History of chemistry

Depending on one's perspective on the defining province of chemistry, one might trace the history of chemistry as far back as the emergence of our species, or even to earlier times in our ancestral hominin lineage.

Where should we begin? Did chemistry come into being when practical information began to be acquired and transmitted? In that case we have to start with prehistoric times, with the first techniques for making and controlling fire, the first processes for dyeing cloth and fermenting wine, and the first pharmacopoeias. Or does it begin with the first elements of rational knowledge? In that case it must start with the pre-Socratic philosophers and the earliest atomic and elemental theories. If our story begins with the link between theory and practice, alchemy must be the starting point. If a "history of chemistry" should be limited to that chemistry clearly identified as a science, the seventeenth century is the necessary origin.

Beginnings

Scholars who give us accounts of their version of the history of chemistry tend naturally to bias their accounts with the perspective of chemistry as a distinct, isolable science of a part of the natural world, what we call a scientific discipline. Yet we find chemistry in the form of transformations and interactions of matter everywhere we look, as astronomers, geologists, physicists, biologists, physicians, painters, chefs, you name it. As the "central science", chemistry sits at the central hub of the sciences it reduces to and those it underpins, which include all the natural sciences. A history of chemistry must recognize that and integrate it into its account.

Archaic Homo sapiens, perhaps as early as 200,000 years ago, undoubtedly experienced earth in its variety of textures and colors; experienced air in its manifestations as wind, in its various states of humidity; experienced fire as something to fear and perhaps begin to use; and, water, as rain, sweat and dew, as potable or not, as wet, as thirst-quenching, as something precious. Sometime during the course of hominin evolution, those experiences became conscious experiences, coupled with the ability to think symbolically through gesticulation and vocalization. Then those experienced aspects of our prehistoric ancestors' chemical environment likely became important topics of discussion. As we shall see, in the earliest written records of thinkers giving thought to issues modern chemists would recognize as a theoretical chemistry, earth, air, fire, and water figure as central fundamentals in the development of a coherent science of chemistry, however unrecognized as such, and however primitive, incorrect, and absent experimental support in the beginning.

Primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that the controlled use of fire, for cooking and for protection from nocturnal predators, began between 1.9 and 1.8 million years ago, with the emergence of Homo erectus, a hominin species in the ancestral lineage of Homo sapiens. If the argument holds, we may claim that ancestral humans practiced the chemistry of cooking and burning combustible materials nearly 2 million years ago, and give that date as a starting point for a history of chemistry.

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