Transcendental chemistry

On the natural history tradition as an example for chemistry, see David Knight, The Transcendental Part of Chemistry (Folkestone, Kent Dawson, 1978) and, more recently, Mi Gyung Kim, "The Layers of Chemical Language, I Constitution of Bodies v. Structure of Matter," History of Science 30 (1992) 6996. 

Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate, 4 and Knight, The Transcendental Part of Chemistry. 

On "genetic" and "functional" (or what she calls "environmental") relationships, see Mi Gyung Kim, "Practice and Representation," e.g., 6576, 98, 103105. On Kolbe, see Alan J. Rocke, "Kolbe versus the Transcendental Chemists The Emergence of Classical Organic Chemistry," Ambix 34 (1987) 156168. 

Kolbe versus the Transcendental Chemists The Emergence of Classical Organic Chemistry." Ambix 34 (1987) 156168. 

Now, the author of this book may lay claim to being a humble student of both Chemistry and what may be generalised under the terms Mysticism and Transcendentalism and he hopes that this perhaps rather unusual combination of studies has enabled him to take a broad-minded view of the theories of the alchemists, and to adopt a sympathetic attitude towards them. 

Though Glauber s writings on chemical philosophy followed the obscure, medieval transcendentalism of previous centuries, and though he elaborately advertised the remedies he dispensed, nevertheless, as a practical chemist, and as a careful and reliable recorder of the results of the experiments of himself and others, Glauber set a new landmark in technical chemistry, and insured for himself a deserved place in the history of the arts of chemistry. 

There are many different kinds of function in mathematics, but in this chapter we shall restrict the discussion to those transcendental functions, such as exponential, logarithm and trigonometric functions, that have widespread use in chemistry. 

Specifically, in Chapter 3 we create a surface for a transcendental function /(a, y) as an elevation matrix whose zero contour, expressed numerically as a two row matrix table of values, solves the nonlinear CSTR bifurcation problem. In Chapter 6 we investigate multi-tray processes via matrix realizations in Chapter 5 we benefit from the least squares matrix solution to find search directions for the collocation method that helps us solve BVPs and so on. Matrices and vectors are everywhere when we compute numerically. That is, after the laws of physics and chemistry and differential equations have helped us find valid models for the physico-chemical processes. 

A. J. Rocke, Kolbe versus the transcendental chemists the emergence of classical organic chemistry , Ambix, 1987, 34, 156-168. 

Our historical amnesia can be traced to Favoisier s omission of chemical affinity in his Traite elementaire de chimie (1789). Favoisier regarded it as the transcendental part of chemistry, a subject that would require a more sophisticated treatment than he could provide in a purposely elementary text. Although he valued affinity as the frontier of chemical investigation and theory, historians focusing on Lavoisier as the father of modern chemistry have overlooked its importance and concentrated on the Daltonian succession or stoichiometry. To restore chemical... 

Logarithms also occur frequently in chemistry problems. The logarithm of a number is the exponent to which some base has to be raised to obtain the number. The base is almost always either 10 or the transcendental number e. Thus,... 

And, yet, the transcendental aspect of elements was not completely forgotten and continued to serve an explanatory function in nineteenth-century chemistry but not necessarily a microscopic explanation. A chemist could be skeptical of atomistic explanations, as many were in the nineteenth-century, and yet could readily accept a transcendental explanation, for example, for the persistence of the elements in their various compounds. As was alluded to earlier, one of the benefits of regarding the elements as having a transcendental existence is that it provides a way out of the apparent paradox concerning the nature of elements when combined in compounds. Suppose that sodium and chlorine are combined to form sodimn chloride (common salt). In what sense is the poisonous metal sodium present in a sample of white crystalline common salt Similarly, one may ask how it is that the element chlorine, a green and poisonous gas, continues to exist in common salt. Clearly, the elements themselves, in the modern sense of the word, do not appear to survive, or else they would be detectable and one would have a mixture of sodium and chlorine able to show the properties of both these elements. The response available from the nineteenth-century element scheme is that simple substances do not survive in the compound but abstract elements do. ... 

The logarithmic function that occurs commonly in physics and chemistry as part of the solution to certain differential equations has as its base not the number 10 but the transcendental number e = 2.718 28. To differentiate between the common and the natural or Napierian logarithms, a more explicit notation could be used logio N = x and log N = y, where 10 = N and e = N. In this book, and in many chemistry and physics books, the notation log N is used to indicate the logarithm to the base 10, and In N to indicate the natural logarithm to the base e. 

Hence, the Ubergang is supposed to fill the gap in the structure of Kant s science of nature (Naturlehre) and thus fill out the architectural plan of his transcendental philosophy. The transition from the metaphysical principle to the empirical part of physics and chemistry hinges on the systematic formulation of a dynamical theory... 

There are already traces of the influence of the new chemistry in the first Critique, second edition (1787), where Kant adds a physico-chemical example (state transition from fluidity to solidity) to the transcendental deduction (B162) though he still mentions Stahl s theory of the calcination of metals (Bxiii). Stahl s phlogiston theory is still in full force in the Danziger Physik of 1785, e.g. (29 163). 

Kant s notion of element would warrant separate attention. Cf. Carrier (2001), B673-681, (29 161-166, 341-361). Kant followed Stahl in having five elements, which for him were more like regulative ideas of reason and can never be identified empirically. Kant s understanding of these elements changed over time under influence of developments in chemistry. Kant s theory of elements in the KrV is transcendental (not empirical or metaphysical). 

It is not surprising to find that the social perception of chemistry has gradually gone worse over the past few decades. With an increased concern on sustainability, we should agree that many of today s environmental problems are caused, among others, by pollutants hnked to chemical industries, but it is the same perception that makes us more difficult to recognize that the best solutions to many of these and other transcendental problems lie in chemical science. 

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