An attempt to establish a pure scientific system of mineralogy, by the application of the electro-chemical theory and the chemical proportions / By J. Jacob Berzelius ... Translated from the Swedish original by John Black.

  • Berzelius, Jöns Jakob, friherre, 1779-1848.
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An attempt to establish a pure scientific system of mineralogy, by the application of the electro-chemical theory and the chemical proportions / By J. Jacob Berzelius ... Translated from the Swedish original by John Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bring any science to a state of perfection; for in that case all the sciences would be blended toge- ther into one. The quantity of knowledge how- ever of which one man can make himself mas- ter is so circumscribed, that both from a regard to the imperfect state of the sciences, and the ne- cessity of distributing them in such a manner that our whole species, taken together and con- sidered as one individual, may possess all the ac- quisitions in every branch of science which one man can never do, we are reduced to the neces- sity of treating subjects belonging to the same department of knowledge under the form of se- parate sciences. This is no doubt the reason why mineralogy has always been considered as a separate science; but it is evident that it must go step for step with chemistry, and that every re- volution in chemical doctrines must overturn those of mineralogy, in the same manner as the discoveries in the peculiar province of the latter must extend the boundaries of both. Again, if mineralogy in itself is merely a branch of chemistry, it is clear that it can have no other scientific foundation for its arrange- ment than a chemical one, and that every other is altogether foreign to mineralogy as a science. The prevailing theory and arrangement there-