Today's post (which is not quite usual for my blog) does not claim to be scientifically accurate and is in many ways an attempt to summarize thoughts on the topic indicated in the title. The main material that prompted me to write this post was the text of the respected @dmityul Dmitry Tyulin " Aging and immortality: a biologist's view ", as well as the discussion under it. I was also interested in the article by Nikolai Mushkambarov on the biology of meiosis, to which Dmitry Tyulin refers. This material gave me two lines of thought and conclusion that I want to share here.
Quite a long time ago, for more than 15 years, I treated alchemy with interest and even respect. Approximately after getting acquainted with the biography of Albert the Great, I came to the conclusion that medieval alchemy was not so much a pseudoscience as a protoscience. It was in this form in the XIII-XVI centuries that research, experiments, discoveries were possible. Using scattered empirical knowledge, mystical (unintelligible, but mysterious) treatises, as well as translations from Arabic, which in turn were translations from ancient Greek, Boettger, Brand, Paracelsus accumulated a natural science base. It was through side projects that Böttger was able to obtain porcelain , Glauber - nitric acid , as well as develop methods for staining glass, and Brand obtained phosphorus. in a truly grotesque and exotic way.
These people, within the framework of their main employment, tried to solve the very problem that startups from California are now solving: they sought a radical life extension for their august middle-aged generous patrons.
Alchemy is associated in the mass consciousness with the production of gold from base metals ( transmutation ), and this goal was indeed a priority for alchemists. However, another important goal of the alchemists was the elixir of life , which actually meant the elixir of youth .
Here I will make my first digression. The role of gold in the modern world is much more modest than in medieval Europe (at least, gold has ceased to be a means of free settlements, and capital is no longer provided with gold as before), but a person still really wants to extend his life. Moreover, I would point out a number of factors due to which, at the beginning of the 21st century, the elixir of life is increasingly perceived as an urgent hedonistic necessity:
We were giddy with the first successes, in particular, the increase in life expectancy during the 20th century.
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The second part suggests itself to the above - consideration of the transfer of consciousness to a non-biological carrier, a fantastic concept known as " Mind Uploading ". But I will consider this article completed, and I will schedule a separate publication after loading my consciousness.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Dmitry Tyulin for his text, which helped me to formulate and present these thoughts. I hope he finds an opportunity to read and possibly criticize this article.