HISTORY OF MODERN SCIENCE - Chemistry and 1/2 Biology

Paradigms and Science

“Paradigms/Paradigm Shifts”: core doctrines, describe legitimate questions to investigate, and give tools for investigation

• shared set of generally accepted beliefs

Normal Science: “puzzle solving” by using tools to solve issues

• The paradigm is questioned after many failed attempts

Paradigm-based Approach: an efficient way to explore shortcomings of the paradigm shift

• pro: efficiency

• cost: efficiency leads to no questioning of the paradigm, so critical thinking and open discussion aren’t supported

• The pros (efficiency) outweigh the cost

Chemistry History (Overview)

• Greek Matter Theory: 4 elements (fire, air, water, and earth) (Aristotle)

• Boyle and Newton (latter half of the 17th century): criticize the previous paradigm and incorporate theories of atoms and forces

• Lavoisier (latter half of the 18th century): oxygen, new concepts of elements, conservation of mass, and chemical revolution

• Dalton → Mendeleev

Alchemy (11th c A.D.)

began as an Arabic tradition and continued into Europe

• Metallurgical Practices: attempts at transmutation (turning lesser metals into gold)

  • Had spiritual aspects like the goal to find the elixir of life

  • trying to speed up/tweak natural processes

    • metal → gold or an embryo growing in the womb

    • no separation between different sciences within their explanations for theories

• explanans (doing the explaining) vs. explanandum (the thing being explained) differ in traditions

• religious implications and influences

• developed independently in different cultures (3)

Chinese Alchemy Tradition

Influenced by Taoism

• Yang: male, positive, and light

• Yin: female, negative, and dark

Notes:

• emphasis on the search for the elixir of life (yang) and medicinal in nature

• discovery of gunpowder

• spread to Islamic cultures then to Europe

Greco-Egyptian Alchemy Tradition

Hellenistic (a melting pot, Alexandria → later periods)

• not Hellenic (homogeneous prior period)

• Hermetic (tradition) books

• Emphasis on revelation and reaction against traditional Greece (Olympic gods and other beliefs)

• Religious influences (more Egyptian and less traditional Greece)

• Interested in “prime matter”

Arabic Alchemy Tradition

mix of Hellenistic (Greco-Roman) and Chinese traditions

• Philosophers’ Stone: transmutation of stone to gold + the extension of life

• “Al Kimiya”: name for Alchemy, either from the Greek word for “fuse” or the Chinese word for “gold making juice”

  • “Chemistry”: evolved from Paracelsus after iatrochemistry

• Jabir Ibn Hayyan “Geber”:

  • Sulfur-Mercury Theory of Metals: metals are formed by mixing a fiery-smoky principle (Sulfur) and a watery principle (Mercury)

  • Gebers: adopt name for authority, feel the need to defend alchemy and transmutation as a valuable practice

    • Many didn’t understand why one would want to tamper with God’s creations

• Al-Razi/Rhazes: manual of chemical practices

  • chemical and procedural accomplishments

  • Calcification: reduction of metal to its ‘calx’ (oxide)

Decline of Alchemy

Alchemists develop deliberately mystifying (secretive) language to protect trade secrets

• gave alchemists a bad reputation

• King banned the public practice of Alchemy but set up a secret court to investigate alchemy ‘projectionists’

• 1689: Boyle and Newton investigated alchemy outside of the court (still fairly secretive)

  • Newton: “last of the magicians,” which opposes the commonly held thought of Newton as a more modern scientist, because his personal involvement in alchemy was kept a secret until later

  • Boyle: Corpusuclarism which is similar to modern atomism

• Mid 18th Century: Alchemy is universally seen as a pseudoscience, and James Price commits suicide when accused of practicing Alchemy

• 19th Century: Hostile to the idea of transmutation

  • John Dalton’s fixed elements

  • popularity of element theory leads to investigation into basic units of matter

• 20th Century: modern science

17th Century

Early science developing although the scientists at the time were considered natural philosophers

• Alchemy was largely practiced

Paracelsus

“Nature as Alchemy” and made significant advancements (14th-16th)

• revolutionary in medicine with specific treatments for specific body parts instead of just blood letting

• Tria Prima

The Greek Matter Theory Main Philosophers

Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates

• Plato and Aristotle had unknown apperances

Beginnings of Greek Philosophy

• unique to Greece/the West

• rationalizing old mythology and, in due course, rejecting it

  • ex: “the sun is god,” no, “the sun is a fiery rock.”

