Science , ancient art practiced especially in the Middle Ages, devoted chiefly to discovering a substance that would transmute the more common metals into gold or silver and to finding a means of indefinitely prolonging human life. Although its purposes and techniques were dubious and often illusory, was in many ways the predecessor of modern science, especially the science of chemistry. The birthplace of was ancient Egypt, where, in Alexandria, it began to flourish in the Hellenistic period; simultaneously, a school of was developing in C ....