Well this is something thats always bothered me abit and maybe someone who knows a bit about Elder lore can tell me.

Well I think alteration and alchemy the magic schools are named all wrong IMO. I believe alteration should be reffered to as alchemy and alchemy as herblore of such. When i think of alchemy I think of the 'Philosopher's stone' or the power to turn one material into another or 'alter.' When I see alchemy being used to describe a more flora mixing of attributes, it doesn't make sense. I vbasically think of Alchemy as turning non-biotic matter into other non-biotic matter like chaning the molecules to water to create a solid pattern to allow waterwalking and such or turning coal into gold. While herblore
is about knowing how living things work and concerns potions and healing.

But yeah just a little thing that has annoyed me and maybe I can hear some reasonings from you guys about it.

Well historically, Alchemy is what later turned into Chemistry so that's one reason. Alteration is the lore of how to alter the physics and reality of this world. Like Water Walking, Feather etc. So they are properly named. So Alchemy (In fantasy) is the lore of extracting powers from plants and herbs to make powerful potions that do things only mages would be able to do.

It sounds more like kind of Fullmetal Alchemist's Renkinjutsu, .

Indeed, a potion-creating with refining, distillation, and other use of different alchemic tools was only part of medieval alchemic practice, but it was.

It seems more fundamental to me.

Alteration, as a spell-school is something the caster achieves with their will alone, a sort've sorcery. Alchemy is purely mechanical, a person with no aptitude for actual spellcasting can (with proper study) release a huge range of the magical properties from inanimate matter and bring them out in a potion; the "school" of those properties brought out by the potion are irrelevant as the property was coaxed out of the herb or material mechanically. While alteration (or any spell school) does not seem to require any material components, the spell is brought forth by the user's willpower

Good reasons all of you, this response I think explains it best to me. Only thing that is against this is how all the in-game materials for alchemy in Oblivion/ Tamriel seem to be of living nature, plants, daedra parts, and such(unless you include the Knights of Order hearts). Wouldn't mineral ores, and such things be of use in alchemy?
Of course this is just with the game and hard to bring alot of things from lore into gameplay.

It's only in Oblivion - in Morrowind there were such ingredients as gems, raw ebony and glass, pelts, hides, and even metal junk.

Pelts and hides are bio-derived. And I'd argue that Fire salts, Frost salts, and Void salts are not - the atronachs may have living, but the residues aren't.

Anyhow, it's down to the game mechanics. You gather Alchemical material by picking them from plants, or killing creatures, both of which are biological sources. They did have silver and gold nuggets from veins, but didn't take that further to provide inorganic ingredients. A mod could reasonably add mining of other ingredients without much effort.

But don't sciences overlap in real life? Biologic processes use Chemistry, which depends on sub-atomic Physics, and Mathematics explains it all. I'm sure Alchemy as practiced in Cyrodiil uses Alteration somewhere in processing the ingredients, just as resulting potions give you Alteration effects.

Alchemy just extracts the magical properties of substances, and concentrates them into a drinkable form. As for ingredients, you could use ebony and glass as ingredients for alchemy, among other things in MW. Alteration is just the manipulation of the physical world using magic.

I think reason that potions can give Alteration effects is because those effects were in the ingredients, and through alchemy were brought out. Kind of like potential energy or something like that.

mY HONORS bIOLOGY TEACHER WAS TALKING ABOUT THAT TODAY>