Returning to the Basics... Alchemy?

This is my first topic of such discussion... But with all of the cloning debate and talk of chimeric creations... I believe I should place my thoughts somewhere to be discussed. I did not know where to put this... So I appologize. *sweatdrops*Alchemy, as most people know, is bloody magic. *Buzzer Noise* Wrong! We aren't talking about the same alchemy used in the anime FullMetal Alchemist, we're talking about the stage of science that came before chemistry. It was used to create such things as gunpowder, and perhaps, something even more...... In some alchemic texts, there are recipes for such creatures as chimera and homunculi, which is where this topic comes up... But perhaps I should give a description of each...Chimera: a mixture of animals, including or not including humans, that can be created throough scientific processes.Homunculus (Homunculi): 1. A living doll. 2. A man-made-man, created with a mind, body, and spirit, but no actual soul. They can feel as humans do and look as they do... But there are two key differences:1. Homunculi have a totally varying lifespan. If you lived a healthy life, you may live to be somewhere between seventy or eighty. A homunculus may last a few days to a few hundred years.2. Since Homunculi have no soul, they can be referenced as animals would be in the bible. I do not remember the specific verse, but I shall search for it... It says that animals 'shall return to the dust from where they came'... Or something of that nature.Homunculi usually were based off of a person. This person and everything related to them they would take two courses: Either hatred or love. They could hate being a copy, a fake version of someone else, or they could love that person for being the basis of their lives, allowing them to live and breathe...Now, back to my theory.I believe that the cloning studies and chimeric experiments are slowly returning us to the roots of our chemistry, alchemy. This can have terrible side-effects, especially in moral concepts... People of the Christian Faith would likely be outraged if a human-chimpanzee (or, in Scotland's case, human-rabbit) embryo would somehow develop into a living being. They might be given a soul, but there's no way to be sure... As for homunculi, they are likely doomed to hell in the view of this faith.My basic belief: Clones are homunculi, and the chimera are... Well... Chimera.

Thread moved here from the Coffee House forum.

A living human would be a human. Genetically, biologically, socially... in every way. A person.On what basis would anyone deny that person a soul (which they can't see or prove in any case)? Since when does a soul have a genetic component? Deny a soul to a cloned individual and you may as well deny it to one of the individuals in a pair of twins.Denial of a soul to a human being is a dangerous attitude to take. One might be bothered by the simple fact of a person's existence if it challenges one's cherished beliefs about how the world should be. But that is a problem for the observer to overcome. It is certainly nothing the individual being observed controls.History offers a warning. In the past some white Europeans insisted that indigenous Americans did not have souls or that Africans did not have souls. For them to allow that those peoples were human beings jarred with their set ideas of how the world should be. Their denial of a soul to these persons rationalized horrific crimes.That is no attitude to take. Ever. Not a good way to go.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Grammar.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

What cloning debate, most of the 'debate' you are referring to has been centered around Korea's massive failure of scientific integrity. That is a straw man variation of alchemy, the reality of it was alchemy was mostly the search of changing lead to gold. The mixture of strange things and tonics that ended up causing heavy metal poisoning was the larger by product of alchemy. Not exactly, gun powder is chemistry. Alchemy is not chemistry. Alchemy is more like shooting blanks, figuring if you mix one thing with the next along some obscure fakery, something nice and 'beneficial' would arise. Could you perhaps refrence to a so called alchemic text? I would question how you came to this form of conclusion. Notably it seems like you've a flawed notion of how genetics as well as biological systems work. Also you seem to have a strange concept at what a human is.And what defines a human has been a question that has been very difficult to pin down. And one that has a very large set of implications...

Actually, it's humans that return to dust:

quote:

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Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

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firstly you need to know that , currently to produce a clone you need a host , if you want to clone a sheep you need a mummy sheep , a mummy pig will not work , the development from egg to birth is dependant on the host . thus the clones egg goe through the same stages in the host as any other egg .secondly your chimp -human idea is a nice example of the miss reperenting of genetics and cloning ...if you wanted to mix a chimp and human which bits of each would you take ??whos immune system , whos blood type , whos mussle structure , whos teeth , hair , skin , sweat glands , hormone regulator systems , whos digestive tract , .....its not a pick and mix where you can say ill just have the chimps arms but ill keep the humans legs ..thirdly my understanding is that alchemy has little to do with chemistry , beyond using so of the same compounds and elements , you could equally say sailing a 3 masted schoneris the same as playing a violin .. both need something made of wood and to be strung correctlty for you to use . ... but are markedly differeent .Newton , normal considered a top brain spent most of his life working on alchemy .. and as far as i know made no discoveries , and added nothing to the pool of knowledge from all that work .lastly the so called making of homunculi and chimeras revolved around isolating and maniputaling the metaphysical essesnce of the life force of the alchemist or other creatures ....
as none of this has any scientific bases , and has not appeared in any genetices review i have come across , and play no part in sciences .cloning is in fact just the ultermate form of selective breeding , taking the comman human cultural trait of breeding with members of the same ethinic and social group ...cloning is the exteme of picking a father / mother for your off spring by what you "like" , its still involves a egg and a period of development in a host .

It's a bit looser then that. A like animal would do the job. Cloning a zebra can be done though gestation in a common horse. You assume who's doing the mixing will be able to pull the proper genes and get them to interact properly not only in providing the necessary information but the growth hormones in proper amounts and timing. That's more or less guesswork and the outcomes of the many failures is assured to be pretty grizzly. Transgenetic god playing is a bad idea when it comes to mixing a sizable number of genes. Yes and no. Alchemy is the process of turning non-gold materials into Gold. That involves chemistry and the knowledge of protons and neutrons. Alchemy is quite possible today. It's bloody expensive and really quite stupid as the easiest and cheapest material to turn into gold is platinum (after the energy costs of running a particle accelerator). Not really bright given that Platinum is worth far more on the commodity markets then gold. The no part is that ancient alchemy had little to do with practical chemistry, even when useful materials were created through trial and error.

like the guy who invented white phosphorous.Decided to mix his urine with ammonia (?), and well, let's just say that pee, no matter how yellow in color, can make gold. explosions, yes, gold, no.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

hmm.I've almost had the full EvC experience.
first double post.
so far, no suspensions or bannings for me . . .yet.Edited by kuresu, : my browser's an idiot

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

there's nothing like the smell of exploding alchemists in the morning wouldn't you say?

From what I know of alchemy, I would have to agree. The main premise of alchemy was, "What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the one thing." Its practitioners believed that matter reflected the world of the spirit in its nature, albeit in a corrupted and hidden form; and that prayerful manipulation of matter had the potential to actualize spiritual truths in a very real way. The alchemist and the prima materia were locked together in a profound spiritual transformation, or so they believed. If I understand correctly, the homunculus was analogous to the prima materia, the earth void and without form, the whole child with the potential for all that we can become.In other words, the alchemists, because they so little understood the true nature of matter, were able to project the contents of their psyches upon it, imagining that the things that occurred within their retorts were a mirror to their own inner workings and the beliefs they attached to them. Jung believed alchemy to be the forerunner both of modern chemistry and depth psychology.I think we still tend to make similar projections, not upon aspects of science that we understand, but upon those that still remain mysterious to us. For the uninitiated, the cutting edge of science can still raise the hair on the backs of our necks, conjuring deep forboding of monstrousness or numinous shivers of miraculousness.