  • ex: “epilepsy is a sacred disease,” no, “it’s just a disease.”

• Questions: What is the ultimate structure, and what is its origin?

  • ‘Rational Creation Myths’: no miracles, but ordinary, explainable, and consistent structure

• Central Problem: What is the permanent basis behind the variety of experiences?

• Pre-Socrates: origin of these theories, no texts, and later criticized

  • Ionian natural philosophers:

    • Thales of Miletos: everything is made of water + universal stuff must be stripped of its individual properties

    • Anaximander: everything is made of featureless stuff (apeiron) + physical stuff is separated by opposing qualities

    • Anaximenes: everything is made of pneuma (breath/air) + organized by compression or expansion

    • Empedocles: 4 elements (solid/earth, liquid/water, fire, and air) + with mixtures based on love and strife

    • Pythagoreans: axioms, discovered stable mathematical order behind the flux of sensory experience

Atomism (Pre-Socrates)

Leukippos, Demokritos, then Epicurus, and Lucretius

• Properties of atoms: shape and sustainability

• Modes of interaction: collision and interlocking

• Problem: What’s responsible for the organization of systems of atoms in living organisms?

  • Lucretius Solution: the mind itself is composed of atoms

    • Solution doesn’t work as it leads to infinite regress (atoms built of more atoms and so on and so forth)

Golden Age of Greek Philosophy (4th century BC)

• Plato (c427-c347): combines the math of the Pythagoreans (5 regular solids/geometry), atomism of Demokritos, and the 4 elements of Empedocles

  • Inanimate Matter: 4 elements with 4 regular solids (5th = heavenly spheres, aka. planets)

    • Tetrahedron (fire), Icosahedron (liquid), Dodecahedron (quintessence (5th)), octahedron (air), and cube (solid (different geometrically, so cannot transfer to the other 3 shapes)

  • Living Things: functional instead of a structural explanation

• Aristotle (384-322 BC): utilized biology as opposed to math to explain living things rather than inanimate matter

  • Living Things: classification in terms of the characteristic nature of the full-grown organism (blueprint)

    • Explanation of development in terms of its end product

    • Teleological explanation (telos = goal)

  • Four Causes: (Answers)

    • Material Cause = what it’s made of

    • Formal Cause = its essential characteristics

    • Efficient Cause = what produces it

    • Final Cause = its purpose

  • Inanimate Matter: classification on basic characteristics, which filters them into the 4 elements (characteristics are primary)

    • Organic development is the model for material change: “Earth has a tendency to move down.”

Stoics

Main Figures:

• Zeno of Citium (4th Century BC): founder

• Seneca (1st century AD): developed further

• Emperor Marcus Aurelius + Galen (2nd Century AD)

Main Ideas: organization of systems calls for holistic properties (belonging to a system as a whole)

• Pneuma: properties carried by continuous stuff pervading (throughout) the system

  • cohesive, vital, and rational

  • consists of blends of elements (intangible air and fire)

• Galen: vital spirits (network of blood vessels) and animal spirits (nervous system)

• Inanimate Matter: Pneuma becomes the material carrier of Aristotle’s form

  • Aristotle: immaterial blueprint for the combination of four elements

  • Stoics: fire and air carry blueprints for combinations of four elements

    • More material like “fields of energy.”

