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Modern chemistry emerged from the historical traditions of metalworking
(beginning as early as the Bronze Age in 3500 BC);
medicine (especially "iatrochemistry",
which emerged in the Renaissance); and alchemy
(the medieval and mystical forerunner of chemistry).
Alchemy
was based on the Aristotelian
concept of elements (earth, air, water, and fire) and Platonic
ideas about pure "essences" (i.e. ideal forms). The modern idea
of a chemical element began to emerge in Robert Boyle's
The Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle established a systematic
approach to a vast subject in which detail frequently obscured
basic principles.
The
18th century theory of "phlogiston" appeared to explain combustion
and respiration as giving off an "inflammable" substance.
In 1774 Joseph Priestly discovered "dephlogisticated
air" (later called oxygen). In Paris, Antoine Lavoisier
recognized the real significance of this discovery, and used
it to revolutionize chemistry through his 1789 work Traite
elementaire de chimie.
A
chemical theory
of atoms emerged in the early 19th century, and
31 new elements were discovered between 1790 and 1830. Dmitry
Mendeleyev laid out the periodic table in 1869. Chemistry
was ushered into the 20th century by organic chemistry, valence
theory, and the electron theory of chemical bonding.
Chemistry and physics would now be linked in an alliance that
has had dramatic consequences for scientific progress and the
modern standard of living.
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