9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chemists and their adventures...., August 15, 2005
I found the stories told on the book so interesting that I read it like a romance, for a few days, every spare time I had, I was reading this book... One will enjoy and learn at the same time.
After reading it, you have a very strong impression that humanity has just started to make science. Not long ago, the knowledge available was so superficial that very few aspects of chemistry were reasonably explained.
The author explains the science involved in very simple terms, it helps if the reader has some previous knowledge of chemistry or physics to fill in the blanks. The last part of the book requires additional reading to understand the evolution of scientific knowledge during the twentieth century.
I recommend reading the Scientists by John Gribbin as a complementary book as nice to read as this one.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The tortuous path from superstition to mystery, April 18, 2004
This review is from: The Last Sorcerers: The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table (Hardcover)
In a world of leptons, quarks, muons, superstrings, 10 dimensions of space and an 11-dimensional theory called M theory -- it is hard to remember the electron was discovered just over a century ago.
English physicist J.J. Thompson discovered the electron in 1897; since then, there has been an explosion of discoveries. For thousands of years, chemists thought of the world consisted of earth, air, fire and water. It was a theory offered by Empedocles, who lived about 2,500 years ago and was said to be able to control the winds and restore life to a woman who had been dead for 30 days. Once Aristotle endorsed the idea, chemists were stuck with it for nearly two and one-half millennia.
Logically, if everything consists of four basic elements -- then, by properly mixing it would be possible to make gold and every other useful item. For example, when mercury ore was heated, a pool of liquid metal was formed. Transformations took place when substances were heated, dissolved, melted, filtered, and crystallized. The key was discovering the proper mixture of the four elements, then keep it secret.
Mix tin and copper and the result was bronze, better than both tin and copper and looking a lot like gold. Wise men would have been foolish not to pursue such a promising start. However, it was a dead-end road, even though the ancients had endorsed it.
Secrecy was the second crucial ingredient. Alchemists realized if everyone knew the secret of making gold, the social impact would be catastrophic. As a result, every alchemist literally began work based on zero knowledge of what works and what doesn't. Bad ideas were never rejected, good ideas were never shared.
It took some real rebels, weirdos and geeks to upset more than two thousand years of error. One of the earliest was Paracelsus; the name he gave himself meant "greater than Celsus," a deservedly famous first century AD Roman physician. Paracelsus, according to one of his contemporaries, "lived like a pig and looked like a sheep drover. He found his greatest pleasure among the company of the most dissolute rabble, and spent most of his time drunk." This is the type of man who first questioned the wisdom of the ages.
In an age when religious fundamentalism is becoming ever more terrible, Morris presents a fascinating story of how scientists went from absolute certainty about the world to tenuous uncertainty. It wasn't too long ago that scientists were looking ever deeper into the furthest reaches of the universe; within the past decade, they have discovered that 96 percent of the universe is invisible and for all intents and purposes unknown.
Science is the process of uncertainty. It's a lonely, dangerous path of inquiry to follow. The English condemned the man who discovered oxygen as a dangerous radical; the French guillotined the leading scientist of his era, because he didn't fit in with the certainties of revolutionary France; the Russian who came up with the Periodic Table of the elements survived only because of the Czar's protections; and the Nazis would have executed the greatest physicist of the past century because he was Jewish.
Care to be a scientist?
It takes guts. Morris outlines the risks, dangers and rewards of overthrowing an ancient orthodoxy with skill, humour and insight. Without people who have the courage to challenge the old, accepted and true, our lives would be ruled by sorcery, superstition and suspicion.
In brief, it's a wonderful look at how modern thought came to be modern.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mellifluous read, March 17, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: The Last Sorcerers: The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table (Hardcover)
Like a well written piece of classical music, the story of early chemistry bears telling and retelling. Each interpretation brings the emotions and the feeling of its author. The written music is the same, the pleasure of listening to it comes from who does the playing.
Richard Morris would have made a great conductor. His interpretation of early chemistry is one of the most enjoyable I read. Read it together with Paul Strathern's "Mendeleyev's Dream" and Oliver Sacks' "Uncle Tungsten". You'll feel you have personally met Paracelsus, Lavoisier and Boyle.
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