A Concise History of Science in India c9.1

c9.1

CHEMISTRY as a branch of modern science is admittedly not very old; for, to be precise, it became systematized only in the latter half of the eighteenth century A.D. mainly because of experimentation and the methodical interpretation of experimental results by Lavoiser (1743–94) and his contemporaries like Joseph Black (1728–99), Henry Cavendish (1731–1810), Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) and Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–86). As a candid recognition of our indebtedness to the past, it must be said that chemical practices have been very ancient, and they formed an integral part of the technical skills of antiquity. The practical chemists—potters, brewers, dyers, metalsmiths, glassmakers and the like—contributed a great deal to the growth of technology and in no small measure to the economic welfare of the ancient communities. They were noted for their craftsmanship and experimental skills involving many a chemical transformation both qualitative and quantitative, even though they did not appear to have formulated any theoretical knowledge of the chemical transformations. For example, the beginnings of modern chemical processes, such as fermentation, distillation, fusion and calcination, can be traced to very ancient times despite the fact that the scientifically valid theoretical principles governing them came to be understood only a century or two ago.