SciShow - 2025-10-17
Alchemy might seem to us like the dark, shameful side of chemistry. Yet alchemists, through the pursuit of turning lead into gold via transmutation, were sincerely trying to understand how the world works. And no one shows it better than the great Sir Isaac Newton himself. In this SciShow Deep Dive, learn how alchemy has always been a science. This video was made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. To learn more, head to https://sloan.org/programs/public-understanding Order your alchemy-themed t-shirt, and all SciShow merch here: https://complexly.store/collections/scishow Special thanks to Dr. William Newman and Dr. Justin Sledge (https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel) Hosted by: Tom Lum (he/him) ---------- Support us for $8/month on Patreon and keep SciShow going! https://www.patreon.com/scishow Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support Join our SciShow email list to get the latest news and highlights: https://mailchi.mp/scishow/email ---------- Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: Jaap Westera, Alex Hackman, Blood Doctor Kelly, Toyas Dhake, Matt Curls, Piya Shedden, Jason A Saslow, Kevin Knupp, J.V. Rosenbalm, Garrett Galloway, Steve Gums, David Johnston, Bethany Matthews, Chris Curry, Chris Peters, Chris Mackey, Jeremy Mattern, Adam Brainard, Kevin Bealer, Alan Wong, Joseph Ruf, Lyndsay Brown, Cye Stoner, Jp Lynch, Eric Jensen, Friso ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? SciShow Tangents Podcast: https://scishow-tangents.simplecast.com/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scishow Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/scishow.bsky.social #SciShow #science #education #learning #complexly ---------- Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTHDOz1stR4Un1jii8k6ZKGOv9vqwEo4BHN2A_yt9TPjurg7AGWWISSRZUn2bh11T9oOQURDQMqN3GL/pub
No wonder alchemists failed; they were obsessed with antimony. In order to make gold, you need to be pro-money.
That joke didn't make much ¢ents. Then again, neither did the alchemists. They might've been rich in vision, but they could only make fool's gold
@phoenixthedragonling antimony for anti-money what do you mean ?
@kaiserhowenzollern1546whoosh
@kaiserhowenzollern1546cents
@kaiserhowenzollern1546 uh-oh. Someone needs to recount the ca$h in their register 😅
The idea that alchemy bridged mysticism and modern chemistry says a lot about how science evolves through trial and imagination. It’s a great reminder that progress often starts where logic meets wonder.
having had the ability to figure out things no one had before, i can't fault him for thoroughly investigating alchemy. it seems he hit a dead end, even though without the knowledge of nuclear physics, he may have figured out that certain parts of alchemy aren't outright untrue, but can only be achieved in insignificant amounts...
The study of genetics began in a monastery. Wild that churches push back so hard against the idea of natural selection and evolution
@blkwhtrbbt I think that happens because of the knowledge "gatekeepers" that feed on their ego and want to keep their power. Happens in our times too on all scales. And I believe we also all do it with different types of information within our own bubble context. In the context you present yes is true it was the church, but it's just because the discovery also happened there. Most probably happened previously too, just the idea never survived the context and surfaced in mani stream public. We also lose knowledge over time. Even if it's written down, we have created so much and still do that some ideas go back into the void, just to be rediscovered again in new times.
@TechnoMageCreator Eh, it’s probably moreso that churches stopped being the place where people did research — universities (slowly) became that place. Prior to universities basically being patrons for scientific research, you had two choices: rich person or cool monastery (unless you were really lucky and were associated with one of the very few 19th century Prussian universities that required faculty engage in the production of knowledge). If Mendel had been born 50 years later, it’s entirely possible we would have seen his research coming out of an early research university.
Funnily enough, Newton WAS a professor of mathematics at Cambridge — but he was paid to teach, not do research. All of his research was considered “amateur,” since it wasn’t done as his paid profession. This is one of the reasons he left Cambridge to become Master of the Mint; it offered him more time for his research than teaching did, and it moved him to London, closer to the Royal Society. And part of the point of the Royal Society was to create a “learned body of collegiate scholars to facilitate scholarly communication.” Most members were either independently wealthy “amateur” scientists, or people of various professions — including university professor.
