The alchemist Robert Boyle is credited as being the father of chemistry. Paracelsian iatrochemistry emphasized the medicinal application of alchemy (continued in plant alchemy, or spagyric). Studies of alchemy also influenced Isaac Newton's theory of gravity
Alchemical symbolism has been used by psychologists such as Carl Jung who reexamined alchemical symbolism and theory and presented the inner meaning of alchemical work as a spiritual path.[101][102]
Jung was deeply interested in the occult since his youth, participating in seances, which he used as the basis for his doctoral dissertation "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena."[103] In 1913, Jung had already adopted a "spiritualist and redemptive interpretation of alchemy", likely reflecting his interest in the occult literature of the 19th century.[104] Jung began writing his views on alchemy from the 1920s and continued until the end of his life. His interpretation of Chinese alchemical texts in terms of his analytical psychology also served the function of comparing Eastern and Western alchemical imagery and core concepts and hence its possible inner sources (archetypes).[105][106][107]
Jung saw alchemy as a Western proto-psychology dedicated to the achievement of individuation.[101][107] In his interpretation, alchemy was the vessel by which Gnosticism survived its various purges into the Renaissance,[107][108] a concept also followed by others such as Stephan A. Hoeller. In this sense, Jung viewed alchemy as comparable to a Yoga of the East, and more adequate to the Western mind than Eastern religions and philosophies. The practice of Alchemy seemed to change the mind and spirit of the Alchemist. Conversely, spontaneous changes on the mind of Western people undergoing any important stage in individuation seems to produce, on occasion, imagery known to Alchemy and relevant to the person's situation.[109] Jung did not completely reject the material experiments of the alchemists, but he massively downplayed it, writing that the transmutation was performed in the mind of the alchemist. He claimed the material substances and procedures were only a projection of the alchemists' internal state, while the real substance to be transformed was the mind itself.[110]
Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Jung, continued Jung's studies on alchemy and its psychological meaning. Jung's work exercised a great influence on the mainstream perception of alchemy, his approach becoming a stock element in many popular texts on the subject to this day.[111] Modern scholars are sometimes critical of the Jungian approach to alchemy as overly reflective of 19th-century occultism.[20][85][112]