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Precious Mettle: Alchemic Aspiration as a Metaphor for Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Ronald Quillo
Ronald Quillo*
Affiliation:
Incarnate Word College
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Abstract

Recent criticism of higher education challenges professors to facilitate learning which involves critical thinking, self-awareness, social consciousness, creativity, and interdisciplinary perspective. The ancient art of alchemy, which antedated post-Newtonian scientific categorizations, was directed toward much more than the transmutation of base metals into precious ones. As a process involving philosophical and religious views brought to bear on self-improvement as well as the improvement of all creation, alchemy may function as an appropriate metaphor for learning which is transformative of both learners and their environments. A psychological interpretation of alchemical pursuits facilitates an understanding of transformation in this way. Higher education is thus directed toward and affirmed in its mission of fostering in students a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge and skills which may be utilized both personally and socially.

Type
Creative Teaching
Information
Horizons , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Fall 1991 , pp. 279 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1991

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