…aaamd I’ll just cut everything else I just sort of randomly barfed up about how research in America functioned and changed, because I apparently got on my soapbox and got on a roll. 😂 Woops!
I think it's kinda cool that the difference between metals DID turn out to be about a ratio, but it turned out to be the ratio of subatomic particles rather than the atoms themselves. If you turn your head and squint a little, it kinda feels like they were close in a way; they just didn't have the tools.
"If our understanding of nature is correct, and nature can produce gold, we should be able to produce gold." That such a good way of looking at it, and even though they were going down the wrong track, the philosophy is spot on! I mean, in modern times, we can produce gold, in particle accelerators. It's not financially viable, not even close, but that was never the point. We know that gold is created when atoms are smashed together at high speeds in supernovae, and now we can do the same thing.
Immediately made me think of organic life stemming from chemicals.
If it can happen, we should be able to do it dammit.
@ninjabiatch101 we very likely could, but chemical processes tend to produce both left handed and right handed organic molecules, whereas life only ever sticks to one or the other. If we accidentally make "Mirror life", it could be very very bad.
We haven't seen nature produce philosopher's stone though big problem
@aeghohloechu5022 sure but the idea was that a philosophers stone would simulate nature. "if nature can make gold, we should be able to make something that can make gold"
Harry Potter and the Neutron Star
The thing is you can change other metals into gold but the furnace has to be an exploding star.
Haha yeah, for a while I’ve been saying the Sun can be considered almost a philosophers stone since when they explode, they create tons of different elements
Or a nuclear reactor.
They’ve turned some lead atoms into gold in the LHC but I don’t think that’s a very practical way to make counterfeit coins lol
More like colliding neutron stsrs but yeah
@zinv47 What's the difference?
One of the biggest changes from medieval math and science to modern math and science was publishing the research and results in ways that could be easily understood and replicated. The medieval mathematicians and alchemists were trying to keep their trade secrets, hampering the growth of the fields as people had to keep reinventing the wheel.
Some academians are still like this, unfortunately. Thankfully, most will publish eventually.
That makes a lot of sense.
Except their "trade secrets" were failure. None of them could produce any result that would constitute having a trade secret to achieve it. Unless total failure was the goal.
@kkjhn41Failure, when rigorous, is a useful result that should be shared.
Yes this does seem to be the case! In how we understand science now, the perhaps most important part of its philosophy is "consensus". By keeping trade secrets it seems like no consensus could be made. It does not surprise me that chemistry then would want to have a schism with alchemy.
Dr. Justin Sledge AND Fullmetal Alchemist talk? This is one of the best episodes yet!
Lol was such a geeky and adorbs rant.
Alex originally included a joke that referenced FMA as "that anime with the thing with the dog" (which was hilarious to me, personally), but it turns out Tom is a HUGE FMA fan and so we absolutely gave him the opportunity to gush about the show!
-Savannah
@SciShow Too soon, bro. Too soon
@SciShow "That anime with the thing and the dog" is such a fantastically good bad summary of FMA 😂
Immediate like with Dr. Justin Sledge, his work and explanatory skills are incredible.
Glad to be on, thanks!
It was a wonderful surprise to see you on the show. Keeping doing your wonderful work. Love your channel for my studies.
It was wonderful to see you here. Two of my favorite channels working together.
I LOVE THIS COLLAB
Your episode on how philosophers confronted witchcraft was fantastic. I finished it right before watching this video, and thought your comment here was a bug lol
I audibly gasped. Yay for collaborative knowledge sharing!
Maybe the true philosopher stone was the science we did along the way
The real philosophers stone are particle accelerators and fusion plasmas.
Bar
the FMA cut-off rambling is absolutely perfect, thank you!!
