The alchemy argument by Francis Bacon and Malcolm Oster is an opinion with respect to the observations made of the world given the scientific method. Interestingly, each conveys an opinion of science as the underlying hand that guides the natural forces. These natural forces are explainable of the imperfections that only a godly type of knowledge possessed by a Vulcan may remove and purify the element into a pure gold substance. A Vulcan is a reference used to explain an individual that has forbidden knowledge, a Godly knowledge of alchemical means. Bacon believes more in the world of science and of the rigors of science and does not identify God as the underlying special secret knowledge that yields purity from the impure.
According to page 66 of the ‘Guide to the Interpretation of Nature’, Bacon believes that the senses are flawed and repetition of experiment will not yield expected results yet will reveal results of differing conclusion. The experiment yields the forbidden knowledge or the Godly knowledge by Oster as the same Godly knowledge that may be found through experimentation, however, which Oster firmly believes is a process of established means to the initiated. Bacon conceivably supports the belief of inconsistencies between the natural world and the scientific world. Alchemy is the empirical analysis of the natural world, essentially, of the natural physical environment.
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"Paracelsus Alchemy".
Francis Bacon was a writer in scientific methods and understood the use in the scientific method as a means to reveal any truth that is hidden before science. Therefore, Bacon would argue that God stood before science to which Oster would suggest that God developed the natural world using a language revealed through the scientific method. Therefore, each process has a differing approach that science must reveal. The revealing of knowledge via the scientific process as promoted by Bacon is essentially the forbidden knowledge equivalent suggested by Oster. Bacon feels the world is a natural condition arising from natural causes that may be concluded by means of scientific experiment. The natural condition is therefore the natural world which is a process arrived at over time and space, a testable medium.
Oster suggested the natural world to be a hidden secret of purity that only the knowledge equivalent to God’s creation will know and have access to. The Vulcan is therefore the alchemist that can see the fruit on the Apple tree during the snowy winter, as Oster characterizes, an individual that is capable of exacting the purity of God from the means of impurity. The natural world is a pure and godly creation that is hidden or beset by impurity as the conspicuous imperfection ruling society. The suggestion would back up the influence of good vs. evil and that behind all evil is good. If ‘as good as gold’ is considered as a phrase that is literally true, then gold is the good behind all living and non-things.
Oster will characterize humans as an alchemical element that may be transmuted into gold. The science of transmutation is a scientific process to all but the uninitiated, who comprehend the exact nature of how to transmute the natural world. If gold is therefore the purest form in the natural world, then transmutation into anything else is impure. The scientific method under Bacon will render impure results until finally yielding purity whilst Oster will characterize science as the scientific process of transmutation rather than the scientific method that is essentially a cause and effect based on a measure of point estimate.
The defense of logic as purported by Bacon is a defense of the scientific means of inquiry, to allow for logically based deduction to arrive at a conclusion rather the defense of an unforeseen sort of supernatural Godly force. Oster seeks to defend the guiding hand of God by instilling the purity of gold as the alchemical equivalent of a Godly symbol of his presence. That gold is proof on Earth of God’s creation of the Earth. The physician can only seek the answer of why the sick is ill by engaging in the scientific pursuit of the alchemical whereby treatment of the patient otherwise will be an exercise of treating only the symptom by not understanding the true nature of the infirmity as the underlying cause.
- Oster, M. (2002). Science in Europe, 1500-1800: a primary sources reader. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave.
- Bacon, F. (n.d.) Guide to the Interpretation of Nature.
- Bacon, F., & Rawley, W. (1670). Sylva sylvarum, or, A natural history, in ten centuries whereunto is newly added, the history natural and experimental of life and death, or, The prolongation of liee [sic] (The 9th and last ed.). London: Printed by J.R. for VVilliam Lee, and are to be sold by George Sawbridge
