From where we are today. In our technological world with a more pragmatic view of natural events and a somewhat greater understanding of the causal relationships between supposedly otherwise unrelated events, it is far more difficult to accept that bit about boiling some detritus in a soup with rat eyeballs and claiming it influenced a volcano.
In the Twenty First Century since Christ we have a hard time taking seriously the concept that a battle can be decided by whether or not one general or the other consulted with an Astrologer who told them that the Pleiades were rising in his sign.
Most University Nuclear Science programs teach that yes, Ernest Rutherford (1871 - 1937) was the first successful Alchemist when he turned Nitrogen into Oxygen in his famous experiment in 1917. So, by implication, every Alchemist before him was a dismal failure. Or at least that is the gist of the syllabus.
We pride ourselves on our scientific understanding and how much we know about our world and the way it works.
