Grundlinien der anorganischen Chemie

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING the great advances that have been made during the past generation in our theoretical knowledge regarding solutions and chemical equilibrium in general, elementary inorganic chemistry is taught to-day much in the same manner as it was in the early seventies. The ordinary student at the end of his junior course has a very hazy knowledge of chemical facts, and scarcely a trace of chemical common-sense; but to make up for these deficiencies he knows all about atoms and molecules. If he is asked how he would convert, say, cadmium sulphate into cadmium chloride, he will doubtfully reply, “Treat the cadmium sulphate with hydrochloric acid”—this because he knows no general principles concerning the facts of chemistry. If, on the other hand, he is asked why hydrogen and chlorine combine, he will probably answer with confidence somewhat in these terms: “They combine on account of the mutual attraction exercised by the chlorine and hydrogen atoms.” He does not see that he is merely restating the fact in terms of an hypothesis, and that the question, in our present state of knowledge, has, properly speaking, no answer. The “heuristically” trained student has a better knowledge of certain facts, but he is equally ignorant of general principles, and equally unable to distinguish between what is fact and what is theory. To him, as to the other, chemical symbols, formulæ, and combining weights are part and parcel of the atomic theory, instead of a convenient method of expressing actual facts—a method, it is true, arrived at through the atomic theory, but a method which would persist though the atomic theory were abandoned to-morrow.

Grundlinien der anorganischen Chemie.

Von W. Ostwald. Pp. xix + 795. (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1900.)