What are you saying? Magic or pseudo-science or science? lol You just prove yourself a worse case of denial syndrome
Alchemy is an old form of modern chemistry, it was Arabic "Al-Khemyya", means "Of the Khemyt". This knowledge was from Khemyt, Egypt. The Arabs learn this knowledge, expand it and called it "the knowledge of the people of Khemyt", simply "Al-Khemyya". Later it going to Europe through trade, conquest, stealing and reverse technology, and many other ways, Europeans call it "Alchemy", which lead to modern Chemistry. As you can simply realized that in chemistry there are a lot of Arabic words in use such as Alcohol derived from Al-Khul...
It is NOT magic or pseudo-science, it just series of experiments, some failed, some succesful. The myth surround it was the creation of the Church and Renaissance people. They attribute Alchemy to witches, wizards and so on.
And it is an interesting fact, Church label it as magic because it was the knowledge from Muslims in that era, and Muslims are horned devils roaming Jerusalem dancing on fire....so they demonize Alchemy making a myth about it...anyone who study it being burned as heretic and witches. While in Renaissance era, western people just want to glorify modernism, making distiction between old knowledge and new one, the old ones are superstition while the modern one is the real science.
Again, what am I denying?
Have I denied that alchemy was a precursor to chemistry? No. Have I denied that it has roots in the muslim world? No (Though its completely irrelevant and really the roots go back to Hellenistic Egypt, where it was formed from a mixture of technology, mythology, greek philosophy and religion. The central figure of the western alchemical mythos was Hermes Trismegitus, a combination of the Egyptian god Toth and the Greek god Hermes believed to have authored the original texts on alchemy and prophesied the birth of Christianity. Do you still think this is a science?)
But I deny that it was science to our modern understanding, certainly as it was practiced by Europeans, who, as in the case of Isaac Newton, were often quite devout Christians that believed Alchemy could be used to purify the human body and soul (Hence the singular obsession with creating the Philosopher's Stone). They did experiment with chemicals, but then used it to form metaphysical theories about the functions of the universe. Some thought they could use the Philosopher's Stone to communicate with angels. In the Renaissance, Alchemy took on more and more occult tones as time went on even as some produced practical results. Chemistry and Alchemy most certainly were not the same thing.
At best I would say it resides in a gray area, not quite a science but a stepping stone for chemistry. There's a reason European interest in Alchemy virtually evaporated with the rise of modern science, because it wasn't a scientific practice.
And you're wrong about the Church proclaiming it devilry, they never did any such thing, actually one of the first European works mentioning Alchemy was written by a monk for the Pope as part of a project for restoring the medieval university curriculum. I know you like bashing the church and western civilization in general, but please stick to the facts.
If you want to talk about a real interesting fact, the catholic church wouldn't have referred to something as witchcraft or magic because they pointedly viewed the belief in witches and witchcraft as nothing but pagan superstition.
Well, they didn't in the Middle Ages. There was a bit of a witch craze in the Renaissance period but the medieval church maintained that witchcraft was nothing but superstition.
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