time, is a small though important part of the reality studied by science. But we must remember and mention at once that the material substratum of space and time is not determined by chemical phenomena and the chemical characteristics of atoms.
2 forms of existence of chemical elements
Geochemistry, or the history of the chemical elements of our planet, could appear only after the new notions about the atomic and chemical elements had come into being. It could appear only recently, but it is rooted deeply in the history of science. Now we can see how the separate studies of different scientists of the past, which were not quite clear to their contemporaries, appear in a new form under the influence of the great scientific generalizations of the present – how they are receiving a new meaning and prove to be interconnected. Unfortunately, I cannot dwell upon the history of these ideas and upon the rise of geochemistry in detail. The preliminary work has not been done yet, and no full and coherent account can be given here of the way human thought has developed in this field.
No doubt, in the seventeenth century and earlier, systematic studies of geochemical problems were undertaken. A future historian of science will discover a fruitful scientific trend, list the names, trace a series of discoveries, observations and facts that are getting more and more precise, and find the roots of the most significant contemporary empirical generalizations and scientific ideas. This trend had become especially powerful and important by the end of the seventeenth century. Here I shall mention the name of the man who probably realized more of the scope and the importance of the phenomena encompassed by modern geochemistry than anybody else. This was Robert Boyle (1627–1691), a founder of the theory of chemical elements and a creator of modern chemistry.
The history of natural waters and of the world’s ocean in particular, the atmosphere as a weighty gaseous medium, the solution of gases in water, the first exact delineation of chemical elements in terrestrial bodies, and the beginning of precise chemical analysis of terrestrial products have all originated from Boyle’s works. I cannot, however, dwell upon these and other forgotten scientific studies, which have not actually passed unnoticed, and which have had a certain influence on the contemporary scientific mind. They lasted for almost two centuries. As early as in the second half of the eighteenth century, geochemical problems began to arouse scientific interest, although the idea of a chemical element was vague and far from the notions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
G. F. Rouelle senior (1703–1770), and his even greater junior contemporary, L. Lavoisier (1743–1794), whose creative work was stopped while fully blossoming, had already posed these problems clearly enough. We cannot imagine the heights Lavoisier4 could have reached. Before his death he began to approach the deepest geochemical problems in his works concerning water and the physiology of breath [respiration]. Rouelle – the senior – published very little, but he influenced his contemporaries greatly by his public experimental lectures on chemistry that he delivered in Paris at the Royal Botanical Garden. All the intellectuals of Paris, or even of Europe, gathered for these lectures, and numerous foreigners who were in Paris – often great minds – attended these lectures. Nowadays it is very difficult to realize Rouelle’s influence; nobody has even tried to do it. But it is indubitably enormous, as it spread from Paris throughout Europe and survived his death. In the works of Lavoisier on the history of elementary gases and on the history of water, there are shining examples of geochemical generalizations expressed in the scientific language we are used to. Due to the great influence of Lavoisier’s ideas on the whole of modern chemistry, geochemical problems were introduced as well. Since then, some of these problems have begun to be included in chemistry courses.
His elder contemporary, Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), who was still very far from our present-day notion of chemical elements, presented in his history of minerals a series of brilliant and interesting generalizations and posed a series of significant geochemical problems. He was able to do this not only because he was a profound observer of nature who covered all the scientific knowledge of his time, but also because he lived in the midst of social activities and was an agronomist and a technologist. We find geochemical problems in his chapters on the history of native elements, and on that of metals in particular. But we find them also in other parts of his Les Epoques de la Nature (1780) and Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière (1749 and following years). Not only was Buffon a great writer, he was also one of the greatest and most profound naturalists, one of the few people who had indeed observed the Universe as a whole. In these “Essays” we shall come across his ideas and their consequences more than once.
We cannot but mention also M. V. Lomonosov (1711–1765), another contemporary of Rouelle and Buffon. Only nowadays have we fully appreciated Lomonosov’s scientific thought, which foresaw the future ways of science. In his forgotten works, which have been published badly and incompletely, his understanding of geochemical problems can be seen clearly and distinctly. In the Petersburg Academy of Sciences he had followed his own path, onto which scientific thought arrived only in the twentieth century. Incessantly he went deeply into the chemistry of natural bodies in general and in connection with Earth’s history. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the new chemistry had been integrated into scientific thought: the chemical element had received a new understanding, far from that attached to it by Lavoisier. Geochemistry had seemed to be on the verge of appearing, but it was created much later. Apparently, the empirical material had not yet been sufficient and understanding of the chemical element itself was not clear enough.
It was the time of the creation of present-day chemistry and geology, and their synthesis gave birth to geochemistry. At the same time, applied scientific disciplines were being created on the basis of the new scientific ideas of matter and our planet – they were understood as technology then. This is extremely important too, because both in ‘technology’ in the broader sense and in pure knowledge we come across thoughts about geochemical problems – the deepening of these problems. The history of chemical elements in the Earth’s crust, their role in different chemical processes, and particularly in the phenomena of life – both in living nature and in daily human life – has permeated scientific thought since the end of the eighteenth, and beginning of the nineteenth century; it has had various manifestations occurring everywhere.
I shall mention three of the most outstanding predecessors of modern geochemistry of the last century. These are the Englishman Humphrey Davy (1778–1829), the Prussian German J. C. Reil (1759–1813), and A. von Humboldt (1769–1859). The brilliant key work of A. von Humboldt, a Prussian by origin, was published outside Prussia. As for himself, in the first decade of the nineteenth century he was completely under the influence of the intellectual atmosphere of Paris.
Humphrey Davy was a brilliant experimenter, physicist, and chemist who covered all the science of his time; he was a thinker possessing a deep poetic understanding of nature. He always connected science with life and was one of the most brilliant figures of the first half of the nineteenth century, which was so rich in talented people. Davy made a tremendous impact upon the science of his time by his lectures, numerous articles and books, and by brilliant experiments. In his works we find a lot of data about the history of chemical elements in the Earth’s crust. In this field he developed the ways discovered by Rouelle and Lomonosov on a new scale. His works were a prototype of all the later treatises of chemistry in which the account of the properties of chemical elements is always connected with their geochemistry. In the later works of Dumas, Bercelius, Liebig, Mendeleyev, and other, no less talented scientists, we always find speculations or brilliant generalizations concerning geochemical problems. After Davy, during the entire nineteenth century, geochemical problems were included into inorganic chemistry courses; they were studied while discussing particular chemical elements.
The fate of Reil was quite different. One of the most outstanding doctors of his day, absolutely committed to helping the suffering, he did not spare himself and died on duty. Reil died in the very midst of his scientific searches. Being a doctor, an anatomist, a psychiatrist, and a physiologist, he was not interested in geochemical problems directly. But he was a man of broad philosophical thinking, a naturalist, like all the genuine doctors of his day.
