Talk:Full Metal's Alchemy
From Full Metal Alchemist d20
The ideas and laws mentioned in the article (those being the law of conservation of mass, the four elements, the three principles, and the law of providence) are fairly straight forward for the most part. That is:
The Law of Conservation of Mass- Mass (matter) can be neither created nor destroyed.
The Four Elements- Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Likely refering to the actual effect rather than something more obscure.
The Three Principles- Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury (or respectively, Body, Mind, and Spirit), which again seem to play more to the effect, although They may have some sort of symbolic purpose in Human Alchemy, esp. the creation of a Human.
However, Al states in the first volume of the manga that an material must be transmuted into a material with similar attributes (in his example, water can only be transmuted into another material that possess "watery" attributes.) This complies with an event not long after in the series in which Ed transmutes raw coal (a mineral) into gold (another mineral). Although the transmutation forms gold (Au) from carbon (C), it is still apparently possible (albeit forbidden it seems).
I assume then that the only constant is the mass (just about all we're left with), but since Carbon holds less mass per cm^3 than gold, it would follow that a certain volume of coal would yeild a lesser volume of gold.
In addition to this, the nature and purpose of "the law of providence" still eludes me. If the defenition that I am familiar with is correct (that being that all actions on earth are the will of god), then it contradicts everything that Ed claims about the inherent atheism of scientists.
Perhaps however, the context of alchemy would translate better to all actions on earth being the result of alchemy. This would make sense in a historical and logical perspective, but can't be trusted (it is, afterall, speculation mounted on further speculation).
Can anyone help me clear this up?
Scott: Ahhh... I'm still reading the manga, so it's nice to have some of that passage defined.
We're going to have to interpolate and adapt a bit from canon, since canon doesn't have to systematize everything and leave it internally consistent. Whee. The point you raise about transmuting to 'a material with similar attributes' bothers me, too. It's too nebulous for our purposes. I think we're going to need to adapt that principle... either to mean the strict hermetic (?) elements of earth/air/fire/water or, as you suggest, materials that may more broadly be classified as one of those. Liquids are 'watery' even if they are not water itself; minerals are 'earthy' and gasses 'airy'; etc. Does that work? Is it consistent with the RL alchemical traditions?
I do think that the 'forbidden' nature of the C->Au transmutation is social rather than alchemical... first, because Ed does it, and secondly because there are good social reasons not to do it, like ruining the economy. ^_^
I think the Conservation of Mass we can keep as mass in the strict sense, rather than volume. If exact volume correspondence is important, I suppose we could assume that the creative alchemist had either made the material non-dense and voluminous by putting voids into its structure (lame answer) or by gathering and converting nearby material either from the air or containers.
Regarding the 'law of providence' I have several guesses but no answers. Thirty Seconds of Research doesn't turn up an easy RL Alchemy answer. Thoughts?
- Law of Providence = Conservation of Mass. You cannot create or destroy matter, i.e. controvert God's creation of the world by altering what has been provided.
- Law of Providence = God's Will = Karma. I think your trouble with this is sensible, though I don't have quite the problem with it that you do. We know that Ed is fundamentally full of it when he talks about the atheism of scientists because he and Al still appeal to abstract laws of justice and retribution. Their motivation in the story is to get back their original bodies which were taken because they violated some law, and no one has an explanation for the law except that it's divine decree. So I agree that Providence is inconsistent with the scientific approach that's usually taken, but I think it's an inconsistency that's built into the series... and into alchemy, which was the foundation of modern science in that it was an application of scientific methodology to extremely unscientific principles. All that said, this explanation doesn't give us something to put into the rulebook.
Where did you get the Three Principles? I'd like to cite that in the series or elsewhere ... and do the reading on it. --Sprice 14:09, 8 Dec 2005 (EST)
