Enchanted science

Alchemical thinking helped lead the Society to interpret the implications of modem atomic theory in a way that emphasized the unity of matter (and even of energy) that saw oneness, rather than disunity and distinctness, as a major substratum of atomic theory and that pushed to spiritualize this principle. This grasping for ever simpler and more basic unity is, of course, not so uncommon an impulse in twentieth-century physics. (Consider unified field theories, and even the Theory of Everything in more recent physics.) Alchemy allowed the scientists and Hermeticists of the Alchemical Society to re-enchant science by positing the origins of the modem scientific push for unity in ancient Hermetic spirituality. 

Instrumentalist views of science challenge strongly these views of the subject. Steve Fuller, a sociologist and philosopher, has, for example, cast these differences in the form of a contrast between disenchanted science and enchanted science, contrasted in Table 1.1 below. 

TABLE 1.1 Differences between Disenchanted Science and Enchanted Science... 

I think there is only one way to science—or to philosophy, for that matter to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part—unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days. 

Sason I hope not, RacheU. .. Chemistry is a magically great science, but we have to be very careful not to end up Uke the Sorcerer s Apprentice, in the symphonic poem by Paul Dukas. He enchanted the broom to do work for him but ended up... 

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