Heroes of Science: Chemists

by M. M. Pattison Muir

Change is vividly impressed on all man's surroundings: the endeavour to find some resting-place amidst the chaos of circumstances, some unchanging substance beneath the ever-changing appearances of things, has always held a prominent place with those who study the phenomena of the world which surrounds them. In the third and fourth centuries of our era much attention was given to the art which professed to explain the changes of Nature. Religion, philosophy, and what we should now call natural science, were at that time closely intermingled; the scheme of things which then, and for several centuries after that time, exerted a powerful influence over the minds of many thinkers was largely based on the conception of a fundamental unity underlying and regulating the observed dissimilarities of the universe.

Thus, in the Emerald Table of Hermes, which was held in much repute in the Middle Ages, we read—

"True, without error, certain and most true: that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for performing the miracles of the One Thing; and as all things were from one, by the mediation of one, so all things arose from this one thing by adaptation: the father of it is the Sun, the mother of it is the Moon, the wind carried it in its belly, the nurse of it is the Earth. This is the father of all perfection, the consummation of the whole world."

And again, in a later writing we have laid down the basis of the art of alchemy in the proposition that "there abides in nature a certain pure matter, which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies that it touches."

To discover this fundamental principle, this One Thing, became the object of all research. Earth and the heavens were supposed to be bound together by the all-pervading presence of the One Thing; he who should attain to a knowledge of this precious essence would possess all wisdom. To the vision of those who pursued the quest for the One Thing the whole universe was filled by one ever-working spirit, concealed now by this, now by that veil of sense, ever escaping identification in any concrete form, yet certainly capable of being apprehended by the diligent searcher.

Analogy was the chief guide in this search. If it were granted that all natural appearances were manifestations of the activity of one essential principle, then the vaguest and most far-fetched analogies between the phenomena of nature might, if properly followed up, lead to the apprehension of this hidden but everywhere present essence.

The history of alchemy teaches, in the most striking manner, the dangers which beset this method of pursuing the study of Nature; this history teaches us that analogies, unless founded on carefully and accurately determined facts, are generally utterly misleading in natural science.

Let us consider the nature of the experimental evidence which an alchemist of the fourth or fifth century could produce in favour of his statement that transmutation of one kind of matter into another is of constant occurrence in Nature.

The alchemist heated a quantity of water in an open glass vessel; the water slowly disappeared, and when it was all gone there remained in the vessel a small quantity of a white earthy solid substance. What could this experiment teach save that water was changed into earth and air? The alchemist then plunged a piece of red-hot iron into water placed under a bell-shaped glass vessel; some of the water seemed to be changed into air, and a candle, when brought into the bell, caused the air therein to take fire. Therefore, concluded the experimenter, water is proved to be changeable into fire.

A piece of lead was then strongly heated in the air; it lost its lustre and became changed into a reddish-white powder, very unlike lead in its properties; this powder was then heated in a convenient vessel with a little wheat, whereupon the lead was again produced. Therefore, said the alchemist, lead is destroyed by fire, but it can be reproduced from its ashes by the help of heat and a few grains of corn.