The alchemists thought they knew what they were doing—although we may
now think that their targets were chimeras. As the “al” gradually faded out to
leave plain chemists, the science became rational. In Laws and Order in
18th-Century Chemistry (Oxford University Press, £50, ISBN 0 19 855806 6),
Alastair Duncan traces the development of this process as chemists began to
create models and predictive theories, travelling from acid spirits and
absorbent earth to modern chemistry.
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