Chemistry: The Western Invention
Chemistry is a relatively young field, becoming a science between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
One can’t speak of a “science” unless it is a discipline with “its own concepts, its own techniques, and its own applicability” (Hall, p. 303).
Whereas sixteenth century physics (mechanics/astronomy) was a “highly organized, mathematically sophisticated, theoretical science” (Rossi, p. 139), with a long line of great scientists going back to ancient times and the Renaissance, backed by figures like Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and Copernicus, modern chemists were preceded by alchemists, druggists, iatrochemists, and sorcerers.
It was only during Robert Boyle’s (1627-91) generation that chemistry started to become conscious of its own distinctive field of study with its own specialized concepts.
Some believe that chemistry came into the light only when the investigation of gases proceeded rapidly in the hands of Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), the theologian Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and Carl Scheele (1742-1786), when chemists came to see that air was an active ingredient in chemical reactions and not the only sort of gas; when Joseph Black showed in the 1750s that “fixed air” (CO2) was distinguishable from normal air, and when Antoine Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion was confirmed in 1772, and his book, Traité élémentaire de chimie, was published in 1789, the first modern chemical textbook with a new nomenclature, in which precise terms came to identify the nature of the substances, with hydrogen, for example, replacing the vague term “inflammable air, and oxygen replacing Priestley’s “eminently respirable air” term.
It was then, some argue, that a new scientific paradigm emerged in the study of matter deserving the name of chemistry. Today we can say that chemistry is the science that studies the properties and behavior of matter, or the way the atoms and molecules that make up the ultimate elements of nature interact and adopt new combinations to create compounds.
It would be a mistake, then, to have headlines about “Chemistry in the Ancient World” or “Alchemy and the Birth of Chemical Science,” as books on the history of chemistry, or chemistry books for high school students, are increasingly doing to be more “inclusive”.
The science of chemistry was developed by Europeans. This does not mean that researchers in mineralogy, pharmacology and alchemy did not play a significant role in the eventual development of chemistry. A.R. Hall, in his classic book, The Scientific Revolution, 1500-1800: the Formation of the Modern Scientific Attitude (first published in 1954), goes too far claiming that “it is almost useless to look to them [the alchemists] for the beginnings of a chemical attitude” (p. 307).
It is true that alchemists had no criteria for distinguishing factual knowledge “from the products of their own extravagant imaginations” and believed they were searching for the ultimate elixir, an alchemical substance capable of turning base metals like mercury into gold, or affording immortality to humans. Everywhere in their writings there were invisible forces, vital agents, mysterious spirits inside matter.
Yet, in fairness, alchemists did explore and greatly expand our knowledge of substances and their reactions, including the Islamic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (721-815), who identified two elements, sulphur and mercury, and synthesized ammonium chloride.
It may be an exaggeration to say that Paracelsus (1493-1541), a Swiss physician, took alchemy “on the road to becoming chemistry,” but he did forge a new field, iatrochemistry, which endeavored to unite medicine with chemistry; and he offered descriptions of the properties of mercury, zinc, cobalt, potassium and other metals.
The nobleman from Brussels, Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580-1644), despite his believe in vital animistic forces in matter, developed iatrochemistry in a more quantitative direction, adopted the theory of void space, and advanced an explanation of digestion as the action of acid as an agent in the transformation of foods.
Hall is far more sympathetic to the “empirical knowledge of the phenomena of chemistry” rooted in glass-making, the metallurgical industry of smelting and refining of metals, the pharmacological preparation of medicaments and the discovery of alcohol, including the differentiation of saltpetre from soda (which made gunpowder possible)—knowledge which emanated from a Hellenistic tradition centered in Alexandria, and from India, China and the Islamic peoples.
The mineralogical and pharmacological knowledge of the Chinese, as Joseph Needham has documented, was considerable, their distinction between saltpetre, alum, and their knowhow in tanning, dyeing, painting and fire-work-making, but this scattered knowledge was descriptive and for practical uses, unguided by any scientific principles.
It would also be a mistake to say that the origins of chemistry are to be found in the ancient Greek idea that everything on earth was made up of four foundational elements (earth, water, fire, and air) or that indivisible particles “generate all composite things”.
Perhaps the best candidate to represent the beginnings of the science of chemistry is the Anglo-Irish Robert Boyle. Boyle, a devout Anglican who sponsored missionary activities and wrote theological treatises, was a prominent figure in the articulation of the modern science of mechanics, with its idea that natural phenomena operated according to mechanical laws.