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

Iatrochemistry (from the Greek word ‘Iatros’ for physician)

• Iconoclast (a person who attacks cherished institutions) as he burned the writings of Galen and Avicenna

Biography:

• Born in Zurich and trained with his father, a physician, doing practical work in the mines

• studied medicine in Ferrara, Italy

• 1527: Professor of medicine in Basel

  • Disgraced himself by not supplying a diploma, lecturing in German (not Latin), admitting Barbers/Surgeons to his class, and burning the textbooks (writings of Galen)

  • Melodramatic in his distaste for established medicine

• 1527: cures Basel book publisher (Frobenius) from having his leg amputated

• 1528: Forced to leave Basel after curing a wealthy patient who then refused to pay and caused great upheaval over Paracelsus’ practices as they weren’t of the time

  • forced to lead a wandering life

Overview: mainly a medical reformer, in practice, he looked for mineral (inorganic) cures as opposed to the herbal (organic) treatments of the Greeks and Romans

• promoted the internal use of chemical remedies in moderate doses as opposed to the large dosage practice of the time

New Concept of Disease

Galen (2nd Century AD):

• Disease: imbalances of the four ‘humors’ that make up someones ‘temperament’

• Cure: blood letting, induced vomiting, and mixing of herbs to restore balance

Paracelsus (1493-1541)(first ½ of the 16th century):

• Disease: specific agents attacking specific parts of the body

• Cure: inorganic remedies (arcana), and distillations (mixing)

• Not entirely modern as he still incorporated astrology

Paracelsus Mattery Theory

Focus on parcipitates (components to be added to arcana) and adds a solid to Geber Sulphur-Mercury theory of metals

• Tria Prima:

1. Sulphur (fiery)

2. Mercury (water, ‘liquidy’)

3. Salt (earthy, ‘solidy’)

Attacked by Robert Boyle (1627-1691) in ‘The Skepticla Chymist” (1661)

Iatrochemistry History

Known because they started teaching and made textbooks as opposed to the secrecy of Alchemy

• French and German

Johannes (Joan) Baptista Van Helmot (1577-1644)

Another Paracelsian/Iatrochemist (about a century after Paracelsus)

• also had no patience for traditional textbooks/medicine

• Weapon Salve: if one were wounded by a weapon, to heal the wound, someone would have to sprinkle ‘powder of sympathy’ on the blood remaining on the weapon

  • “Wounded Dog Theory” for telling longitude

• One Element Theory: everything is made of water that is organized by ferment

  • Attacked by Robert Boyle in ‘The Skeptical Chymist”

• 2 Things to Remember:

  • Willow tree experiment: most important (famous) evidence for his one-element theory

  • He coined the term ‘gas’ from ‘chaos’ as gas couldn’t be contained seemingly

  • This is ironic as he overlooked the crucial contribution of air to his willow tree experiment in the form of oxygen and carbon dioxide during photosynthesis

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

A scientist born in Ireland, the 14th child, was sent to France with his brother to study under a tutor

• his brother was shortly married to a bride given by Charles I and taken as Charles II mistress

Robert Boyle (Historical Context)

• 1641: Irish rebellion breaks out

• 1642: British civil war breaks out (Boyle family split between two sides)

• 1644: Boyle returns to England

  • forms the “Invisible College” which becomes the Royal Society (1660), of which Boyle is the most prominent member of

  • sets an example for others

• 1649: Regicide (beheading of Charles I) after tension was brewing

  • influences scholars after that to be more cautious, so as not to stir up a rebellion

• 1649 - 1660: Commonwealth → restoration of the monarchy

  • 1659: Cromwell (commonwealth) was exhumed and publicly executed by Charles II, and his skull was skewered

  • 1960: reburied after being retrieved (1658)

• 1688: Glorious Revolution (w/o bloodshed)

• 1649 - 1660: period of Dutch-English wars

Influences on Boyle

Introduction to new science, Galileo Galilei (Boyle visited Florence after he died), he influenced Boyle’s writing style

• Experimental Inductive Method: Bacon articulated the primacy of technology in controlling and instrumentalizing it

• Mechanistic Corpuscular View: Bacon, the revival of atomism, and Descartes

  • Boyle accepted the general outline of Descartes mechanistic corpuscular view

  • Atomists void over Descartes Plenum

  • Bacon’s inductive experimental method over Descartes deductive mathematical method

  • Microscope (Robert Hooke) (1635-1702)

Boyles Work in Chemistry

General Aim: using Descartes and Galileo's physics (mechanical) perspective to understand chemistry

• Refute Aristotelian and Paracelsus/Van Helmot older views and replace them with mechanical views

• Basis of experiments

• Scheptical Chymist (1661)

Arguments: against 4-element/Tria Prima through decomposition by fire

• Aristotle/Paracelsus:

  • Not all things decompose into 3 or 4 things, can decompose further, depending on the decomposition method, and not all products were present originally

• Van Helmot:

  • water may be composed of more basic particles, and there is no evidence for the growth of metals or minerals from water

• Questions: usefulness of the concept ‘element.’

