"I have raised a question which may be regarded as heretical. At the time when our modern conception of chemistry first dawned... the average chemist... accepted the elements as ultimate facts... absolutely simple, incapable of transmutation or decomposition, each a kind of barrier behind which we could not penetrate. ...[H]e said they were self-existent from all eternity ...But in our times... we cannot help asking what are the elements, whence do they come, what is their signification? ...These elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us—mocking, mystifying and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities. If I venture to say that... elements are not simple and primordial... but have evolved from simpler matters—or... one sole kind of matter—I... give formal utterance to an idea... for some time "in the air" of science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit declare explicitly their belief that the seventy... elements of our text-books are not the which we must never hope to pass."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
William Crookes, "Genesis of the Elements" (Feb 25, 1887) The Chemical News Vol. LV, No 1422.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Atomic_theory
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Atomic theory
71 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Atomic theory →
Related Quotes
"We have come a long way from the classical ideal of objective descriptions. In quantum mechanics the departure from t…"
"Who sees the future? Let us have free scope for all directions of research; away with dogmatism, either atomistic or …"
"It seems not absurd to conceive that at the first Production of mixt Bodies, the Universal Matter whereof they among …"
"Neither is it impossible that of these minute Particles divers of the smallest and neighbouring ones were here and th…"
"I shall not peremptorily deny, that from most of such mixt Bodies as partake either of Animal or Vegetable Nature, th…"
"It may likewise be granted, that those distinct Substances, which Concretes generally either afford or are made up of…"
"And, to prevent mistakes, I must advertize You, that I now mean by Elements, as those Chymists that speak plainest do…"
"Fraunhofer's publication of 1814 did not receive prompt recognition, nor did his papers of 1821 and 1823. Physicists …"
"To try to make a model of an atom by studying its spectrum is like trying to make a model of a grand piano by listeni…"
"In 1763 a Croatian Jesuit named Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711 - 1787) identified the ultimate implication of this mech…"