He actually sought to integrate chemistry with physics as the two sciences that are seeking to explain the properties of matter. His book The Sceptical Chymist (1661) attacked the ancient doctrine of the four elements, proposed a clear definition of element as a “perfectly unmingled body, which not being made of other bodies…are the ingredients of which…mixt bodies are immediately compounded”—which anticipated the modern theory of molecules and atoms.
He is known for his famous “Boyle’s law” which states that there is an inverse relationship between pressure and volume of gas, and for promoting the idea that air played a vital part in combustion. From this point on, there is a consensus among historians that the following names were critical in the consolidation of the science of chemistry: G. E. Stahl (1660-1734), Cavendish, Priestly, Black, and Lavoisier.
The Periodic Table
Once Lavoisier, who was raised in a pious Catholic family, set chemistry on a firm scientific footing, and established a good working definition of an element as a substance that cannot be broken into more fundamental constituents, it was a matter of time before new elements would be discovered. Don’t believe the incredibly deceptive Wikipedia claims about how the elements of gold, iron, copper, lead, silver, and tin were discovered in the ancient Middle East and Africa.
These metals were used but not consciously discovered as chemical “elements.” It was only as the science of chemistry came into its own that elements came to be progressively discovered. Phosphorus in 1669, cobalt in 1735, nickel in 1751, magnesium in 1755, hydrogen in 1766, oxygen in 1771, nitrogen in 1772—by European names.
The big question in chemistry soon became how to classify the elements. This effort led to the development of the Periodic Table, one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in human history.
John Dalton, teacher at a Quaker boarding school, played a crucial role in the classification of elements with the publication of his book, A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), with its observations that the atoms of different elements differed in size, weight and number per unit volume, and that when two elements combined to form a compound each atom of the first element united with one atom of the second element in a series of whole numbers.
The studies by Swede Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) and the Belgian Jean Stas (1813-91) on the atomic weights of the elements, and the law of isomorphism, which allowed Berzelius to determine the formulae of many salts and the atomic weights of their constituent elements, were also important steps in the classification of the elements in a scientifically accurate way.
The making of the Periodic Table included an all-European cast, consisting of Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, John Newlands, Lothar Meyer, and Dimitri Mendeleev. Newlands showed how if the elements were listed in order of atomic weight, each element shared properties with those eight and sixteenth places later.
The German Lothar Meyer also noted the sequences of similar chemical and physical properties repeated at periodic intervals. The Russian Mendeleev is the one immortalized for drawing up the Periodic Table in 1869, spelling out systematically how the characteristics of the elements recur at a periodic interval as a function of their atomic weight.
Meyer had produced a similar, if less systematic, version of the Table in 1868, but it was Mendeleev who applied himself to the elaboration and defense of his Table, predicting the properties of five unknown elements and what their compounds would be, even before their discovery.
Today the periodic table outlines each element’s electron configuration, the atomic number of the element, and the chemical properties of the element. Many great chemists would come in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish chemists from physicists.
Ernest Rutherford, for example, was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908 “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances” even though he was a physicist who believed that his main contribution was in the pioneering of the nuclear structure of the atom. Marie Curie, on the other hand, a highly gifted chemist, was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 for her work on radioactivity.
I could go on listing great chemists by naming Nobel Prize winners during the 20th century. Most of the names are European, though Jews do start winning prizes during the 1970s, a high number in the 1980s, and some afterwards, along with some non-Europeans.
Nevertheless the basic thesis of this article stands: Europeans originated the science of chemistry, pioneered all the fundamental ideas, from the seventeenth until the twentieth century, created the research centers and university departments that would transform chemistry into an institutionalized field with thousands of scholars and researchers, working less as individuals than as members of research teams funded in the millions, and making new contributions, but relatively minor, and none in the macro scale of the pioneers listed above.
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Jürg Gassmann
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Nice breakdown of the history of chemistry, but the author is too absolutistic (and maybe chauvinistic) in dismissing alchemy as precursor of “proper chemistry”, and denying the scientific nature of earlier efforts.
I agree that the pursuit of knowledge generally took on a different flavour in the Enlightenment, and acquired the trappings of scientific enquiry that still apply today. But Enlightenment man was still caught in the belief that there was a One Truth out there, the difference to his precursors was that he no longer expected to find it in religion, but in science – a hubris from which in the meantime we have hopefully been cured.