My daughter and her friends are deeply into Manga, anime, cosplay, and anything Japanese. The FMA rambling made me grin, because it's fun when fans get so excited. 😊
I just watched Sacred Star of Milos today, & no, that movie is godawful.
@TheLithp thanks for not letting him talk me into watching any movie after the og fma 03 movie debacle lol.. the sudden mix with world war in our world lol. Also, I didn't trust him that much when he said 03 was just bh with more subplots, very misleading as it does have that, but the fact the storry made up in the second half is unhinged is more important lol. They only did the Nina amd Alexander story more emotional and a slow burn. Those sickos!! Lol
Heck yes! No discipline emerges as an unblemished fait accompli. To paraphrase Ms. Frizzle, in order to learn, we have to make mistakes & get messy. It's about time Alchemy & Chymistry were recognized as an important & worthwhile part of Science History.
That's like saying the path through the Rockies was actually rightly explored as being northeast of St Louis because the ultimate path ended up having tree roots on it as well. Alchemy was utter nonsense. Just because someone found an actual method doesn't make it not nonsense.
If I imagine a method of reaching the moon by concentrating really hard, it isn't salvaged because someone invented rocket science.
Your sentiment is nonsense.
@mastpg this is a good argument until you realized it was chinese alchemist who discovered rocketry first. Then experimentations of european alchemist in corning and ratio made them more effiecient.Modern science stepped in and discovered that combustion had 2 ingredients oxidizer and fuel.Rocketry existed way longer than modern science. Just because modern science can send rockets into space doesnt undermine the achievements of the ancient people that made them fly first.
@Christmas_Gman That's as good a point as saying that we should mention the first person ever to climb a hill in Edmund Hillary's obituary.
@mastpg mfw the point of the first comment is that it's important to honor and remember where we came from.modern empirical science did not generate from the either it evolved from alchemist banging chemicals together and slowly figuring out how that knowledge could be better evolved.
Also how is that quote directly related to the actual historical scientific development of rocketry over the millennia.
@mastpglike we know for a historical fact that evolution of rocketry was. Gunpowder, corning and chemical ratio, combustion theory, modern rocketry. It's not some abstract event when a caveman first climbed a hill and from there we climbed mount everest .
I studied chemistry in college. The thing that I love more than anything is that chemistry, in a way, is magic. It's just atoms & how they're arranged for each element. That is astounding. Obviously, chemistry is so much more, but it does feel a bit magical.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
— Arthur C. Clarke
Stare at the parts that make up atoms long enough and you'll start seeing mana
@TechBlade9000Personally I see Chi
Chemistry is probably the single most important science for modern society, almost everything we take for granted comes from chemistry and it's a shame that chemistry is often seen as one of the most boring sciences.
The more we learn about history, the more obvious it becomes that we have so much more in common with our ancestors than most people realize.
like learning about not just that the world is round(ish) but how big, using a pair of poles, and people now 'not understanding' the results because they're creationists
There literally just use
Humans have remained functionally unchanged for over 100,000 years. If you took a baby from the stone age, brought it to the modern world, and raised it normally, it's highly probable that it would develop just like any modern child. The same likely applies to the reverse, from the few case studies of children subjected to abuse through extreme isolation.
The only substantial difference is that we have the benefit of starting our lives on the foundations of thousands of years of collective knowledge and infrastructure. It's all artificial.
@ashureanIt's not artificial. Obligate sapience is what sets humans apart from other animals
The fruit never falls away from the tree.
The thing is that alchemists were kinda right. They just didnt know about atoms yet but if you bombard an element with protons and nuetrons you can change them from one element to another. Its how we make the man made heavy radioactive elements. You can in fact turn lead to gold, it just takes more energy and money than it would be worth to do and the result will be radioactive to some degree. They werent 100% wrong, they were just lacking important details.
Large Hadron Collider = philosophers stone?
