The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry. M. M. Pattison Muir

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       M. M. Pattison Muir

      The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664142207

Table of Contents

       PREFACE.

       THE STORY OF ALCHEMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY.

       CHAPTER I

       THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS.

       CHAPTER II.

       A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY.

       CHAPTER III.

       THE ALCHEMICAL CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE.

       CHAPTER IV.

       THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES.

       CHAPTER V.

       THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE.

       CHAPTER VI.

       ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART.

       CHAPTER VII.

       THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY

       CHAPTER VIII.

       THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY.

       CHAPTER IX.

       PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS.

       CHAPTER X.

       SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE.—THE REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES OF THE ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF PHLOGISTON.

       CHAPTER XI.

       THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF COMBUSTION.

       CHAPTER XII.

       THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE INTERACTIONS OF DEFINITE SUBSTANCES.

       CHAPTER XIII.

       THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES.

       CHAPTER XIV.

       THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF THE ONE THING.

       INDEX

PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry is very interesting in itself. It is also a pregnant example of the contrast between the scientific and the emotional methods of regarding nature; and it admirably illustrates the differences between well-grounded, suggestive, hypotheses, and baseless speculations.

      I have tried to tell the story so that it may be intelligible to the ordinary reader.

      M.M. PATTISON MUIR.

      CAMBRIDGE, November 1902.

      NOTE TO NEW EDITION.

      A few small changes have been made. The last chapter has been re-written and considerably enlarged.

      M.M.P.M.

      FARNHAM, September 1913.

THE STORY OF ALCHEMY

       AND

       THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY.

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS.

       Table of Contents

      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