On the first principles of chemistry / by Edmund J. Mills.

  • Mills, Edmund J (Edmund James)
Date:
[1876]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the first principles of chemistry / by Edmund J. Mills. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anuary 1876. ON THE FIEST PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY. BY EDMUND J. MILLS, D.Sc., F.R.S., YOUNG PROFESSOR OF TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY IN THE ANDER80NIAN COLLEGE, GLASGOW. Contents. (1) A property of First Principles.—(2) Special difficulties of the investi¬ gation.—(3) Need of it.—(4) The first principle of science is motion— (5) of chemistry, action.—(6) Such action is determinate, continuous, proportional to mass, and occurs between wholes; it is not, therefore, expressible by the ordinary symbols.—(7) Experiments of Gladstone, Harcourt & Esson, Guldberg & Waage; those of Bunsen and Debus are consistent with continuity. Chemical action cannot be regarded as finite.—(8) Acting substance is directed motion; homogeneous, not partite. Digression on isomerism.—(9) Consequences traced: vices of current speculation: diffuse and concrete motion.—(10) Symbols of substance, operation, equivalence. Valencies ” cannot form an arith¬ metical series. Equivalent defined.—(11) Table of theses and anti¬ theses.—(12) Principles on which to found a decision. (1) Ij^IRST principles are of all portions of a science the most JlJ difficult to grasp. The explanation of this fact lies in the law, first pointed out by Professor Perrier (Institutes, p. 12), that what is first in the order of nature is last in the order of Imowledge. To that subtle and accomplished philosopher (now, alas I no longer with us) the pure reason of mankind stands in eternal debt, and not least for the power and beauty of his exposition of this law of scientific progress. For, if it be progress to attain first principles, then all science can ad¬ vance only by going, in a manner, backwards, or rather by corning roundand the apotheosis and final triumph of B