Beyond Expression Bright (Philosopher’s Stone Trilogy Part 3)
Modern science can’t quite shake its obsession with alchemy. Chemists have finally cracked the code and created gold, but what if alchemy had a different purpose all along? The final episode in our philosopher’s stone trilogy explores alchemy in the modern era, from Newton to nuclear physics and beyond!
Researched, written, and produced by Thomas Ignatius and Corinne Wieben, featuring the voice talents of Gregg Adams, John Pippen, and Lenny Scovel and original music by Purple Planet. Special thanks to Librivox for the recording of Paradise Lost.
You can find a digital collection of Isaac Newton’s alchemical manuscripts at Indiana University’s The Chymistry of Isaac Newton.
Music
Purple Planet - Galactic Harmony
Frédéric Chopin - Waltz in A minor, B. 150 - performed by Aya Higuchi
Purple Planet - Heavenly Waters
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Sonata no. 11, K. 331, 3. Alla Turca - performed by Eduardo
Purple Planet - Spiritual Moment
Purple Planet - Shadowlands
Sources
Primary
Flamel, Nicholas. Nicholas Flammel, His Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures Which He Caused to Bee Painted Vpon an Arch in St. Innocents Church-Yard, in Paris. Together with the Secret Booke of Artephius, and the Epistle of Iohn Pontanus: Concerning Both the Theoricke and the Practicke of the Philosophers Stone... Translated by Eirenaeus Orandus. London: T[homas] S[nodham] for Thomas Walkley, 1624.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Project Gutenberg. October 1991.
Secondary
Abraham, Lyndy. “Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘the Sounding Alchymie’.” Renaissance Studies 12, no. 2 (1998): 261-76.
Badash, Lawrence. “How the ‘Newer Alchemy’ Was Received.” Scientific American 215, no. 2 (1966): 88-95.
Martin, Sean. Alchemy & Alchemists. Harpenden: Oldcastle Books, 2011.
Mendelsohn, J. Andrew. “Alchemy and Politics in England 1649-1665.” Past & Present 135 (1992): 30-78.
Monod, Paul Kléber. Solomon's Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment. Princeton: Yale University Press, 2013.
Romer, Alfred. “The Transformation Theory of Radioactivity.” Isis 49, no. 1 (1958): 3-12.
Schuler, Robert M. “Some Spiritual Alchemies of Seventeenth-Century England.” Journal of the History of Ideas 41, no. 2 (1980): 293-318.
Sclove, Richard E. “From Alchemy to Atomic War: Frederick Soddy’s ‘Technology Assessment’ of Atomic Energy, 1900–1915.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 14, no. 2 (1989): 163-94.
Shrieves, Katherine. “Mapping the Hieroglyphic Self: Spiritual Geometry in the Letters of John Winthrop, Jr, and Edward Howes (1627–1640).” Renaissance Studies 25, no. 2 (2011): 276-97.
Treitel, Corinna and John Warne Monroe. “Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France.” Modern Intellectual History 6, no. 3 (11, 2009): 611-625.
Valjak, Domagoj. “In 1980, chemist Glenn Seaborg solved a centuries-old problem in alchemy and turned a non-precious metal into gold.” The Vintage News. December 22, 2017.
Walsh, Kirsten. “The Unknown Newton.” Societate Si Politica 9, no. 2 (2015).
