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The history of chemistry is long and convoluted. It begins with the discovery of fire; then metallurgy which allowed purification of metals and the making of alloys, followed by attempts to explain the nature of matter and its transformations through the protoscience of alchemy. Chemistry begins to emerge when the distinction is made between chemistry and alchemy by Robert Boyle in his work The Sceptical Chymist (1661). Chemistry then becomes a full-fledged science when Antoine Lavoisier develops his laws of Conservation of mass, which demands careful measurements and quantitative observations of chemical phenomena. So, while both alchemy and chemistry are concerned with the nature of matter and its transformations, it is only the chemists who apply the scientific method.The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of Willard Gibbs.
The discovery of fire and atomism
The roots of chemistry can be traced to the phenomenon of burning.[citation needed] Fire was a mystical force that was said to transform one substance into another, and was thus an object of wonder and superstition. Fire affected many aspects of early societies, such as their diet, because it allowed them to cook food, and make pottery, specialised tools and utensils.
Atomism can be traced back to ancient Greece and ancient India.[citation needed] Greek atomism dates back to 440 BCE, as what might be indicated by the book De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things)[1] written by the Roman Lucretius[2] in 50 BCE. In the book was found ideas traced back to Democritus and Leucippus, who declared that atoms were the most indivisible part of matter. This coincided with a similar declaration by Indian philosopher Kanada in his Vaisheshika sutras around the same time period.[3] Kashyapa may have arrived at his sutras by meditation. By similar means, he coined a form of Newton's Third Law (action/reaction), and discussed the existence of gases. What Kanada declared by sutra, Democritus declared by philosophical musing. Both suffered from a lack of empirical data. Without scientific proof, the existence of atoms was easy to deny. Aristotle opposed the existence of atoms in 330 BC; and the atomism of the Vaisheshika school was also opposed for a long time.[citation needed]
In Europe, the Church raised Aristotle's writings almost to the level of scripture, associating atomism as some form of heresy. Aristotle's writings were preserved in Arabic in the Muslim world, and were later translated to Latin by St. Thomas Aquinas and alchemist Roger Bacon in the 13th century.
The rise of metallurgy
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It was fire that led to the discovery of glass and the purification of metals which in turn gave way to the rise of metallurgy.[citation needed] During the early stages of metallurgy, methods of purification of metals were sought, and gold, known in ancient Egypt as early as 2600 BCE, became a precious metal. The discovery of alloys heralded the Bronze Age. After the Bronze Age, the history of metallurgy was marked by which army had better weaponry. Countries in Eurasia had their heydays when they made the superior alloys, which, in turn, made better armour and better weapons. This often determined the outcomes of battles.[citation needed]
Indian metallurgy and alchemy
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Significant progress in metallurgy and alchemy was made in ancient India. Will Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage:
"Something has been said about the chemical excellence of cast iron in ancient India, and about the high industrial development of the Gupta times, when India was looked to, even by Imperial Rome, as the most skilled of the nations in such chemical industries as dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass and cement... By the sixth century the Hindus were far ahead of Europe in industrial chemistry; they were masters of calcinations, distillation, sublimation, steaming, fixation, the production of light without heat, the mixing of anesthetic and soporific powders, and the preparation of metallic salts, compounds and alloys. The tempering of steel was brought in ancient India to a perfection unknown in Europe till our own times; King Porus is said to have selected, as a specially valuable gift from Alexander, not gold or silver, but thirty pounds of steel. The Moslems took much of this Hindu chemical science and industry to the Near East and Europe; the secret of manufacturing "Damascus" blades, for example, was taken by the Arabs from the Persians, and by the Persians from India."
The philosopher's stone and the rise of alchemy
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Many people were interested in finding a method that could convert cheaper metals into gold. The material that would help them do this was rumored to exist in what was called the philosopher's stone. This led to the protoscience called alchemy. Alchemy was practiced by many cultures throughout history and often contained a mixture of philosophy, mysticism, and protoscience.[citation needed]
Alchemy not only sought to turn base metals into gold, but especially in a Europe rocked by bubonic plague, there was hope that alchemy would lead to the development of medicines to improve people's health. The holy grail of this strain of alchemy was in the attempts made at finding the elixir of life, which promised eternal youth. Neither the elixir nor the philosopher's stone were ever found. Also, characteristic of alchemists was the belief that there was in the air an "ether" which breathed life into living things.[citation needed] Practicioners of alchemy included Isaac Newton, who remained one throughout his life.
Problems encountered with alchemy
There were several problems with alchemy, as seen from today's standpoint. There was no systematic naming system for new compounds, and the language was esoteric and vague to the point that the terminologies meant different things to different people. In fact, according to The Fontana History of Chemistry (Brock, 1992):
The language of alchemy soon developed an arcane and secretive technical vocabulary designed to conceal information from the uninitiated. To a large degree, this language is incomprehensible to us today, though it is apparent that readers of Geoffery Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale or audiences of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist were able to construe it sufficiently to laugh at it.[4]
Chaucer's tale exposed the more fraudulent side of alchemy, especially the manufacture of counterfeit gold from cheap substances. Soon after Chaucer, Dante Alighieri also demonstrated an awareness of this fraudulence, causing him to consign all alchemists to the Inferno in his writings. Soon after, in 1317, the Avignon Pope John XXII ordered all alchemists to leave France for making counterfeit money. A law was passed in England in 1403 which made the "multiplication of metals" punishable by death. Despite these and other apparently extreme measures, alchemy did not die. Royalty and privileged classes still sought to discover the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life for themselves.[5]
There was also no agreed-upon scientific method for making experiments reproducible. Indeed many alchemists included in their methods irrelevant information such as the timing of the tides or the phases of the moon. The esoteric nature and codified vocabulary of alchemy appeared to be more useful in concealing the fact that they could not be sure of very much at all. As early as the 14th century, cracks seemed to grow in the facade of alchemy; and people became sceptical.[citation needed] Clearly, there needed to be a scientific method where experiments can be repeated by other people, and results needed to be reported in a clear language that laid out both what is known and unknown.
