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The Ruricolist is now available in print.

Nondefinition #26

Alchemists. To alchemists, fools and frauds, we owe the glorious and world-changing science of chemistry. No one could have invented chemistry on purpose; the wonders we expect from it daily were never unattainable, only unthinkable – except at the miraculous hands of the saints. It had to be stumbled on; we had to overreach to measure our grasp. We are proud of our sciences, and rightly so; but if there are sciences we have not yet imagined, they will not be born in the laboratories and institutes; look, rather, to the workshops and retreats, the lectures, the hyphenated works, to California; look to where the fools and frauds are steadily conceiving new ambitions.