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Ideas in Chemistry: A History of the Science

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David Knight teaches the history of science at the University of Durham, England. In this book, Ideas in Chemistry (Rutgers University Press), Knight describes the changing nature of chemistry from the Renaissance to the present. We readers meet only a few chemical expressions and notations. (This is not a history of the classic experiments that shaped the development of chemistry.) Nonetheless, I suspect that few general readers unfamiliar with chemistry will remain engaged. Ideas in Chemistry will primarily interest students and teachers of chemistry, chemists, and other scientists.

This is the story of how chemistry has changed from an occult science to an independent, experimental science and finally to a supporting role to medicine, pharmacology, biology, geology, mineralogy, archeology, and other disciplines. Knight explores how early attempts to explain the findings of chemical experimentation through the mechanical models of Newtonian physics were less than satisfactory and for a period chemistry flourished as an independent, experimental science. But with the development of quantum theory (and quantum chemistry), physics emerged as the fundamental physical science. Chemistry today remains an empirical science, but its foundations are now rooted in physics.

The last four chapters are titled A Descriptive Classifying Science, A Teachable Science, A Reduced Science, and A Service Science. They explore the pervasive supporting role that chemistry plays today.