Development of Physical Chemistry During the Nineteenth Century
Overview
Before the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, all the natural sciences were grouped together under the heading of "natural philosophy." But by 1800 many had become separate disciplines, with distinct subject matters and investigative methods. During the later nineteenth century, however, it became increasingly clear that discoveries in one science often had major consequences for another, and many scientists sought to recover the previous unity between the sciences. One result was the rise of "physical chemistry," which united ideas and techniques from both physics and chemistry.
Background
By the early nineteenth century, physics and chemistry had segregated into two distinct fields. Physics studied the general motions of bodies in space and time according to mathematical laws due to the action of various "forces." Chemistry focused on the discovery, analysis, synthesis, and qualitative description of particular species of matter, chiefly elements and compounds. Heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, once believed to be "imponderable" (weightless) fluids and hence chemical substances, were now thought by many to be only apparent effects of the motions of microscopic particles and invisible forces, and thus a part of physics instead. Attempts to develop a quantitative "force" chemistry, which would explain reactions by mathematical laws of atomic motions due to gravitational or electrical forces of attraction and repulsion, failed.
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