History of Chemistry 1
History of Chemistry 1
History of Chemistry 1
The earliest practical knowledge of chemistry was concerned with metallurgy, pottery, and dyes;
these crafts were developed with considerable skill, but with no understanding of the principles involved,
as early as 3500 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The basic ideas of element and compound were first
formulated by the Greek philosophers during the period from 500 to 300 B.C. Opinion varied, but it was
generally believed that four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) combined to form all things. Aristotle's
definition of a simple body as ‘one into which other bodies can be decomposed and which itself is not
capable of being divided’ is close to the modern definition of element.
About the beginning of the Christian era in Alexandria, the ancient Egyptian industrial arts and
Greek philosophical speculations were fused into a new science. The beginnings of chemistry, or
alchemy, as it was first known, are mingled with occultism and magic. Interests of the period were the
transmutation of base metals into gold, the imitation of precious gems, and the search for the elixir of life,
thought to grant immortality. Muslim conquests in the 7th century A.D. diffused the remains of
Hellenistic civilization to the Arab world. The first chemical treatises to become well known in Europe
were Latin translations of Arabic works, made in Spain c.A.D. 1100; hence it is often erroneously
supposed that chemistry originated among the Arabs. Alchemy developed extensively during the Middle
Ages, cultivated largely by itinerant scholars who wandered over Europe looking for patrons.
Evolution of Modern Chemistry.In the hands of the "Oxford Chemists" (Robert Boyle, Robert
Hooke, and John Mayow) chemistry began to emerge as distinct from the pseudoscience of alchemy.
Boyle is often called the founder of modern chemistry (an honour sometimes also given Antoine
Lavoisier). He performed experiments under reduced pressure, using an air pump, and discovered that
volume and pressure are inversely related in gases. Hooke gave the first rational explanation of
combustion – as combination with air – while Mayow studied animal respiration. Even as the English
chemists were moving toward the correct theory of combustion, two Germans, J. J. Becher and G. E.
Stahl, introduced the false phlogiston theory of combustion, which held that the substance phlogiston is
contained in all combustible bodies and escapes when the bodies burn.
The discovery of various gases and the analysis of air as a mixture of gases occurred during the
phlogiston period. Carbon dioxide, first described by J. B. van Helmont and rediscovered by Joseph
Black in 1754, was originally called fixed air. Hydrogen, discovered by Boyle and carefully studied by
Henry Cavendish, was called inflammable air and was sometimes identified with phlogiston itself.
Cavendish also showed that the explosion of hydrogen and oxygen produces water. C. W. Scheele found
that air is composed of two fluids, only one of which supports combustion. He was the first to obtain pure
oxygen, although he did not recognize it as an element. Joseph Priestley independently discovered oxygen
by heating the red oxide of mercury with a burning glass; he was the last great defender of the phlogiston
theory.
The work of Priestley, Black, and Cavendish was radically reinterpreted by Lavoisier, who did for
chemistry what Newton had done for physics a century before. He made no important new discoveries of
his own; rather, he was a theoretician. He recognized the true nature of combustion, introduced a new
chemical nomenclature, and wrote the first modern chemistry textbook. He erroneously believed that all
acids contain oxygen.
Історія хімії (частина 1)