Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry

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American Philosophical Society, 2002 - Science - 332 pages
Chemistry as it is known today is deeply rooted in a variety of thought & action, dating back at least as far as the fifth century B.C. In this book, Joseph Fruton weaves together the history of scientific investigation with social, religious, philosophical, & other events & practices that have contributed to the field of modern chemistry. The story begins with the influence of alchemy on early Greek numerology and philosophy, followed by the historical account of chemical composition and phlogiston. The life and work of Antoine Lavoisier receive extensive coverage in Chapter Three, with the remaining six chapters devoted to atoms, equivalents, and elements; radicals and types; valence and molectualr structure; stereochemistry and organic synthesis; forces, equilibria, and rates; and electrons, reaction mechanisms, and organic synthesis.
 

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Page xi - Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.
Page 5 - I now mean by elements, as those chymists that speak plainest do by their principles, certain primitive and simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies; which not being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the ingredients of which all those called perfectly mixt bodies are immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately resolved...
Page 9 - I plead only for such a philosophy, as reaches but to things purely corporeal, and distinguishing between the first original of things, and the subsequent course of nature, teaches, concerning the former, not only that God gave motion to matter, but that in the beginning he so guided the various motions of the parts of it, as to contrive them into the world he designed they should compose, (furnished with the seminal principles and structures, or models of living creatures...
Page 51 - Having been long accustomed to make meteorological observations, and to speculate upon the nature and constitution of the atmosphere, it often struck me with wonder how a compound atmosphere, or a mixture of two or more elastic fluids, should constitute apparently a homogeneous mass, or one in all mechanical relations agreeing with a simple atmosphere.
Page 200 - In the normal atom, this assemblage of corpuscles forms a system which is electrically neutral. Though the individual corpuscles behave like negative ions, yet when they are assembled in a neutral atom the negative effect is balanced by something which causes the space through which the corpuscles are spread to act as if it had a charge of positive electricity equal in amount to the sum of the negative charges on the corpuscles.
Page 32 - Another thing which Mr. Lavoisier endeavours to prove is, that dephlogisticated air is the acidifying principle. From what has been explained it appears, that this is no more than saying, that acids lose their acidity by uniting to phlogiston, which with regard to the nitrous, vitriolic, phosphoric, and arsenical acids is certainly true.
Page 32 - Then after a short but very discerning analysis of the subject, Cavendish concluded : ' It seems, therefore, from what has been said, as if the phaenomena of nature might be explained very well on this principle, without the help of phlogiston; and indeed, as adding dephlogisticated air to a body comes to the same thing as depriving it of its phlogiston and adding water to it...
Page 54 - It is contrary to the usual order of things, that events so harmonious as those of the system of the earth, should depend on such diversified agents, as are supposed to exist in our artificial arrangements ; and there is reason to anticipate a great reduction in the number of the undecompounded bodies, and to expect that the analogies of nature will be found conformable to the refined operations of art.
Page 193 - I at first laid down, namely, that the chemical power of a current of electricity is in direct proportion to the absolute quantity of electricity which passes (377.
Page 139 - I see no escape from the conclusion that, at the moment when life first arose, a directive force came into play — a force of precisely the same character as that which enables the intelligent operator, by the exercise of his Will, to select one crystallised enantiomorph and reject its asymmetric opposite.

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