Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T03:26:44.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Precious Mettle: Alchemic Aspiration as a Metaphor for Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Ronald Quillo
Ronald Quillo*
Affiliation:
Incarnate Word College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent criticism of higher education challenges professors to facilitate learning which involves critical thinking, self-awareness, social consciousness, creativity, and interdisciplinary perspective. The ancient art of alchemy, which antedated post-Newtonian scientific categorizations, was directed toward much more than the transmutation of base metals into precious ones. As a process involving philosophical and religious views brought to bear on self-improvement as well as the improvement of all creation, alchemy may function as an appropriate metaphor for learning which is transformative of both learners and their environments. A psychological interpretation of alchemical pursuits facilitates an understanding of transformation in this way. Higher education is thus directed toward and affirmed in its mission of fostering in students a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and skills which may be utilized both personally and socially.

Type
Creative Teaching
Information
Horizons , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Fall 1991 , pp. 279 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Project on Redefining the Meaning and Purpose of Baccalaureate Degrees, Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community (Washington, DC: Association of American College, 1985), 1f.Google Scholar

2 Hirsch, E. D. Jr., Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton, 1987).Google Scholar

3 Newman, Frank, Higher Education and the American Resurgence (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1985), 35f.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 61f.

5 Oakeshott, Michael, The Voice of Liberal Learning, ed. Fuller, Timothy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 22, 68.Google Scholar

6 Newman, , Higher Education, 53–57, 64.Google Scholar

7 Project, Integrity in the College Curriculum, 18, 20f.

8 Task Group on General Education, A New Vitality in General Education (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1988), 8, 10, 37.Google Scholar

9 Project, Integrity in the College Curriculum, 6f.

10 Sykes, Charles J., ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1988).Google Scholar

11 Wilshire, Bruce, The Moral Collapse of the University (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 64f.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 91, 132f.

13 Webb, Eugene, “The Alchemy of Man and the Alchemy of God: The Alchemist as Cultural Symbol in Modern Thought,” Religion and Literature 17/1 (Spring 1985): 47–60.Google Scholar

14 Corless, Roger, The Art of Christian Alchemy: Transfiguring the Ordinary through Holistic Meditation (New York: Paulist, 1981).Google Scholar

15 Gillespie, Diane, “Claiming Ourselves as Teachers,” Change 21/4 (07–08 1989): 56–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Partington, J. R., A Short History of Chemistry (New York: Harper, 1960), 23f.Google Scholar

17 Read, John, Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy, Its Literature and Relationships (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 2.Google Scholar

18 Eliade, Mircea, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. Corrin, Stephen (London: Rider, 1962), 9.Google Scholar

19 Read, , Prelude to Chemistry, 74–80.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 81-85.

21 Eliade, , The Forge and the Crucible, 171.Google Scholar

22 Partington, , A Short History of Chemistry, 34.Google Scholar

23 Read, , Prelude to Chemistry, 101f.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., xxi.

25 Holmyard, E. J., Alchemy (Baltimore: Penguin, 1957), 162.Google Scholar

26 Read, , Prelude to Chemistry, 160–63.Google Scholar

27 Holmyard, , Alchemy, 177, 189, 199.Google Scholar

28 Cited in ibid., 157.

29 Read, , Prelude to Chemistry, 246–54.Google Scholar

30 Cited in Holmyard, , Alchemy, 157.Google Scholar

31 Sadoul, Jacques, Alchemists and Gold, trans. Sieveking, Olga (New York: Putman, 1972), 35f.Google Scholar

32 Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales, trans. Nicolson, J. U. (Franklin Center, PA: Franklin, 1981), 577.Google Scholar

33 Jung, C. G., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 12, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. Hull, R. F. C. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 245.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 250-54.

35 Ibid., 258.

36 Jung, C. G., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 14, Mysterium Conjunctionis:An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, trans. Hull, R. F. C. (New York: Pantheon, 1963), 179f, 200.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 454.

38 Jung, , Psychology and Alchemy, 304–13.Google Scholar

39 Jung, , Mysterium Conjunctionis, 263.Google Scholar

40 Wilshire, , The Moral Collapse of the University, 100, 194, 203.Google Scholar

41 Shakespeare, William, “Hamlet,” An Essential Shakespeare: Nine Plays and the Sonnets, ed. Fraser, Russell (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 214.Google Scholar

42 Jung, , Psychology and Alchemy, 258.Google Scholar