Dismissing alchemy for its secrecy and pursuit of e.g. the Philosopher’s Stone misses the point. Many technical inventions were at risk of being seen as witchcraft, which could be punishable by death, so maintaining secrecy and encoding knowledge was pure self-preservation. And the promise of finding a way to turn lead into gold was a way of gulling princes into funding the research – a unicorn quest the last two years should have taught us to recognise.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Jurg,
I am not smart enough to find the u letter you use in your name, but I know about the history to which you referred when you wrote:: “Nice breakdown of the history of chemistry, but the author is too absolutistic (and maybe chauvinistic) in dismissing alchemy as precursor of “proper chemistry”, and denying the scientific nature of earlier efforts.” I did not read beyond “Chemistry is a relatively young field, becoming a science between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” when I immediately looked to see what you had commented. And I still only very quickly scanned the remainder of I write this comment.
For I have read about the history the the alchemists, one of whom is shown in his ‘laboratory as painted by an artist of his time. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words so study this painting. A lie about the alchemists, that I have read, is that they were a very secretive group of the general society of their time. More than one artist of that earlier time has painted similar paintings as the header. I ask: If these men were so secretive how is the artists were invited into their laboratories???
But I have not read (as far as I can remember) reading that the alchemists were merely following the ‘wisdom’ of Aristotle and his fellow Greek philosophers who had concluded that the four forms (earth, water, air, fire) of ELEMENTARY MATTER as the alchemists tried to make gold from this ELEMENTARY MATTER.
But if you look at the painting can see open books (someone by that time had invented paper). Most important to me is you can see GLASS flasks and the sand timing device, whose common name I cannot remember as I write. Glass is just as useful as gold and it is still special to the chemists of today. For when I entered college as a chemistry major I was encouraged to take a glass working class to learn to make eye droppers and vacuum lines etc. And I taught my introductory chemistry students, regardless of their intended major to take glass tubing to make eye droppers etc. to use in their laboratory assignments. Yes, hot glass looks like cold glass and it burns the fingers if one forgets which might still be hot.
In this painting I could not find a globe, a skull or a skeleton which was evidence of the alchemists’ general interests in the NATURAL WORLD in addition to their alchemy.
As I scan the remainder of the article the author does review the contributions made the more modern alchemists whose alchemy led to the discovery of actual elementary matter and scientific laws which finally led to the conclusion that matter is composed of tiny, tiny atoms instead of being endlessly divisible as the great Greek philosophers concluded without during any experiments..
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Jurg,
I am not smart enough to find the u letter you use in your name, but I know about the history to which you referred when you wrote:: “Nice breakdown of the history of chemistry, but the author is too absolutistic (and maybe chauvinistic) in dismissing alchemy as precursor of “proper chemistry”, and denying the scientific nature of earlier efforts.” I did not read beyond “Chemistry is a relatively young field, becoming a science between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” when I immediately looked to see what you had commented. And I still only very quickly scanned the remainder of I write this comment.
For I have read about the history the the alchemists, one of whom is shown in his ‘laboratory as painted by an artist of his time. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words so study this painting. A lie about the alchemists, that I have read, is that they were a very secretive group of the general society of their time. More than one artist of that earlier time has painted similar paintings as the header. I ask: If these men were so secretive how is the artists were invited into their laboratories???
But I have not read (as far as I can remember) reading that the alchemists were merely following the ‘wisdom’ of Aristotle and his fellow Greek philosophers who had concluded that the four forms (earth, water, air, fire) of ELEMENTARY MATTER as the alchemists tried to make gold from this ELEMENTARY MATTER.
But if you look at the painting can see open books (someone by that time had invented paper). Most important to me is you can see GLASS flasks and the sand timing device, whose common name I cannot remember as I write. Glass is just as useful as gold and it is still special to the chemists of today. For when I entered college as a chemistry major I was encouraged to take a glass working class to learn to make eye droppers and vacuum lines etc. And I taught my introductory chemistry students, regardless of their intended major to take glass tubing to make eye droppers etc. to use in their laboratory assignments. Yes, hot glass looks like cold glass and it burns the fingers if one forgets which might still be hot.
In this painting I could not find a globe, a skull or a skeleton which was evidence of the alchemists’ general interests in the NATURAL WORLD in addition to their alchemy.
As I scan the remainder of the article the author does review the contributions made the more modern alchemists whose alchemy led to the discovery of actual elementary matter and scientific laws which finally led to the conclusion that matter is composed of tiny, tiny atoms instead of being endlessly divisible as the great Greek philosophers concluded without during any experiments..
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Saeed Qureshi
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Good one!
It is a good read, followed by excellent comments. One can certainly argue about historical aspects and timely of the developments. However, it is really exciting to see the rekindling of the chemistry subjects from my perspective.