Eh. They arrived at one correct, simple prediction - it is physically possible to convert one metal into another - for very wrong reasons. That still makes them pretty wrong. Like, they had a 50 50 chance on that one.
@XxThunderflamexX
Not any more wrong than any of us really.
nah, they thought gold was a compound rather than an element. They couldn't be more wrong on that. That nuclear was later discovered is not a credit to them.
Actually gold was obtained from lead now in laboratory, but in so little quantity and so expensive to worth or count.
Tom Lum, Esoterica, AND Sir Isaac Newton alchemy stuff? Awesome!
It's gonna be hard to top a stacked combo like this
This one really was filled to the brim
Funny thing is that modern particle physics allows transmutation of lead into gold in beam colliders. So we ended up achieving transmutation in the end eventually, actually long ago, well before we made any gold, just with other elements and processes of more scientific interest.
I think our society foolishly thinks we are currently at man’s intellectual pinnacle. I think there have been many iterations of mankind that were much more intelligent and advanced than we are today
@PiandI-o5r i would say we are still the apex, but we have lost the wisdom of the old days. no caution in the institutions, the capitalists have corrupted the system.
@paradoxica424I think our history was whitewashed around 300 years ago.
@PiandI-o5r hmm, I don't know about that, a much simpler explanation is, that we just have a lot more people to think and connect with,
And also looking at the past has a f ton of survival bias baked in it, you will only see people who overachieved and it paints the ancient world filled with geniuses,
Yet our current knowledge base is actually very massive and we're rediscovering lost things and making it harder to be lost again, most of it is kinda hidden though if you don't know what to look for in the vast ocean of academia and general resources, (information =/= knowledge afterall, just think about the library of babel, most of it is junk and it's actually equivalent to just trying random stuff, unfortunately we're filling the internet with random info (AI) so thats another thing to be concerned about)
And... Thankfully not everyone lives in the west,
It was neat seeing the articles earlier this year about this happening at the LHC. We truly used a city-sized circle to achieve the effects of the Philosopher’s Stone.
The "philosopher's stone" turned out to be the Demon Core. While it can rarely turn very tiny amounts of mercury into gold, it did not grant immortality. Quite the opposite in fact.
accurate synopsis
Now that’s a story worth a deep dive! Oh sure, let’s just tickle the dragon’s tail… 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
I mean, it technically did make everyone it irradiated immune to death by old age...
By killing them with acute radiation sickness, sure, but there's no need to sweat the details, right?
you just havent tried enough, wolverine got his immortality from it
We did an episode about the demon core a while back (which was the first I had heard of it) and it boggles my mind. If ever there was a cursed object, it is a sphere of plutonium. -Savannah
I like longer format videos like this one. I'm sure they take a lot of work, but it is appreciated. Edit: also, history of science is fascinating stuff.
The significance of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood is that it's story is much closer to the manga's.
"Edward"
But 03 is better.
my man weebed out for a moment 😂😂❤
@mattesteI used to think that but we were wrong
@liamsloan5410 to pull the joke off right you have to hyphenate it "ed-ward"
We're really eating good today
Great presentation of an overlooked and complicated subject.
When I was a classics major, I bumped into the roots of alchemy now and again, observing how the thought experiments of early Greek mathematicians and philosophers made the transition from theory to real-world applications like predicting astronomical events for timekeeping, geometry for surveying and and construction, and mathematics leading to a whole new appreciation for and study of music.
As scientists (Latin for "knowers") began to uncover underlying principles of the natural world and even the heavens, they were astonished by the harmony, the poetry, even, in these hidden "laws of nature."
These adepts of hidden knowledge sought to explain or at least acknowledge these underlying patterns and principles as something profound, divine, intentional. So they came up with philosophical frameworks and symbolic metaphors that modern science sees no need for today. They imagined the music of the spheres. They drew up elaborate hierarchies for the Great Chain of Being. They remixed Sun and Moon and the old pagan gods as metaphors for forces and principles. It seems unscientific now, but this was before science narrowed its focus to HOW the world works (things that can be tested and proven by real-world experimentation), before it handed off questions of WHY and SO WHAT? to philosophy and religion.
