My friend was recently showing me a late 19th century book called “Occult Chemistry” in which some people “viewed” the structure of the atom through visions received while doing yoga meditations. From what I’m told their drawings are “startlingly accurate” and also that these people predicted the existence of quarks.
Obviously my BS detector is of the meter with this one, judging just by the sound of it. Unfortunately my knowledge of chemistry is weak at best so could someone familiar with this work set the record straight so I can set my friend straight?
If this Occult Chemistry is the same one that you are talking about I think the best way to debunk it to your friend would be to point out that for the most part none of drawings even remotely resemble any aspect of the real world. As far as the prediction of quarks goes, the Occult Chemistry guys did say that atoms were made of things and all of these things are each made of three smaller things. They got the number three right, but I’m going to chalk that up to luck, and every particle is not made up of quarks as predicted by Occult Chemistry.
Ask your friend which drawings are “startlingly accurate” because figure 1 in no way resembles a hydrogen atom, so I didn’t really feel the need to look at all the other figures.