To me, chemistry, in particular its applications, has been dead or falsified for the past five to six decades, especially in the area of the practice of medicines. I hope the current debacle of the pandemic and the virus will bring back the actual subject of science/chemistry. In the older days, stores used to be called chemist and druggist shops. I am not sure when and why this name changed to pharmacies. Any thoughts – please share?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
The following is what Galileo Galilei wrote in ‘Two New Sciences’ which was published in the Italian language in 1638 and translated to English by Crew and de Salvio which translation was published in 1914 and seemingly read by very few chemists and now by the author(s?) of this article. For I have never read elsewhere what Galileo wrote in 1638.
“Seeing that water has less firmness [consistenza] than the finest of powder, in fact has no consistence whatever, we may, it seems to me, very reasonably conclude that the smallest particles into which it can be resolved are quite different from finite and divisible particles; indeed the only difference I am able to discover is that the former are indivisible. The exquisite transparency of water also favors this view; for the most transparent crystal when broken and ground and reduced to powder loses its transparency; the finer the grinding the greater the loss; but in the case of water where the attrition is of the highest degree we have extreme transparency. Gold and silver when pulverized with acids [acque forti] more finely than is possible with any file still remain powders, and do not become fluids until the finest particles [gl’ indivisibili] of fire or of the rays of the sun dissolve them, as I think, into their ultimate, indivisible, and infinitely small components.”
It cannot be doubted that Galileo is referring to experimental results of the chemical experiments that had been conducted the secretive alchemists at this early time. And they had made the acids hydrochloric and nitric for acque forti is mixed solution of these two acids and the only chemical mixture known to dissolve gold.
And PSI readers, what do you guess the following is about: “into their ultimate, indivisible, and infinitely small components”???
Have a good day, Jerry
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Charles Higley
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My favorite science or math claim is that calculus was invented first in Sub-Saharan Africa. Anything to that? It does not sound useful in that context.
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K Kaiser
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An interesting and quite factual read indeed !
Being a chemist myself, I like to think that there was already much “chemistry” going on long before it became its own recognized filed of modern natural sciences.
A few examples of such include the invention of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) in the “Bronze Age” some 5,000 years ago, then the preparation of dyes (like indigo) to color natural fibers blue (like in your blue jeans), said to be known 6,000 years already ago in South America, or the invention of “black powder” 1,000 years ago in the Far East.
The processes to create all of those materials required a kind of knowledge that, in my perception, can rightly be called “chemistry”.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi K and PSI Readers,
I came to my computer this morning with the THOUGHT: Wrong Ideas hinder progress. For, for a while I had concluded that my critical comments might be wrong, even if they were right. So, I had not compared with what I read in in this article written by an historian with that a chemist, John W. Hill, has written in his textbook ‘Chemistry for Changing Times’.
In this PSI article I read: “The big question in chemistry soon became how to classify the elements. This effort led to the development of the Periodic Table, one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in human history.” Which is true! But then I read; “The Russian Mendeleev is the one immortalized for drawing up the Periodic Table in 1869, spelling out systematically how the characteristics of the elements recur at a periodic interval as a function of their atomic weight.” Which is a half truth.
For Hill wrote the WHOLE TRUTH: “His [Mendeleev] table arranged the elements primarily in order of increasing atomic weight, although in a few cases he placed a slightly heavier element before a lighter one. He did this to get elements with similar CHEMICAL PROPERTIES in the same column. For example, he placed tellurium (with an atomic weight of 127.6) ahead of iodine (with an atomic weight of 126.9), because the former resembled sulfur and selenium in its properties whereas the latter was similar to chlorine and bromine.” So the fact is the atomic weight had nothing to do with the arrangement of the elements; the arrangement was totally based on their experimentally observed CHEMICAL PROPERTIES.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Psi Readers,
I conclude I need to explain to some of you how this article’s author’s half truth hinders progress. If the question is asked: How does an element’s atomic weights cause an element’s CHEMICAL PROPERTIES?, an answer will never be found because an element’s atomic weight does not cause its chemical properties. So more needs to be learned about elemental matter. Like matter is atomistic and not endlessly divisible. Like that an atom has a nucleus surrounded by electrons. EcT. Etc.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Psi Readers,
I conclude I need to explain to some of you how this article’s author’s half truth hinders progress. If the question is asked: How does an element’s atomic weights cause an element’s CHEMICAL PROPERTIES?, an answer will never be found because an element’s atomic weight does not cause its chemical properties. So more needs to be learned about elemental matter. Like matter is atomistic and not endlessly divisible. Like that an atom has a nucleus surrounded by electrons. EcT. Etc.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply