Ancient analogues of chemical equations

Di Giacomo, Francesco

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/128645 Copy

Description

Title

Ancient analogues of chemical equations

Author(s)

Di Giacomo, Francesco

Issue Date

2022-12-30

Keyword(s)

• Chemistry
• History
• Plato
• Timaeus

Abstract

The symbolizing of chemical reactions with chemical equations goes back to Lavoisier and Berzelius. In Plato’s Timaeus, his only dialogue devoted to science which was for many centuries the most influential of his works, we find analogues of chemical reactions which, when written as quantitative constitutive chemical equations, show very clearly that reactants and products are the analogues of molecules. Heisenberg and Bertrand Russell wrote about Plato’s reactions, but they interpreted the reactants and products as atoms, and they did not write them as chemical equations. The writing of Plato’s reactions in the form of chemical equations shows the power of this modern symbolism even when applied to Plato’s analogues of chemical reactions, immediately allowing the modern chemist to see an analogue of the concept of molecule in Plato’s geometrical atomism. His theory becomes then the first mathematical theory of the structure of matter at the three levels molecular, atomic and, as will be shown in the text, even sub-atomic, an unbelievable feat 2200 years before John Dalton and Amedeo Avogadro. His theory is also here compared with the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus.

Publisher

Division of the History of Chemistry

ISSN

1053-4385

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

article

Language

eng

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/128645

DOI

https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2022v047p265

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Division of the History of Chemistry

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