Beginnings of chemistry
Early chemists
- See also: Alchemy (Islam)
The development of the modern scientific method was slow and arduous, but an early scientific method for chemistry began emerging among early Muslim chemists. One of the most influential among them was the 9th century chemist Geber, who some consider to be the "father of chemistry".[6] [7] [8] Other influential Muslim chemists included Al-Razi, Abu-Rayhan Biruni and Al-Kindi. Alexander von Humboldt regarded the Muslim chemists as the founders of chemistry. [9]
Will Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization IV: The Age of Faith:
"Chemistry as a science was almost created by the Moslems; for in this field, where the Greeks (so far as we know) were confined to industrial experience and vague hypothesis, the Saracens introduced precise observation, controlled experiment, and careful records. They invented and named the alembic (al-anbiq), chemically analyzed innumerable substances, composed lapidaries, distinguished alkalis and acids, investigated their affinities, studied and manufactured hundreds of drugs. Alchemy, which the Moslems inherited from Egypt, contributed to chemistry by a thousand incidental discoveries, and by its method, which was the most scientific of all medieval operations."[10]
For the more honest practitioners in Europe, alchemy was an intellectual pursuit, and over time, they got better at it. Paracelsus (1493-1541), for example, rejected the 4-elemental theory and with only a vague understanding of his chemicals and medicines, formed a hybrid of alchemy and science in what was to be called iatrochemistry. Paracelsus was not perfect in making his experiments truly scientific. For example, as an extension of his theory that new compounds could be made by combining mercury with sulfur, he once made what he thought was "oil of sulfur". This was actually dimethyl ether, which had neither mercury nor sulfur.[citation needed]
Robert Boyle, one of the co-founders of modern chemistry through his use of proper experimentation, which further separated chemistry from alchemy
The first alchemist considered to have applied the modern scientific method to alchemy and to separate chemistry further from alchemy was Robert Boyle (1627–1691).[citation needed] Robert Boyle was an atomist, but favoured the word corpuscle over atoms. He comments that the finest division of matter where the properties are retained is at the level of corpuscles.
Boyle was credited with the discovery of Boyle's Law. He is also credited for his landmark publication The Sceptical Chymist, where he attempts to develop an atomic theory of matter, with no small degree of success.
Despite all these advances, the person celebrated as the "father of modern chemistry" is Antoine Lavoisier who developed his law of Conservation of mass in 1789, also called Lavoisier's Law.[citation needed] With this, Chemistry was allowed to have a strict quantitative nature, allowing reliable predictions to be made.
Antoine Lavoisier
Although the archives of chemical research draw upon work from ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and especially the Arabs and Persians after Islam, modern chemistry flourished from the time of Antoine Lavoisier, who is regarded as the "father of modern chemistry", particularly for his discovery of the law of conservation of mass, and his refutation of the phlogiston theory of combustion in 1783. (Phlogiston was supposed to be an imponderable substance liberated by flammable materials in burning.) Mikhail Lomonosov independently established a tradition of chemistry in Russia in the 18th century.[citation needed] Lomonosov also rejected the phlogiston theory, and anticipated the kinetic theory of gases.[citation needed] He regarded heat as a form of motion, and stated the idea of conservation of matter.
The vitalism debate and organic chemistry
After the nature of combustion (see oxygen) was settled, another dispute, about vitalism and the essential distinction between organic and inorganic substances, was revolutionized by Friedrich Wöhler's accidental synthesis of urea from inorganic substances in 1828. Never before had an organic compound been synthesized from inorganic material.[citation needed] This opened a new research field in chemistry, and by the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of organic compounds. The most important among them are mauve, magenta, and other synthetic dyes, as well as the widely used drug aspirin. The discovery also contributed greatly to the theory of isomerism.[citation needed]
Disputes about atomism after Lavoisier
Throughout the 19th century, chemistry was divided between those who followed the atomic theory of John Dalton and those who did not, such as Wilhelm Ostwald and Ernst Mach.[11] Although such proponents of the atomic theory as Amedeo Avogadro and Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in explaining the behavior of gases, this dispute was not finally settled until Jean Perrin's experimental investigation of Einstein's atomic explanation of Brownian motion in the first decade of the 20th century.[11]
Well before the dispute had been settled, many had already applied the concept of atomism to chemistry. A major example was the ion theory of Svante Arrhenius which anticipated ideas about atomic substructure that did not fully develop until the 20th century. Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was electrochemistry, in which (among other things) a certain quantity of electricity during electrolysis or electrodeposition of metals was shown to be associated with certain quantities of chemical elements, and fixed quantities of the elements therefore with each other, in specific ratios.[citation needed] These findings, like those of Dalton's combining ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature of matter.
The periodic table
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Classical
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