Political Science

Alchemy is to autocracy what science is to democracy.

When an alchemist has a success he will share the results
with his fellows, whether alchemist or high status citizen,
but he will never share, or compare with other alchemists,
the processes by which those results were achieved.

Autocrats, like alchemists, root their faith
in their manipulations of nature and people
in how far they are above having to explain
their actions. able, Whether alchemist or autocrat,
they hide their failures behind word salads,
and slight of hand and word presentations.

Both modern science and democracy
are experiments where confidence
in the process depends on openness,
and well thought out definitions
for the parameters of what counts
as as 'success', where the process
of being observably effective
matters more than any given result.

Though how either system stacks up
against the plethora of new media, 
boosted by turbo capitalism, remains to be seen....