'One Matter' - Empiricism & Alchemy - Discerning Truth from Deception

[Andro]

‘I fell off the Cliffs of Moher and lived to tell the tale’

Certainty is an abstract and unproven concept. It is also not empirically provable, since not all possibilities (which are infinite) can be taken into consideration, unless one is able to dedicate all eternity to exhaust all of them

"Highly probable" would be a more appropriate term than "certain" - and certainly so for die-hard empiricists


One might argue that at least physical death is a certainty for everyone, but, again, one cannot study EVERYONE from all of time, thus an OPEN empirical mind should also account for margins of error.

Declaring "certainty" is shaky ground for an empiricist.

[JDP]

‘I fell off the Cliffs of Moher and lived to tell the tale’

Certainty is an abstract and unproven concept. It is also not empirically provable, since not all possibilities (which are infinite) can be taken into consideration, unless one is able to dedicate all eternity to exhaust all of them

"Highly probable" would be a more appropriate term than "certain" - and certainly so for die-hard empiricists


One might argue that at least physical death is a certainty for everyone, but, again, one cannot study EVERYONE from all of time, thus an OPEN empirical mind should also account for margins of error.

Declaring "certainty" is shaky ground for an empiricist.

Freak accidents do happen every now and then. One American air gunner in WW2 was unbelievably lucky to survive a 20,000 foot fall from a downed B-17 bomber! (look up Alan Magee, one of the luckiest men ever!) But under normal/ordinary conditions, falling off of a cliff will kill you. Take that as a fact.

[Andro]

under normal/ordinary conditions, falling off of a cliff will kill you. Take that as a fact.

You're the one who said "certain death". I posted what I did to challenge the "certainty" claim, not the high statistical probability of dying.

There is NO certainty (only statistical odds, be they high or low) and there are no predictions that can possibly be "certain facts" (because they haven't happened yet), just like there are NO "normal/ordinary" conditions.

You're being surprisingly vague as an empiricist when it suits you...

So please stop cheating by inserting into your equations factors that are vague and open to interpretation, such as "normal/ordinary conditions" (unless you can empirically define what they are)...

Provide empirically measurable PARAMETERS of such conditions!

Provide clear parameters that we can actually insert into the probability equation, and then, and only then, IF the result is 100% (unlikely), I might take you seriously!

BUT, if you predict "certainty" instead of calculated odds (and consider your predictions to be "facts") - you're not an empiricist, you're a believer and a self-proclaimed prophet - and your "empirical" debates are no more than religious wars!

Attaching the term FACT to events that have not happened yet, categorizes your approach to such debates as irrational and, if anything, more "mystically" inclined.

Replace "fact" with "highly probable", and you're back in the land of empirical reasoning.

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[JDP]

You're the one who said "certain death". I posted what I did to challenge the "certainty" claim, not the high statistical probability of dying.

There is NO certainty (only statistical odds, be they high or low) and there are no predictions that can possibly be "certain facts" (because they haven't happened yet), just like there are NO "normal/ordinary" conditions.

You're being surprisingly vague as an empiricist when it suits you...

So please stop cheating by inserting into your equations factors that are vague and open to interpretation, such as "normal/ordinary conditions" (unless you can empirically define what they are)...

Provide empirically measurable PARAMETERS of such conditions!

Provide clear parameters that we can actually insert into the probability equation, and then, and only then, IF the result is 100% (unlikely), I might take you seriously!

BUT, if you predict "certainty" instead of calculated odds (and consider your predictions to be "facts") - you're not an empiricist, you're a believer and a self-proclaimed prophet - and your "empirical" debates are no more than religious wars!

Attaching the term FACT to events that have not happened yet, categorizes your approach to such debates as irrational and, if anything, more "mystically" inclined.

Replace "fact" with "highly probable", and you're back in the land of empirical reasoning.

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It goes without saying that falling down from a cliff or an airplane where there is nothing along your falling path that might gradually slow down your fall you will die. Those are the "normal/ordinary" conditions. Now, if you fall off of a cliff/plane where there is something along your descending path that might slow down your fall, then the conditions would be met by which you might survive such an event. But this falls under the realm of "coincidence". The fact that such freakish events of incredible good luck only happen rarely should tell you that they are not the normal/ordinary conditions but the exceptions.

[Andro]

Regardless, referring as "fact" to something that has not occurred yet is acting like a prophet, not an empiricist. An empiricist would speak in terms of statistical odds, not of certainty.

It goes without saying that falling down from a cliff or an airplane where there is nothing along your falling path that might gradually slow down your fall you will die. Those are the "normal/ordinary" conditions.

Still, we've made some progress. You have defined the parameter referred to as "normal/ordinary circumstances", although by using the term "nothing" in the definition - which is an abstract, UN-provable concept. Define "nothing" and then we can progress some more.

