4 ms·

DaVinci is in good company. Another such slacker was Newton, who spent all of that time on alchemy but never did transmute lead into gold.

sidewndr46 4y ago
For Newton to be interested in alchemy loosely makes sense, given the time frame. I don't really understand much about Jung, but apparently towards the end of his life he became increasingly interested in alchemy. He published on it quite a bit. It's a really weird chapter in his legacy.
- lioeters 4y ago
  Alchemy is another expression, a symbolic language, as part of a larger mythological and psychological journey in Jung's life and inner world. > Jung referred to his imaginative or visionary venture during these years as "my most difficult experiment." This experiment involved a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious through wilful engagement of what Jung later termed "mythopoetic imagination". > From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form... In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescaline. > Jung initially recorded his "visions", "fantasies", or "imaginations" — all terms used by Jung to describe his activity — in a series of six journals. > ..In 1957, near the end of his life, Jung spoke about the Red Book and the process which yielded it; in that interview he stated: > The years ... when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)
- Bakary 4y ago
  Perhaps I am missing something, but alchemy sounds completely in character with Jung's works.
lioeters 4y ago
Ah, would that we aspire to achieve and accomplish even a fraction of such glorious, brilliant failures.
TigeriusKirk 4y ago
>never did transmute lead into gold. That we know of.

sidewndr46 4y ago

For Newton to be interested in alchemy loosely makes sense, given the time frame. I don't really understand much about Jung, but apparently towards the end of his life he became increasingly interested in alchemy. He published on it quite a bit. It's a really weird chapter in his legacy.

lioeters 4y ago
Alchemy is another expression, a symbolic language, as part of a larger mythological and psychological journey in Jung's life and inner world. > Jung referred to his imaginative or visionary venture during these years as "my most difficult experiment." This experiment involved a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious through wilful engagement of what Jung later termed "mythopoetic imagination". > From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form... In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescaline. > Jung initially recorded his "visions", "fantasies", or "imaginations" — all terms used by Jung to describe his activity — in a series of six journals. > ..In 1957, near the end of his life, Jung spoke about the Red Book and the process which yielded it; in that interview he stated: > The years ... when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)
Bakary 4y ago
Perhaps I am missing something, but alchemy sounds completely in character with Jung's works.

lioeters 4y ago

Ah, would that we aspire to achieve and accomplish even a fraction of such glorious, brilliant failures.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

>never did transmute lead into gold. That we know of.