Kinetics, an Historical Introduction

This Chapter would provide a methodological analysis of the historical developments of chemical kinetics from the beginnings to the achievements of Transition state theory and Kramers-Christiansen approach. Chemical kinetics is often treated as a side issue of the most important disciplines of chemical science. Students in most of the cases gain knowledge of Kinetics as part of Physical Chemistry introductory courses and find it again applied in many other contests. 

Despite that, it would necessitate a fundamental and main teaching course as we will see in the course of this chapter. This didactical and academic approach could have many reasons. A general one may be the philosophical and psychological disposition to put our attention more on objects rather than concepts, matter over processes. 

In Science History there are many examples of this tendency the transmission of heat and electromagnetic waves are good examples. Phlogiston and Liitnitiiferous Aether represents a materialization of processes that processes themselves do not need to be studied, however our mind need this primitive objectivization to grasp the concept in a simpler way. 

This represents a fundamental issue of scientific method to do Science we need to go beyond banality and perception. The development of Chemical Kinetics is deeply involved in the counterfactual ap proach that brought from Alchemy to Chemistry as for Physics form Aristotelic Natural Philosophy to Galilean Science. 

The chemical affinity principle, developed during the seventeenth century, derives from the alchemical concept of chemical wedding similar substances will interact so we can categorize them The real innovation at the end of 17 and during the 18 centuries was the application of that concept not only as a taxonomic principle but also for the comprehension of chemical reactivity. 

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This general area is filled with an alphabet soup morass of acronyms, only a few of which will be addressed here. The interested reader is particularly directed to the introduction of Stringfellow s book [4]. His work is directed exclusively at the compound semiconductor market, nevertheless it includes an exceptional discussion of the kinetics and thermodynamics of chemical vapor deposition processes in general. Additionally, a good chemical introduction is included in The Chemistry of Metal CVD [2]. Also, Jensen and Hitchman s book on chemical vapor deposition has an outstanding introduction to the background of the field, its historical perspective, and the prospects for continued growth in the area [5]. 

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