The modern apothecary: reviving the romance of chemistry

摘要

A little more than a decade ago, an award-winning science journalist described the origins of chemistry thus: "Modern chemistry has a panoply of origins: in the arts of metallurgy and brewing; in the ancient philosophers' puzzles over the nature of brute matter and the distinction between substance and form; in the mystical obsession of alchemists. To explain the basics of matter, the latter groped for underlying principles such as the four Aristotelian elements (earth, air, fire and water), the seven metals, the universal spirit and the philosopher's stone. They understood the natures of substances through their links with the planets, with mythological characters, with theology. They represented them using symbols, colours, pictures, secret names and codes. The achievement of chemistry over the last two hundred years has been to remove these romantic underpinnings."