I was reading the Wikipedia article about silver nitrate. They said it used to be called luner caustic by the alchemists, because they believed it was associated with the Moon. I got irritated by the umpteenth remark implying that ancestors exploring the technical wizardry of nature were ignorant. Among the Greeks techne and sophe both referred to skill. So philosophy meant the study of how nature works it's skillful magic.
Naturally a bit of poetry was used to describe the exalted processes of nature's works, in the same way modern physicists call quarks (quarks!) charmed or strange, or categorize quarks and gluons ...Gluons! ("They believed it was associated with glue.")... Modern use of poetic language to describe the wonders of nature is only more enlightened than previous generations BECAUSE of the knowledge they passed on to us.
I am reading Priest of Nature, biography of Isaac Newton, and am constantly wondering at the modern supremicist judgements scattered throughout the work. The author is presenting a lot of really good info, some straight from Newton's manuscripts, and info about what Newton read, but he makes repeated judgements about Newton's attitudes that make me wonder if he has fully synthesized Newton's life circumstances.
When he makes offhand remarks about Newton's seething anger with Trinitaran Christian dogma being over the top, I wonder if he would make similar criticisms of my friends' extreme anger with the current state of our government.
So there i was, seriously irritated with the constant, obligatory negative remarks about alchemists. One day they will say of us, "They believed a big man in a red suit rode a sled through the sky and brought presents to allll the children in the world," and how many of us will recognize that we are on the receiving end of the same prejudiced sloppy thinking that we use to describe the studious work of our ancestors.
I like to look at charts of the sky to see what's up when I notice strong emotions rising in me. Mars rising. Mars in Gemini. I felt a militancy about communication rising at that moment.
You could say I believe Mars rising was associated with that moment. Especially if you take 'belief' to mean 'holding something dear.'. But you must then remember the same could be said about nuclear physicists and their color charges of quarks. Poetic language is a tool to aid the memory. Making intellectual connections between various natural phenomena is a way of organizing the sensory input of the world we live in.
Throwing Newton and other students of nature in the same category as people who take colorful stories as literal truth reflects badly on the categorizers.
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