The big shift from ancient to medieval/alchemical science was experimentation. The Greek philosophrr Democritus as far back as the 5th century BC had theorized that everything was made of atoms (a+tomos, un+divisible), tiny particles that couldn't be cut. Later "atomists" like Lucretius proposed truly prescient theories — sorry, in science they're hypotheses — using arrangements of atoms to explain states of matter, smells, even genetic inheritance... but these ideas were all based on reason, extrapolation and analogy.
The alchemists made the jump to experimental science, but it was early days, so they were making up the rules — and they clung very strongly to the "so WHAT' philosophical side of early western science to give their flailing a sense of meaning and legitimacy.
The reason they got so hooked on metallurgy is that the manufacture of metal is pretty darn, well, metal. It seems like magic. Most metals don't exist in purified form. Onr has to grind up raw ore, heat it, and refine it with chemical processes (often adding additional chemicals/substances) to reveal the "true" metal hidden inside. And to get truly useful metals like bronze (which looks like gold) or steel (discovered by Newton's day), one combines base metals like tin, copper. and iron, transmuting them through difficult processes into new, "nobler" substances. At least, that's what it looked like.
Yet mined gold typically was found as nuggets or veins, unadulterated (thry thought) by other metals. Why shouldn't they be able to uncover the physical process through which the earth refined and melted away all its baser materials to make gold?
Such an underrated comment, thanks for spreading your knowledge and putting my vague ideas into coherent words
I’m really glad I read through this, that metallurgy perspective is something I’ve never thought of and really helps one understand intent of ancient peoples
Just to clarify, steel is almost as old as iron use itself, unless you use meteoric iron the process of refining iron will always yield carbon impurities which is what gives steel it's properties.
I love seeing Esoterica get some love!
❤🎉
YOU GUYS FEATURED ESOTERICA!!!!! (My absolute favorite YouTuber!)
Are you a ww2 veteran
@DeRocco21No. Are you?
@DeRocco21 Why the question? Anyone can be antifa
I like Esoterica and was delighted by the collaboration.
I also admire your handle and icon. These days I'm so twitchy about hidden fascism that my brain saw the swastika and reacted for a microsecond before I registered the 🚫. Classy!1😅✌️🖖
@margaretwordnerd5210Thank you! I'm always encouraged when people comment positively on the ANTI-swastika. It has been my pfp since February, and you definitely wouldn't have been the first to mistake it.
Lol! Can you imagine someone with a swastika Pic fangirling over Dr. Sledge?!?!😂
Green Lion was the name of a superhero I made up when I was nine. Proud to find out I was actually channeling ancient alchemical wisdom.
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
-Uncle Ben, & apparently Isaac Newton too.
Okay the FMA rant was pretty great lol
I'm glad they did, every time I see anything alchemy related I figure it deserves a shout out
My late son went through a fanatical FMA phase as a teen. Thanks for the memories.
That was hilarious.
Comedy gold. Also wholly accurate.
I'm so here for it!
As someone who loves the history of magic and when our understanding gradually advanced from supernatural to scientific this is my new favorite scishow video. Wizards, shamans and alchemists were often very smart - they were just operating from assumptions that were incomplete. The magical traditions of the past may not teach us to understand the universe but they can teach us a lot about how humans learn, think and interpret.
10/10.
The FMA digressions were very charming. Took me back to middle school...
This why i love science history. Getting a glimps into what the 'geniuses' of the past were cooking up, regardless of if we now know they were 'wrong'. Science is a ladder of trial, error, and the will to continue.
Its why when people ask me 'If u could go back in time, when?' I often say 'during the golden age of medicine in the middle east or during newton or voltiers time' 😊
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," is usually attributed to Isaac Newton, and I thought about that quote a lot while this episode was in production. We're only where we are today because people in the past did things wrong, and we learned from that!
