This book was the first time I came into contact with a history of chemistry, and it was absolutely fascinating. Histories of physics have been my default, due to their ongoing contributions to the origins of life, the universe and everything; but much of that history is the back and forth of military funded experiments, and intellectual genius. Chemistry, on the other hand, was funded by the wealthy in an attempt to create more wealth through transmutation (i.e., alchemy), as well as the mishaps of mad scientists tinkering with “the elements”.
This book covers over two thousand years of history, which includes the origin story of many words (some are included below), and the intellectual struggle of determining what exactly is an element? The following are ideas, and excerpts from the book to hopefully give you an idea of why it was such an engaging read.
Aristotle was responsible for creating a worldview that would last almost 2 thousand years. His scientific brilliance was built on the lens of object qualities, rather than object properties. In this way, he failed to see a world composed of atoms, which had been proposed by Democritus decades before Aristotle. Instead, he saw the world through four “basic elements”: Earth ws the center, next came water, above that was air, and above the air fire.
“All motion in the world was the attempt of the elements to find their rightful place. Thus stones fell to the bottom of water, bubbles rose up out of it, fire rose upwards through the air and so forth. But the sun, the moon and the stars clearly did not move in such a way, so Aristotle proposed a fifth element. This rarefied element he called aether. Remnants of this element persist in our words ethereal (celestial, airy), and quintessence (literally ‘fifth essence’)”
“[The middle ages were] not so much an anti-scientific age as an a-scientific one. There was simply no need for science in an age without progress, an age which believed that timeless spiritual values were superior to the vagaries of reality”
Once discovered, sulphuric acid transformed the development of many materials, so much so that until the mid-twentieth century, a country’s development was measured by the volume of sulphuric acid it’s industry used each year!
Nicolas Flamel was a real person who set out on an alchemical pilgrimage through France and Spain in search of the philosopher’s stone - his published memoirs mention: “Finally, in the yeere of the restoring of mankind, 1382, I made a projection of the Red stone upon the like quantity of Mercury the five and twentieth day of April, about five a clock in the Evening; which I transmuted truly into almost as much pure Gold, better assuredly than common Gold, more soft, and more pliable.”
Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, was another well known character in the history of Alchemy - which I suppose was a nod from Full Metal Alchemist.
“The Arabic name for the substance with which Jezebel painted her eyes was kohl. By a series of misapprehensions this word came to be used to describe distilled liquids, and eventually the distilled liquid al-kohl (the kohl) - which became alcohol” Many other words with the “al” prefix come from Arabic - like Algebra, Algorithm, Alkali, and even Alchemy etc.
“Hydrogen” comes from the Greek hydro “water” and -gen, “generator, getter, maker”
5/5.