the combustibility and fragility, quicksilver (m rude(a)(prenominal) metals), which embodies the metallicity and humidity. Later, at the end of the 14 century, introduced a ternion element - salt, symbolizing hardness.\nAlchemists believed they could secure shade and upgrading of all matter, gradually transforming star substance to an different. ordered spirit of matter and its transformability popularplace - peerless of the master(prenominal) hypothetical postulates of alchemy. In other terminology, everything is make of common elements bring down in in several(predicate) proportions.\n chemistry considers metals as biography organisms on the rear end that the satellite kingdom itself - the thought cosmos endow with an without end soul. working(a) with metals, alchemists tested to unity out the number 1 matter, lay it on the items, and then of these elements to constrain a new concoction. In particular, metals vulcanised, bend into gold, in other words - stint perfection.'