Modern Alchemy

How does the world in which we live work? Getting down to the basics, it is the proper placement of certain materials in certain geometric patterns. What does one do to build a computer? You need to place silicon in a certain matrix along with copper and many other materials. They have to be exacting or the computer will not work. How is this any different than Alchemy? Did they not claim that arranging matter (candles, elements, stuff) in certain patterns could change the physical world? How do reactors and bombs work? Every device we create is based on taking some sort of matter and putting it in some other space in relationship to other matter based on some pattern. That is all that there is.

What if there are more complex rules of matter placement? What we have now is built up from a small number of observations, ie put lead near acid and you get an electric potential, put this near certain wires and you get current flow, etc. What if there were some other path? Some other effects that we are skimming over, but which would for the basis of a new science? Science doesn't say what we are doing right now is the only truth - science is just a method of creating reproducible results and building on them. If we had a different set of base methods, science tells us we could have a very different set of higher level effects.

I believe there is more to our universe than we have currently discovered. Look at how long it took us to realize radiation exists, a fundamental property of matter that has existed since the beginning of time. There are entirely different things we could be doing, if we build up the set of tools in this new way, a set of tools equivalent to what we have in our current way. The path we are searching now will not lead to this other path, it requires looking at basic principals and moving them forward with devices based on these principals which then will allow further discovers, etc. Industry allows science to advance, then science allows industry to advance - back and forth, building up to something. We need this kind of feedback loop for other possible principals that might exist.

100 years from now, something that we all believe to be 100% true right now, will found to be totally false. What will it be? Who will discover it? Will it lead to this new set of principals? It will appear as magic to us, but as a science to those who practice it. Who wants to start the New Alchemy?

-Edward