I&#x27;m not familiar with medieval Indian philosophy but that sounds more like a set of principle derived from a religion than a philosophy, much like zen buddhism. Again, that&#x27;s my observation solely based on your short description. That is to say that I could — most likely — be completely wrong. The point I was attempting to make was that philosophy is more about process than the verdict. A good analogy would be math. What is important is not that 1+1=2, rather the fundamental law of addition. In addition, all other proofs in math use previously proven facts as building blocks. In the same way, philosophers use “a priori” and use them to build up to another truth. Syllogism is a good example of this. Where as in lifestyle philosophy, what is shown is the result, not the process that took to arrive at the truth. I would argue that what matters more is that you know how you arrived at that truth, rather than being told the truth and practicing that truth.<p>Disclaimer: My view of philosophy has heavy western bias because of the three classes I took (they were all about western philosophers).<p>As a side, I thought alchemy was a pseudo-chemistry aimed at finding elixir of life (immortality juice) and philosopher&#x27;s stone (turning things into gold). I believe Newton was an alchemist himself and he harmed himself in his fruitless pursuit. I never knew there was a philosophy of alchemy. Please correct me if I&#x27;m wrong.