Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
score:4
Accepted answer
Long comment
Alchemy was a "living subject" in Islamic science and philosophy.
See at least Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (2013, The University of Chicago Press), Ch.2 Arabic al-Kimyia.
A central thinker was Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latin: Geber). Also al-Razi with the Book of Secrets and the refutation of al-Kindi's denial of the validity of alchemy.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), in turn, in the Book of the Remedy denies the possibility of metallic transmutation.
Also al-Baghdadi was profoundly averse to alchemy.
I've found no reference to Ibn Rushd (Averroes) interest into alchemy.
Having said that, a possible conclusion may be the following: it is reasonable to assume that Victor Hugo had no detailed knowledge about Islamic science.
Thus, a "generic" knowledge about Arabic and Middle Ages interest into alchemy, as well as the common (in Hugo times) view about the "dark ages", may explain Hugo's story.
The attribution to Averroes is probably due to the fact that Averroes'name was (one of) the "best known".
More post
- 📝 How did German racial laws affect people who weren't Jewish but one of their parents wasn't German?
- 📝 When were the baskets invented in Australia and America?
- 📝 Why did Britain object to the Ottomans bringing its ships-of-the-line against Russia in the beginning of the Crimean War?
- 📝 How did people wake up on time before alarm clocks?
- 📝 Why did democracy emerge in what is now Greece?
- 📝 Why was Reagan sworn in twice for his second term?
- 📝 Did the Diggers view property as a sin?
- 📝 Real-life examples of finding long-lost treasure?
- 📝 Does the T-34 tank engine use different strokes in the banks of the pistons?
- 📝 Have American gangsters ever helped their government in war time out of patriotism?
- 📝 Is the term "chainmail" historically accurate, or a modern invention?
- 📝 Disappearance and reappearance of helmets in European armies circa 1600 to 1900
- 📝 What were French actions against Germany during September 1939?
- 📝 Did a foreigner ever lead a revolution?
- 📝 Was the option of setting up a Jewish state in defeated Nazi Germany ever considered?
- 📝 Why were cavalry raids so powerful during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Who made this Sino-Soviet Propaganda Poster?
- 📝 How did Diego Gutiérrez know the boundaries (shape of the Americas) when he drew the 1562 Map of America
- 📝 What happened to people of color on interstate railroads traveling from segregated states to non-segregated states?
- 📝 What is the exact date and year when the first car got invented?
- 📝 The meaning of Pan-India Character?
- 📝 In which year of the post-WWII Occupation of Japan was the Imperial Rescript on Education repealed?
- 📝 Demonym for someone from the kingdom of D'mt
- 📝 Does anyone know a quote, from an opponent of MLK (e.g. a sheriff) which presents him as radical?
- 📝 What does the prefix in dates mean?
- 📝 Where was the AT&T radio station in 1942 in New York?
- 📝 What do we know about Hitler/OKW's plans concerning USSR if Molotov/Ribbentropp Pact hadn't happened?
- 📝 Did Peron shelter Nazis after WWII?
- 📝 How much did Pan Am tickets to the moon cost?
- 📝 How do I differentiate ancient ceramic from today's junk?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
- 📝 Did Truman really believe that Hiroshima was a military base?
- 📝 Did Brahms really leave Germany because he was dissatisfied with the political realities of that time?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 How did people realize that America was a different continent?
- 📝 Why was gold so popular and valuable back when it did not have many real world uses?
- 📝 Did the Tamil People discover that the earth was round 2000 years ago?
- 📝 Before European influence circa 1600, did any Chinese believe the Earth was spherical, and did they ever try to measure it?
- 📝 Did any ancient polytheistic religion hold that theirs was the only pantheon?
- 📝 Was FDR right that a garden hose was really $15 in 1940 (c.a. $300 today)?
- 📝 Did Mussolini know that Hitler was going to attack Poland?
- 📝 Did Sir Isaac Newton ever claim that his mind in 1666 was "remarkably fit for invention"?
- 📝 Did Jeanne d'Arc really tell a woman that she couldn't serve on the battlefield?
- 📝 Did JFK really say "Hitler is one of the greatest men…one of the most significant figures that ever lived"?
- 📝 Did the emperor Ashoka really build hospitals or is that a myth?
- 📝 When did we figure out that Venus was too hot for humans?
- 📝 How did people ensure that renaissance Papal election bribery was honored?
- 📝 Why did Robert E. Lee say that George McClellan was the best general he ever faced?
- 📝 When was it first noticed that airplane passengers really seemed to like tomato juice?
- 📝 Why did the Australian IOC deny that Peter Norman was excluded from the 1972 Olympics for supporting racial equality?
- 📝 Does any evidence exist that suggests Hitler’s primary reason for declaring war on America was an attempt to draw Japan into his war with Russia?
- 📝 Did West Russia really have a rock shortage in WW2? And if so, what was the cause?
- 📝 Who was the Irishman that betrayed Coronel's gold claim?
- 📝 Who was the first to point out that transmutation of gold would be mostly useless, since it would simply lead to inflation?
- 📝 Did Turkey invade Cyprus to keep the USSR out? Is there really CIA files that prove this for real?
- 📝 Why did Meriwether Lewis think that William Clark was coming to help him just before he killed himself?
- 📝 At the Battle of Augusta, how did the French learn that de Ruyter was mortally wounded?
- 📝 What did it mean that Italy was an Empire?
- 📝 Did people in the late 1800s and earlier really think that there would be, or already exist, "mechanical men"?
- 📝 Why did Mussolini say that people are not really free if they don't have access to the ocean?