Alchemy, Science and the Quest for Immortality
My earlier two-episode vampire analysis has prompted me to thinking about the quest for immortality, which is probably as old as mankind. The first known hero story, that of the Sumerian Gilgamesh, has the prince unsuccessfully seeking the plant that would bestow him immortality. In the Bible, the first human beings, Adam and Eve, were apparently created immortal only to lose the gift due to evil temptation. Adam and Eve’s story assumes that humanity was initially meant to be immortal. But if immortality is the natural state of mankind, would it be possible to recover it by some means?
I shall conspicuously pick from the countless attempts at achieving immortality those related to alchemy. Commonly described as the art of making gold, alchemy often had the goal of achieving life-extension or immortality. In fact, scholars consider that life extension, not gold was the foremost goal of Chinese alchemy (1). In the West, the attainment of the elixir vitae was initially secondary to the art of goldmaking (2). The first author to emphasize it was the Arab alchemist Jabir (3). He conceived of the “elixir vitae”, another name for the magical Philosopher’s Stone, which transformed metals into gold. The alchemists who came to possess the Stone would then be expected to live many years, or even forever.
From this concept an entire legend of immortal alchemists was born. One of the earliest embodiments was the French alchemist Nicholas Flamel (1330 – 1418), which was reputed to have faked his own death (4) and was recently featured in a novel as an ‘immortal’ (5). The Renaissance magus Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, though less associated with alchemy, was portrayed as having lived several hundreds of years in Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal (6). Yet perhaps the most influential ‘immortal’ in his age was the mysterious Count of St Germain, whom I have talked about in my previous article. He was reputed to have lived hundreds or even thousands of years, a legend that he apparently cultivated as well (7).
It was in the Renaissance that the idea of ‘elixir vitae’ and of an universal medicine became the main ideal of alchemy. The physician Paracelsus proclaimed that the purpose of alchemists must be to cure illness, rather than make gold (8). His followers dedicated themselves to finding the miraculous elixir vitae. Van Helmont, one of the later alchemists, also believed the prolongation of life was possible, although not immortality (9).
As the rationalism of science progressed in the 1700s, the alchemist’s claims to obtaining a life-extending elixir were attacked as being either absurd (in scientific circles) or demonic (in religiously influenced circles). After all, the Christian Church could only frown upon concerns for the extension of one’s mortal life as opposite to caring for the afterlife. Thus, the image of Faust – the alchemist who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for immortality and pleasure – became widespread in the literature of the 1600 and 1700s (10).
Yet if the 17th and 18th century scientists launched a scathing attack on alchemists for their attempt to extend life, they did not shy away from coveting immortality themselves. In other words, it wasn’t immortality or life extension that they questioned, but the methods of achieving them. For scientists, the only way towards longevity involved scientific experimentation and the use of reason. Thus, Descartes, Francis Bacon, Franklin, and above all the Marquis de Condorcet believed in the possibility of achieving human immortality through science (11). Even Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, maintained that the goal of immortality was attainable through human evolution (12). It was mainly against these scientific dreams of immortality that the Romantics conceived the notion of the ‘lonely’ or ‘accursed’ immortal. As Roberts points out, their work suggest that the extension of life can only result in an extension of misery and suffering (13). This is because, for them, the achievement of immortality was pointless without spiritual evolution.
Despite Romantic warnings, the desire for immortality has not ceased to be a human ideal until our very day. Marx, Bergson and several Darwinists thinkers upheld the principle of prolongevity as possible and desirable (14). In the twentieth century, and seeping into ours as well, the possibility of immortality has been hailed by a plethora of semi-sci-fi methods, such as cryonics, mind uploading or cyborgology (transforming humans into cyborgs) (15). By the use of these methods, scientists say, man’s life will be extended indefinitely (16, 17). Yet, if science is often highly optimistic about life extension, the cultural views of physical immortality remain mixed. Pop culture treatments of the vampire or the immortal often harken back to Romanticism, portraying the loneliness, the evil, the boredom or the suffering implied in longevity. Yet in the end, if offered immortality, how many people would actually refuse it? After all, in the absence of an alchemical universal medicine, we do our best to postpone old age or death, by taking pills, healthy foods, beauty products etc – our modern versions of the immortality elixir.
References:
(1) Holmyard, E.J. (1990). Alchemy. New York: Dover Publications.
(2), (3), (14) Gruman, G.J. (1966). A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life: The Evolution of Prolongevity Hypotheses to 1800, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 56 (9), pp. 1-102.
(4), (5) Wikipedia. (2008). Nicholas Flamel. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Flamel. Accessed on 18.01.2009.
(6), (11), (12), (13) Roberts, M. (1990). Gothic Immortals. London: Routledge.
(7) See my earlier article here.
(8) Paracelsus. (2008). Liber Paragranum, in Paracelsus, Essential Theoretical Writings, ed. and trans. by Andrew Weeks. Leiden: Brill.
(9) Pagel, W. (2002). Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.
(10) Culianu, I.P. (2002). Dr Faust, Great Sodomist and Necromancer – Reflections on the Myth, in Culianu, I.P. Mind Games. Bucharest: Polirom.
(15) Wikipedia. (2008). Immortality. Online. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality. Accessed on 18.01.2009.
(16) Smith, D. (2005). 2050 and Immortality is Within our Grasp, The Observer, 22 May. Online. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/may/22/theobserver.technology. Accessed on 18.01.2009.
(17) Schorn D. (2006). The Quest for Immortality: Want to Live 500 Years? One Scientist Says It May Be Possible One Day. CBS News, 1 Jan. Online. Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/28/60minutes/main1168852.shtml. Accessed on 18.01.2009.
Tags: agrippa, alchemists, Alchemy, cryonics, elixir vitae, immortality, life extension, longevity, Paracelsus, philosopher's stone, saint germain, science, van helmont
