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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
135
Lavoisier
made
these
great
advances
by
applying
himself
to
the
minute
and
exhaustive
examination
of
a
few
cases
of
chemical
change,
and
endeavouring
to
account
for
everything
which
took
part
in
the
processes
he
studied,
by
weighing
or
measuring
each
distinct
substance
which
was
present
when
the
change
began,
and
each
which
was
present
when
the
change
was
finished.
He
did
not
make
haphazard
experiments;
he
had
a
method,
a
system;
he
used
hypotheses,
and
he
used
them
rightly.
"Systems
in
physics,"
Lavoisier
writes,
"are
but
the
proper
instruments
for
helping
the
feebleness
of
our
senses.
Properly
speaking,
they
are
methods
of
approximation
which
put
us
on
the
track
of
solving
problems;
they
are
the
hypotheses
which,
successively
modified,
corrected,
and
changed,
by
experience,
ought
to
conduct
us,
some
day,
by
the
method
of
exclusions
and
eliminations,
to
the
knowledge
of
the
true
laws
of
nature."
In
a
memoir
wherein
he
is
considering
the
production
of
carbonic
acid
and
alcohol
by
the
fermentation
of
fruit-juice,
Lavoisier
says,
"It
is
evident
that
we
must
know
the
nature
and
composition
of
the
substances
which
can
be
fermented
and
the
products
of
fermentation;
for
nothing
is
created,
either
in
the
operations
of
art
or
in
those
of
nature;
and
it
may
be
laid
down
that
the
quantity
of
material
present
at
the
beginning
of
every
operation
is
the
same
as
the
quantity
present
at
the
end,
that
the
quality
and
quantity
of
the
principles[9]
are
the
same,
and
that
nothing
happens
save
certain
changes,
certain
modifications.
On
this
principle
is
based
the
whole
art
of
experimenting
in
chemistry;
in
all
chemical
experiments
we
must
suppose
that
there
is
a
true
equality
between
the
principles[10]
of
the
substances
which
are
examined
and
those
which
are
obtained
from
them
by
analysis."
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