Chemical revolution

The chemical revolution, also called the first chemical revolution, denotes the reformulation of chemistry based on the Law of Conservation of Matter and the oxygen theory of combustion.

It is centered on the work of French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (the "father of modern chemistry").

The chemical revolution, which succeeds the phlogiston theory, can be said to begin with the presentation of Geoffroy the Elder’s tables of "affinities" (tables des rapports) to the French Academy in 1718 and 1720.

The English alchemist, Robert Boyle, had laid the foundations for the Chemical Revolution, with his mechanical corpuscular philosophy, which in turn relied heavily on the alchemical corpuscular theory and experimental method dating back to pseudo-Geber.

Several factors lead to this revolution, such as the experiments by Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley that prove air is not an element but is composed of several different gases.

Lavoisier also translates chemistry's archaic and technical jargon into language more accessible to the largely uneducated masses.

This leads to increased public interest in learning and practicing chemistry.

Beginning with the 1789 publication of Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) and others to follow, Lavoisier discovers the composition of air and water and coins the term "oxygen".

He also explains the theory of combustion, and does away with the phlogiston theory with his views on caloric.

The Traité incorporates notions of a "new chemistry" and describes the experiments and reasoning that led to Lavoisier's conclusions.

In sum, Lavoisier's Traité does for chemistry what Newton's Principia had done for physics.Additionally, Lavoisier’s contemporary Jöns Jakob Berzelius comes up with a simplified shorthand to describe chemical compounds based on John Dalton's theory of atomic weights.

During the chemical revolution, modern chemists disprove hypotheses that had been proffered by the ancient Greeks and accepted ever since.

For example, chemists begin to assert that all structures are composed of more than the four elements of the Greeks or the eight elements of the medieval alchemists.

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