The Foundations of Chemical Theory: The Elements of Physical and Genera/ Chemistry (Classic Reprint)

Modern chemistry presents a multitudinous array of facts. It could not be otherwise, since the science undertakes to describe more than eighty separate elements and the compounds they form, one with another. The exhibition of these facts, as set forth in a comprehensive textbook, whether of organic or inorganic chemistry, may well dazzle and bewilder the student, who will scarcely be likely to appreciate the beauty of the science, or the glamour of the human achievement of which it is the monument, if he is required laboriously to appropriate the facts without judicious selection and arrangement. I ndeed, the complaint is often made by students that chemistry requires too much memory-work, and is therefore not so inspiring a science as physics, which deals all the while with fundamental principles, and properties of matter. Yet the facts of chemistry are the facts of nature, and nature is not chaotic. Consequently these accumulated facts present to the mind of man a powerful challenge. They must be systematized. Chemical theoiy, however, is worthy of the facts which form the subject-matter of the science, for it includes some of the greatest generalizations of any science. The atomic and molecular theories, the theories of molecular structure, the periodic law, the conceptions embraced in modern physical chemistry, which constitute, par excellence, the science on its intellectual side, are among the noblest achievements of the human mind. Every student of chemistry must become acquainted in some degree with chemical theory. The question therefore arises how this theory may best be communicated.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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