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M. Svrˇ cek
Incidentally sharing the knowledge of a community of communicating observers
is not just one single form of sharing that descends from the collective unconscious.
The communication and sharing of our discoveries is a similar case. Whyte presents
a motto due to Goethe in his book [154]: “No one can take from us the joy of the
first becoming aware of something, the so-called discovery. But if we also demand
the honour, it can be utterly spoiled for us, for we are usually not the first. What does
discovery mean, and who can say that he has discovered this or that? After all it’s
pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it’s simply unconscious conceit, not to admit
frankly that one is a plagiarist.”
However, many of Jung’s works relate to alchemy, though his interests were
focused only on its arcane aspects. According to Linden [156], esoteric aspects of
alchemy prevailed among psychologists, spiritual and new age communities, hermetic philosophers, and historians of esotericism, while exoteric aspects occurred
among historians of the physical sciences, who did examine subjects in terms of
protochemistry, medicine, and charlatanism. In this sense Jung’s ideas and inspirations are full of occultism, gnosticism and spiritism. On the other hand, if we
extract the scientific truth from the Jung’s considerations, we immediately recognize
that Jung was correctly aware of the collective unconscious as a mind component
of alchemy, after the Cartesian split, whereas classical chemistry became a matter
component. Wikipedia, in the year 2018, speaks about the origin of chemistry in
this way: “Chemistry was preceded by its protoscience, alchemy, which is an intuitive but non-scientific approach to understanding the constituents of matter and their
interactions… Chemistry as a body of knowledge distinct from alchemy began to
emerge when a clear differentiation was made between them by Robert Boyle…
Chemistry is considered to have become an established science with the work of
Antoine Lavoisier…”
The comments above raise one of the most important questions of this article:
is chemistry, as we know it today, the only true matter branch of alchemy after
the Cartesian split? Looking first at the customary definition of chemistry, see e.g.
Wikipedia, 2018: “Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with compounds
composed of atoms, i.e. elements, and molecules, i.e. combinations of atoms: their
composition, structure, properties, behaviour and the changes they undergo during
a reaction with other compounds. Chemistry addresses topics such as how atoms
and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds.” By
tradition, science dealing with material objects from elementary particles up to atoms
is called physics, and from atoms up to molecules it is chemistry, however, from
molecules up to the macroscopic level of fluids and solids it is shared with (condensed
matter) physics again. At the quantum level the first and third parts essentially form
quantum physics, and the second part mostly quantum chemistry. In this way quantum
chemistry is a result of an embedding of post-Cartesian classical chemistry ideas into
the pre-Cartesian quantum physics.
As Boyle and Lavoisier were fathers of classical chemistry, Löwdin is often
regarded as father of quantum chemistry. A recent biography of Per-Olov Löwdin,
see Brändas [157], describes his significant achievements for the development of the
new sub-discipline of quantum chemistry. Assessing the new field and its specific
M. Svrˇ cek
Incidentally sharing the knowledge of a community of communicating observers
is not just one single form of sharing that descends from the collective unconscious.
The communication and sharing of our discoveries is a similar case. Whyte presents
a motto due to Goethe in his book [154]: “No one can take from us the joy of the
first becoming aware of something, the so-called discovery. But if we also demand
the honour, it can be utterly spoiled for us, for we are usually not the first. What does
discovery mean, and who can say that he has discovered this or that? After all it’s
pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it’s simply unconscious conceit, not to admit
frankly that one is a plagiarist.”
However, many of Jung’s works relate to alchemy, though his interests were
focused only on its arcane aspects. According to Linden [156], esoteric aspects of
alchemy prevailed among psychologists, spiritual and new age communities, hermetic philosophers, and historians of esotericism, while exoteric aspects occurred
among historians of the physical sciences, who did examine subjects in terms of
protochemistry, medicine, and charlatanism. In this sense Jung’s ideas and inspirations are full of occultism, gnosticism and spiritism. On the other hand, if we
extract the scientific truth from the Jung’s considerations, we immediately recognize
that Jung was correctly aware of the collective unconscious as a mind component
of alchemy, after the Cartesian split, whereas classical chemistry became a matter
component. Wikipedia, in the year 2018, speaks about the origin of chemistry in
this way: “Chemistry was preceded by its protoscience, alchemy, which is an intuitive but non-scientific approach to understanding the constituents of matter and their
interactions… Chemistry as a body of knowledge distinct from alchemy began to
emerge when a clear differentiation was made between them by Robert Boyle…
Chemistry is considered to have become an established science with the work of
Antoine Lavoisier…”
The comments above raise one of the most important questions of this article:
is chemistry, as we know it today, the only true matter branch of alchemy after
the Cartesian split? Looking first at the customary definition of chemistry, see e.g.
Wikipedia, 2018: “Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with compounds
composed of atoms, i.e. elements, and molecules, i.e. combinations of atoms: their
composition, structure, properties, behaviour and the changes they undergo during
a reaction with other compounds. Chemistry addresses topics such as how atoms
and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds.” By
tradition, science dealing with material objects from elementary particles up to atoms
is called physics, and from atoms up to molecules it is chemistry, however, from
molecules up to the macroscopic level of fluids and solids it is shared with (condensed
matter) physics again. At the quantum level the first and third parts essentially form
quantum physics, and the second part mostly quantum chemistry. In this way quantum
chemistry is a result of an embedding of post-Cartesian classical chemistry ideas into
the pre-Cartesian quantum physics.
As Boyle and Lavoisier were fathers of classical chemistry, Löwdin is often
regarded as father of quantum chemistry. A recent biography of Per-Olov Löwdin,
see Brändas [157], describes his significant achievements for the development of the
new sub-discipline of quantum chemistry. Assessing the new field and its specific