Book Id: 43634 Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae & experimentalis. Georg Ernest Stahl.
Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae & experimentalis

Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae & experimentalis

Publisher Information: Nuremberg: Wolfgang Mauritius, 1723.

tahl, Georg Ernst (1659-1734). Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae & experimentalis. . . . 4to. [8], 255, [25]pp. Nuremberg: Johann Ernst Adelbulner for Wolfgang Mauritz, 1723. 198 x 161 mm. Modern half vellum, floral-patterned boards. Light toning, but a very good, crisp copy.

First Edition. Stahl was the originator of the phlogiston theory, which dominated chemistry until the end of the eighteenth century. Stahl took the structure of his theory from 17th-century alchemist Johann Joachim Becher, who had stated air, water and earth to be the three elementary principles; water and earth were the basis of all material things, and Becher further subdivided the principle of earth into the three principles of substantiality, combustibility and weight/ductility/volatility. Stahl elaborated from Becher’s “second earth” a new chemical principle, phlogiston, representing the principle of combustibility that combined with other chemical substances to form compounds. Experimental evidence for the existence of phlogiston came largely from metals and minerals, particularly from the reversible relationship of metals and their calces: when a metal was heated intensely, its phlogiston was driven off and a calx appeared, but when phlogiston was reintroduced to the calx (by heating it with carbon, oil, pitch or other phlogiston-rich materials), the metal reappeared. Air did not combine with phlogiston but received it when it was liberated during combustion; air could absorb only a limited amount of phlogiston, and when that limit was reached, combustion could no longer take place. The flaws in the phlogiston theory are obvious and it did not survive the eighteenth century; however, it served as an important link between older (al)chemical concepts and the new, an attempt to modify the existing intellectual framework in order to account for new experimental observations. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica, p. 560. Norman 2005. Partington, History of Chemistry, Vol. II, pp. 662-678.

Book Id: 43634

Price: $3,000.00

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