Week Six: Electrochemistry and Alchemy

1. Halogen of the week...

Halogen means “salt-former” -- compounds containing halogens are called salts. All halogens have 7 electrons in their outer shells.

Iodine was discovered in 1811 by Bernard Courtois, a fellow who was born in Dijon, France. He apprenticed as a pharmacist and then joined his father’s business, saltpeter manufacturing. Courtois was isolating sodium and potassium compounds from seaweed ash during the production of saltpeter (which is a component of gun powder, and in high demand during the Napolenonic Wars). He had added too much sulfuric acid to the seaweed ash and saw a purple vapor -- iodine. The word comes from the Greek “ioeides,” which means violet. (Following this discovery, Courtois went on to isolate morphine from opium.)

Iodine’s atomic number is 53. It is the least reactive of the halogens. Iodine is found concentrated in seawater and some sea plants, as well as in the mineral caliche, which is found in Chile. It is used in medicine (and at home often existing in your first aid kit), in photography (as silver iodide), to purify water, in halogen lights, and in dyes. Iodine is rare in the solar system and on Earth.

Iodine is required in trace amounts is all animals and in some plants. Kelp and algae have the ability to concentrate the element, which is why it has become an essential element in the food chain. It is the heaviest element known to be required by animals.

Our body uses iodine as a component of thyroid hormones which help to regulate our basal metabolic rate. The thyroid absorbs iodine from blood, and then distributes it into other bodily tissues, including the mammary glands. Iodine’s role in the mammary glands is to help regulate fetal and neonatal development. It acts as an antioxidant in other tissues.

If you eat kelp, some seafood, or plants grown in iodine-rich soil, you are getting your necessary iodine (recommended allowance is 150 micrograms per day). Iodine has also been added to some salt in order to ensure people get enough. In many developing countries people do not get enough iodine which can result in mental retardation, hypothyroidism, goiter, depression, weight gain, and extreme fatigue.



Iodine is also used in the manufacture of meth, so if you buy it in large quantities you will be investigated by the DEA.

2. Alchemy -- science, magic, art -- or all three?

From a very surface understanding of alchemy, it seems to me that the difference between alchemy and modern chemistry is that alchemy had a philosophical belief system underlying it, one that acknowledged and honored the "magic" of how matter can be transformed. Perhaps some of the early alchemists were "wrong" -- you apparently can't turn lead into gold, and it certainly isn't a good idea to eat lead -- but that doesn't mean that some of the underlying principles should be disregarded and forgotten, and that the mysterious should not be honored. In fact that seems like the biggest difference between alchemy and modern science. Modern science no longer honors the mysterious. It has rendered the whole world robotic and banal. Whereas alchemy wandered into questions of the soul and other metaphysical concerns such as unification with God. Their work was not separate from a spiritual path. Today, this would be seen as crazy or as a pollutant to true scientific pursuits. Which I think is too bad. I think one's work really should encompass life as a whole -- the spiritual, mental, physical, artistic, creative and mysterious elements of life.

Carl Jung used alchemical symbols to validate his theories about universality in psychological motifs. From the vantage point of human psychological and spiritual development, and an investigation of the mystery of who we really are and where we come from, the study of alchemical history and its symbols and philosophies are fascinating and possibly quite useful. I think that modern chemistry could also be looked at through the lens of metaphor and human development -- we have become quite detached from the natural world, are polluting ourselves and each other, and show a profound disrespect for life. But hope is on the horizon with the advent of scientific developments, such as the principles behind green chemistry, that are putting the recognition of the wholeness of the universe back into the mixing pot.

Here is a beautiful passage by M.L. von Franz from the book edited by Carl Jung "Man and His Symbols." The passage relates to the usefulness of alchemy as an epistemology for understanding the self:

"The alchemical stone (the lapis) symbolizes something that can be never be lost or dissolved, something eternal that some alchemists compared to the mystical experience of God within one's own soul. It usually takes prolonged suffering to burn away all the superfluous psychic elements concealing the stone. But some profound inner experience of the Self does occur to most people at least once in a lifetime. From the psychological standpoint, a genuinely religious attitude consists of an effort to discover this unique experience, and gradually to keep in tune with it (it is relevant that a stone is itself something permanent), so that the Self becomes an inner partner toward whom one's attention is continually turned."