Creative Chemistry | Page 5

anything that is
in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water
under the earth.
In the textile industry the same development is observable. The
primitive man used the skins of animals he had slain to protect his own

skin. In the course of time he--or more probably his wife, for it is to the
women rather than to the men that we owe the early steps in the arts
and sciences--fastened leaves together or pounded out bark to make
garments. Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon
and the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth. Nowadays it
is possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any
desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be
found in nature. The first metals available were those found free in
nature such as gold and copper. In a later age it was found possible to
extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of
multifarious combinations of rare metals. The medicine man dosed his
patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or
queer look. The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their
medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the
creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs
adapted to specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.
In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it is
the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the
world has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until
recently indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed
what should have been their proudest boast. The French chemist
Lavoisier in 1793 defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The
German chemist Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the
chemist works in opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys,
analyzes, that the vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it
reconstructs the edifice torn down by the chemical forces."
It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were so
absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were blind to
the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less prescient than
their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who, foolish and
pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation of something
new.

It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly perceived
the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as "the science of
analysis and synthesis," of taking apart and of putting together. The
motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is _savoir c'est
pouvoir_, to know in order to do. This is the pragmatic test of all useful
knowledge. Berthelot goes on to say:
Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, comparable to that
of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from the natural and historical
sciences.... These sciences do not control their object. Thus they are too
often condemned to an eternal impotence in the search for truth of
which they must content themselves with possessing some few and
often uncertain fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sciences
have the power to realize their conjectures.... What they dream of that
they can manifest in actuality....
Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent degree than
the other sciences because it penetrates more profoundly and attains
even to the natural elements of existences.
Since Berthelot's time, that is, within the last fifty years, chemistry has
won its chief triumphs in the field of synthesis. Organic chemistry, that
is, the chemistry of the carbon compounds, so called because it was
formerly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only be formed by
"vital force" of organized plants and animals, has taken a development
far overshadowing inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral
substances. Chemists have prepared or know how to prepare hundreds
of thousands of such "organic compounds," few of which occur in the
natural world.
But this conception of chemistry is yet far from having been accepted
by the world at large. This was brought forcibly to my attention during
the publication of these chapters in "The Independent" by various
letters, raising such objections as the following:
When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal Tar" that
"Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business" you have
doubtless for the moment allowed your enthusiasm to sweep you away

from the moorings of reason. Shakespeare, anticipating you and your
"Creative Chemistry," has shown the utter untenableness of your
position:
Nature is made