The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry By M. M. Pattison Muir CHAPTER I THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS. For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge of the changes of material things, they had thought about these changes, regarded them as revelations of spiritual truths, built on them theories of things in heaven and earth (and a good many things in neither), and used them in manufactures, arts, and handicrafts, especially in one very curious ...
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The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry By M. M. Pattison Muir CHAPTER I THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS. For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge of the changes of material things, they had thought about these changes, regarded them as revelations of spiritual truths, built on them theories of things in heaven and earth (and a good many things in neither), and used them in manufactures, arts, and handicrafts, especially in one very curious manufacture wherein not the thousandth fragment of a grain of the finished article was ever produced. The accurate and systematic study of the changes which material things undergo is called chemistry; we may, perhaps, describe alchemy as the superficial, and what may be called subjective, examination of these changes, and the speculative systems, and imaginary arts and manufactures, founded on that examination. We are assured by many old writers that Adam was the first alchemist, and we are told by one of the initiated that Adam was created on the sixth day, being the 15th of March, of the first year of the world; certainly alchemy had a long life, for chemistry did not begin until about the middle of the 18th century. No branch of science has had so long a period of incubation as chemistry. There must be some extraordinary difficulty in the way of disentangling the steps of those changes wherein substances of one kind are produced from substances totally unlike them. To inquire how those of acute intellects and much learning regarded such occurrences in the times when man's outlook on the world was very different from what it is now, ought to be interesting, and the results of that inquiry must surely be instructive. If the reader turns to a modern book on chemistry (for instance, The Story of the Chemical Elements, in this series), he will find, at first, superficial descriptions of special instances of those occurrences which are the subject of the chemist's study; he will learn that only certain parts of such events are dealt with in chemistry; more accurate descriptions will then be given of changes which occur in nature, or can be produced by altering the ordinary conditions, and the reader will be taught to see certain points of likeness between these changes; he will be shown how to disentangle chemical occurrences, to find their similarities and differences; and, gradually, he will feel his way to general statements, which are more or less rigorous and accurate expressions of what holds good in a large number of chemical processes; finally, he will discover that some generalisations have been made which are exact and completely accurate descriptions applicable to every case of chemical change. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.
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