-Savannah
The esoterica/scishow collab was unexpected, but amazing. Dr Sledge is one of my favorites.
It's extremely important that we understand the history of human knowledge to really get what science is about — and alchemy is absolutely part of that history.
One aspect I love about FMA:B was that they kept this alchemy written in code aspect. Marcoh's notes on the Philosopher's Stone were written as a series of cook books, and Ed's notes were coded as a travel log.
extensive alchemical experiments with heavy metals, including drinking some of the mixtures, may have led to mercury poisoning, which some historians believe contributed to a serious mental breakdown he suffered around 1693.
Also many believe the reason his hair was gray wasn't from age yet poisoning from his practice.
This was FASCINATING! and what a treat to see Tom again! 😁 I love these deep-dive, look at it complexly format videos!
This topic is literally the basis for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In fact, the character Victor Frankenstein's academic development seems to be modeled on Isaac Newton.
5:02 the talking, floating head in the book is hilarious
Alchemy is probably closer to chemistry than whatever doctors were doing back in his day to actual medicine, so I don't really see why someone should be shamed for having practiced it in his time
The evolution of alchemy into chemistry is more or less parallel to the development of modern science generally.
The thing with alchemy is that I could see how all the "alchemical" processes would seem strange and mysterious, mystical even. It's a bit like imagining the Sun going around the Earth: ancient people could see the same astronomical phenomena as we do now, but they interpreted it through a geogentric lens because that's kind of what it looks like. They have some grounding in real chemistry, but with added mystical elements to explain things they couldn't otherwise explain. It makes sense that once we moved on from trying and failing to repeat the same experiments, it became easier to focus on better understanding the experiments that actually did something. And the concept of comparing results, trying to share information and critique each other, being more open, probably helped as well.
Tom Lum is another excellent narrator! Thank you, Tom, for making this content interesting and entertaining.
turning lead into gold was the time-honored way to score research grants .
Both Full Metal Alchemist shows were awesome. Was a bit confusing when the second one came out.
See, I'm NOT weird in loving both SciShow and Esoterica. Both are fascinating looks at science... one modern, one the science of 500 years ago.
to be frank I wouldn't be surprised if praxis were both a mental breakdown and a masterpiece at the same time even if that doesn't make sense
7:22 "your princes is in another castle"
13:29 i would like to bring back the practice of writing 'tutorials' or instructions as riddles
This is hands down one of my favorite dives you guys have done possibly ever
The font choice was cool, but definitely very difficult to read at a glance
My high school Biology class was Alchemy. My final project included an oil painting based on Blake's Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright. It was the early 70's.
my favourite part of this episode is the rants on Full-Metal Alchemist, i think we need more of Tom talking about FMA
@EayuProuxm - 2025-10-18
"Alchemy is the scapegoat left holding all the mistakes of the natural process of science"
That's the best summary.
@furyberserk - 2025-10-30
No. It's science avoiding the witch hunt successfully, promising immortality and infinite gold, to the king and church.
@Ahuizome - 2025-11-06
"Scapegoat"
Other sciences produce results, alchemy fails in many instances, and what was successful was adopted by chemistry and yet you think it's a scapegoat?
This video is going to fuel more anti science and promote crack pot theories in the long run.
@forwadnothing8212 - 2025-11-09
@Ahuizome eh, mix a bunch of impure chemicals and compounds together and you'll create new compounds, possibly ones that haven't been discovered yet. figure out their properties, and you might have found the new penicillin, or the new sulphuric acid, you never know.
@StoufSto - 2025-11-09
@furyberserk Astute.
@maximillianhallett3055 - 2025-11-10
@forwadnothing8212 As some who has read through alchemical texts. They knew, mostly/somewhat, what they were doing. To lay person it looks like occultist hokum.