Does molecular reconstruction and alchemy have anything to do with each other?

Question

I don't have much knowledge on alchemy, but does it have anything to do with the reconstruction of molecules?

Answer 1

alchemy "died" many hundreds of years ago.  But alchemy is the start of what we call "chemistry" today.

What's the difference?  "Chemistry" uses scientific principles to control and generate certain reactions.  With chemistry, the results are usually predictable, and chemistry usually results in something useful.

"Alchemy" is just a bucn of old farts palyiong around with things they didn't understand. If they got any results at all, it was by shere accident, not thriough any real chemical understanding.

As I understand it, the main goal of alchemy was to change other materials (like lead) into gold.  That would be a complet etransformation of the basic chemical properties, much deeper and more sophisticated that mere molecules.