In other words, alchemical gold might very well look like gold, have all the apparent characteristics of gold, and convince at least some people that it is indeed gold, but it is not really true gold. Ibn-Sīnā’s denial of the possibility of true transmutation turned out to be extremely influential, for this section of his Book of the Remedy would later be translated into Latin and widely circulated in Europe, often under the weighty name of Aristotle himself (see chapter 3).