• More pragmatic definition of element (cant breakdown further at that time), but Boyle himself didn’t personally achieve this/use it

  • inspired use by others later on (Lavoisier)

Boyle on Air

Inspired by the Vacuum pumps of Otto Von Guericke, he hypothesized that air is an elastic fluid with chemically active particles floating in it (air isn’t chemically active)

• something absorbed from the air in combustion and respiration

• “Nitro-aerial Theory” of combustion/respiration (Hooke, Mayow)

• Mechanical (not chemical) principles

Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)

• Work: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica = Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)

  • Book 1: Mechanics (absolute space and time) (3 Laws of motion)

  • Book 2: Fluid Mechanics (not accurate)

  • Book 3: Universal Gravitation

    • Newton had reservations about his theory on forces acting at a distance, but those were silenced by the success of his theory

• Not as dogmatic as the Cartesians (atomists), as he allows forces along with size, shape, and motion

• Newton’s Critics: felt he was occultish (a step back in progress), but their criticisms were silenced by his success

• Newtons Influence: culture, new discoveries, and an atheistic perspective (science first)(not personally adopted by Newton but others like Laplace and Lagrange)

Newtons Opticks

Theories about Chemistry and Matter Theory presented through “Queries” in his three books

• 1st edition English (1704)(16)

• 1st edition Latin (1706)(23)

• 2nd edition English (1717)(31)

  • organizations due to attraction by forces

  • impulsive attraction, doesn’t theorize a cause

  • god created indivisible basic matter that can change the characteristics of things

    • adhere based on the strongest attraction to create bigger particles (which have weaker bonds) and many layers

  • no help to chemistry progress at the time

Newtons Shadow

• Particle Theory of Light: casts a long shadow in the 18th century, overshadowing the Huygens wave theory (correct), which came back later on

• Boyle’s Law: explained by repulsive forces instead of Bernoulli’s correct explanation, where thermal motion of particles aren’t interacting with one another

Effects on Matter Theory (Newton)

• Newton had some supporters and others who weren’t

• Anti-Newtonian: Geoffrey develops an affinity table to explain chemical bonding/reactions based on the strength of the affinity between different molecules, which was unhelpful, and kind of Newtonian in theory

  • didn’t account for all factors like temperature

Phlogiston Theory

Becher (1635-1682) + Stahl (1660 - 1734)

• Becher: an alchemist and con artist (turning Dutch dunes into gold)

  • His version of the Tria Prima consisted of three types of earths

    • Terra Fluida (fluidity + volatility), Terra Lapida (solidifying + fusing), and Terra Pinguis “fatty earth” (oily + combustible)

• Stahl: picks up on Terra Pinguis from Becher and renames it Phlogiston, creating the Phlogiston theory

  • has unifying power

    • Incorporates combustion (burning), calcination (rusting) and its inverse (smelting)

    • Calcination: Metal (high phlogiston) → Calx (no phlogiston) + phlogisticated air

    • Smelting: turning calx into metal through heating it with charcoal (high in phlogiston) and producing “fixed air” (CO₂) in the process

• Phlogiston Theory: substance burned/rusted releases something into the air

  • vs. absorbing something from the air in the oxygen theory

• Explanations: plants reabsorbed phlogiston from the air

  • had trouble explaining why a metals calx was heavier than the metal itself after phlogiston was theoretically removed

• Main Ideas: 3 aspects of calcination, combustion, and rusting

  • 1. changes in chemical composition

  • 2. release of heat

  • 3. changes of state

    • Phlogiston Theory: accounts for all 3 (Stahl, Becher, Cavendish, and Priestly)

    • Oxygen Theory: accounts for 1. + caloric accounts for 2. and 3. (Lavoisier and his cronies)