William Brock - The Fontana History of Chemistry

(Editor: Roy Porter)

William H. Brock

COVER

TITLE PAGE FONTANA HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY (Editor: Roy Porter)

PREFACE TO THE FONTANA HISTORY OF SCIENCE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INTRODUCTION

1 On the Nature of the Universe and the Hermetic Museum

Chinese Alchemy

Greek Alchemy

Arabic and Medieval Alchemy

Newton’s Alchemy

The Demise of Alchemy and its Literary Tradition

2 The Sceptical Chymist

Paracelsianism

Helmontianism

The Acid-Alkali Theory

A Sceptical Chemist

Boyle’s Physical Theory of Matter

The Vacuum Boylianum and its Aftermath

Newton’s Chemistry

The Phlogistonists

Conclusion

3 Elements of Chemistry

A Scientific Civil Servant

The Chemistry of Air

The Chemical Revolution

The Aftermath

Conclusion

4 A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Dalton’s ‘New System’

Dalton’s Life

The Atomic Theory

The Origins of Dalton’s Theory

Electrifying Dalton’s Theory

Chemical Reactivity

Prout’s Hypothesis

Volumetric Relations

Scepticism Towards Atomism

Conclusion

5 Instructions for the Analysis of Organic Bodies

Purity

The Basis of Chemistry

The Supply of Apparatus and Chemicals

Liebig, Organic Analysis and the Research School

Conclusion

6 Chemical Method

Classifying by Radicals

Classification by Types

7 On the Constitution and Metamorphoses of Chemical Compounds

The Establishment of Quantivalence

Kekulé and the Theory of Chemical Structure

The Triumph of Structural Theory

8 Chemistry Applied to Arts and Manufactures

The Alkali Industry

Dyestuffs and Colouring

9 Principles of Chemistry

Sorting the Elements

The Rare Earths

The Inert Gases

Manufacturing Elements

Mendeleev’s Principles

Conclusion

10 On the Dissociation of Substances Dissolved in Water

Proto-Physical Chemistry

Raoult and van’t Hoff

Electrochemistry from Faraday to Arrhenius

The Ionic Theory

The Reception of the Ionic Theory

11 How to Teach Chemistry

Frankland’s State-sponsored Chemistry

Armstrong’s Heuristic Method

Twentieth-century Developments in Teaching

The Laboratory

12 The Chemical News

Forming Chemical Societies

The Chemical Periodical

William Crookes, Chemical Editor

13 The Nature of the Chemical Bond

The Lewis Atom

Spreading the Electronic Theory

The Pauling Bond

14 Structure and Mechanism in Organic Chemistry

The Lapworth-Thiele-Robinson Tradition

The Michael-Flürscheim- Vorlãnder Tradition

The Electronic Theory of Organic Reactions

Organizing the Structure of Organic Chemistry

The Kinetics of Mechanisms

The Spread of Physical Organic Chemistry

Aromaticity

The Non-classical Ion Debate

Conclusion

15 The Renaissance of Inorganic Chemistry

Werner’s New Ideas

Sidgwick’s Electronic Interpretation of Co-ordination Chemistry

Australian Chemistry

Australian and Japanese Chemistry

Co-ordination Chemistry in Australia

Nyholm’s Renaissance

Conclusion

16 At the Sign of the Hexagon

Synthesis

Industrial Chemistry

Chemistry and the Environment

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX: HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

‘Chemical Industry, Upheld by Pure Science Sustains the Production of Man’s Necessities’, frontispiece to A. Cressy Morrison, Man in A Chemical World: the service of chemical industry (London & New York: Scribner’s, 1937) Reproduced courtesy of Scribner’s, Collier Macmillan, New York

Academic study of the history of science has advanced dramatically, in depth and sophistication, during the last generation. More people than ever are taking courses in the history of science at all levels, from the specialized degree to the introductory survey; and, with science playing an ever more crucial part in our lives, its history commands an influential place in the media and in the public eye.

Over the past two decades particularly, scholars have developed major new interpretations of science’s history. The great bulk of such work, however, has been published in detailed research monographs and learned periodicals, and has remained hard of access, hard to interpret. Pressures of specialization have meant that few survey works have been written that have synthesized detailed research and brought out wider significance.

It is to rectify this situation that the Fontana History of Science has been set up. Each of these wide-ranging volumes examines the history, from its roots to the present, of a particular field of science. Targeted at students and the general educated reader, their aim is to communicate, in simple and direct language intelligible to non-specialists, well-digested and vivid accounts of scientific theory and practice as viewed by the best modern scholarship. The most eminent scholars in the discipline, academics well-known for their skills as communicators, have been commissioned.

The volumes in this series survey the field and offer powerful overviews. They are intended to be interpretative, though not primarily polemical. They do not pretend to a timeless, definitive quality or suppress differences of viewpoint, but are meant to be books of and for their time; their authors offer their own interpretations of contested issues as part of a wider, unified story and a coherent outlook.

Carefully avoiding a dreary recitation of facts, each volume develops a sufficient framework of basic information to ensure that the beginner finds his or her feet and to enable student readers to use such books as their prime course-book. They rely upon chronology as an organizing framework, while stressing the importance of themes, and avoiding the narrowness of anachronistic ‘tunnel history’. They incorporate the best up-to-the-minute research, but within a larger framework of analysis and without the need for a clutter of footnotes – though an attractive feature of the volumes is their substantial bibliographical essays. Authors have been given space to amplify their arguments and to make the personalities and problems come alive. Each volume is self-contained, though authors have collaborated with each other and a certain degree of cross-referencing is indicated. Each volume covers the whole chronological span of the science in question. The prime focus is upon Western science, but other scientific traditions are discussed where relevant.