Abstract
Dalton proposed that each element is made up of identical atoms distinctive of it and that least parts of compounds consist of characteristic combinations of small numbers of them. The laws of proportion predicted by his theory were borne out by experiment. For the first time, tentative experimental contact was made with a property of atoms, their relative weight. However, not much chemistry can be done armed only with such weights. It took a creative shift in Dalton’s programme for significant progress to be made. This occurred in organic chemistry with the use of formulae and the representation of properties other than weight by suitable arrangements of symbols in them. The formulae could serve their function without interpreting the symbols in them as representing atoms. Most of the chemists involved did interpret them as representing atoms, but they differed in a crucial respect from the atoms in the philosophical tradition dating back to Democritus. The properties of atoms were to be discovered by chemical research rather than set down at the outset. The property of valency was one such property, the necessity of which became evident from the 1860s. Progress in nineteenth-century chemistry was a precondition for rather than result of the introduction of atomism into chemistry, Dalton notwithstanding.
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Chalmers, A. (2009). Dalton’s Atomism and its Creative Modification via Chemical Formulae. In: The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 279. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2362-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2362-9_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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