Modern alchemical engineering shies away from the more spiritual aspects of the profession, most particularly philosophy. I've had many a colleague deride "400 page papers bloviating about nothing" as if philosophers were not doing important work, when that's far from the case. Even were I to boldly ignore everything outside of alchemy, any of their conclusions cross over into transmutation fairly well. They were how we proved that gold is the noblest possible metal by traditional standards, after all.

Anyway, did you know that you can show with very convincing and rigorous arguments that some molecules (though we cannot tell which ones) are ontologically evil? Let's all agree that asbestos is one of them.

- Alchemist Kazyan