[JDP]

Regardless, referring as "fact" to something that has not occurred yet is acting like a prophet, not an empiricist. An empiricist would speak in terms of statistical odds, not of certainty.



Still, we've made some progress. You have defined the parameter referred to as "normal/ordinary circumstances", although by using the term "nothing" in the definition - which is an abstract, UN-provable concept. Define "nothing" and then we can progress some more.

"Nothing along your falling path that might gradually slow down your fall" means exactly what it implies: any physical object that could slow down your fall without it killing you first. In the case of Alan Magee cited above, that "something" that saved his life against such incredible odds was the glass panels on the ceiling of the train station where he ended up falling into (can you believe that guy's incredible luck?!) It slowed him down enough to survive the impact when he hit the solid ground of the station. Had that glass ceiling not been there, he would have died from the massive trauma to pretty much all his body when he had hit either a more solid roof material or the solid ground at full free-falling speed.

[Andro]

Had that glass ceiling not been there, he would have died.

OK.

"He would have died" - is this a "fact" or a highly probable scenario?

Also, have you factored for other possible variables, even if highly unlikely, statistically speaking?

Please note that I am not contesting the very high probability, but the re-branding those high odds as "fact".

And going back to alchemy - in your view, is the production of the Stone from 'one matter' highly unlikely, or a factual impossibility?

[JDP]

OK.

"He would have died" - is this a "fact" or a highly probable scenario?

Also, have you factored for other possible variables, even if highly unlikely, statistically speaking?

Please note that I am not contesting the very high probability, but the re-branding those high odds as "fact".

Since there was nothing else between him and the ground that could have slowed him down, I'd say it is about 99.9% sure he would have died from the full speed free-fall impact.

And going back to alchemy - in your view, is the production of the Stone from 'one matter' highly unlikely, or a factual impossibility?

It is highly unlikely for a few reasons: 1- the large number of seekers throughout history who failed by trying to follow such an over-simplistic approach (one would expect that a claim that has been floating around for some 2000 years would have actually produced a much higher rate of success if it really was true that only one single substance is required, and in fact alchemy should have ceased to be "mystery" to most people a long time ago if it in fact was really so easy and simple as to require nothing else but one single starting substance) 2- accumulated empirical experience hasn't found yet any single substance that can perform all the things the alchemists describe (like the multitude of color & phase changes) during the making of the Stone 3- people who are historically known (i.e. by the witness accounts of independent observers who were not alchemists themselves) to have had the Stone do not describe the process as being carried out with only one single starting substance (some of them, like "Mundanus", for example, still pay lip-service to the old theory that the matter of the Stone is supposedly "found everywhere", but when it comes to the nitty-gritty, they pull out the also old excuse that "some matters work better than others" and then proceed to describe the making of the Stone very obviously as the interaction between several starting substances, but, of course, never under the real, common, ordinary names that everyone knows for those substances but under "decknamen" in order to not make it easy to figure out.)

[Andro]

falling off of a cliff will kill you. Take that as a fact.

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I'd say it is about 99.9% sure he would have died

It is highly unlikely

Highly unlikely = NOT impossible.

Now we're making progress!

[Avatar]

My understanding is that this one matter is mercury. An that mercury is a prepared substance.
So in this, it depends what your goal is.
Say I go the plant route.
I can extract the oil.
I can burn the body. Then suspend the ash and siphon off the upper liquid, dry, repeat in order to procure a fine body.
I can even burn the oil to procure it's salt.
To be quicker I could burn the body and catch the smoke, an then extract the oil. The smoke will be finer than any refined ash gained through refining ash.
I feel alchemy is the realm of nano particles.
In plant or metal alchemy, it is an attempt to extract the virtue of substance from the poisonous aspect. Purification an then increasing the potency of the virtue.

Any particle made nano size penetrates the body easily.
Smoke at best is what? 0.2 micrometers?
Grinding can bring you to a very small size. A ball mill is very effective for this. Coupled with repeated moistening and drying may yield a smaller size. For it makes substances more brittle. Yet! That is for plants.
I have heard reports that gold is sometimes toxic, sometimes not at a nano size. I have not really heard a reasoning behind it being toxic at times. More research needed.
Also have heard it takes on multiple colors at a nano size.

Yet nano gold is usually made from a bottom up approach, not a top down method.
Hypothetically gold is the hardest substance to work with No?
That's if we say gold is a literal substance to work with, an we are working with metals.
Meaning mercury can be prepared with a weaker more impure metal. An is more easily done in that way.

Many work with morning 'dew'. Hell many praise it.
If it is hot during the day, cold at night. An the earth is moist, dew will be heavy. Fog is a dew concentrate. A water colloid near the earth. It takes special tempatures for fog to appear.
It is the earth pushing it's moisture out, anything light enough to be carried up comes with it. Nano and micro and any biological component small enough ascend with it.
A body is not fine enough until it ascends during distillation and evaporation.

No answers here. Just ideas.