Alchemy to Chemistry

ALCHEMY TO CHEMISTRY

Can we say that alchemy and chemistry are two different things? Actually no, we can’t. Alchemy is the pioneer of today’s modern chemistry. As the time passed alchemy has changed and developed to form Chemistry. Therefore we shouldn’t think that they are two different subjects.

In this article, first of all you will learn how alchemy was found and evolved .After that how it transitioned from alchemy to chemistry and finally the similarities and differences between them.

According to my researches alchemy was born in ancient Egypt, where the word Khem was used. In the 7th Century Egypt was occupied by the Arabs who added 'al-' to the word Khemia and al-Khemia is now seen as a possible origin for the word alchemy. In the narrow sense of the word, alchemy is the pretended art of making gold and silver, or transmuting the base metals into the noble ones. In course of time Chinese, Egyptian, Arabian and European alchemy has occurred. Once alchemy became more scientific and focused on the transmutation into gold, there was more support for it. This was a period of economic hardship and even many monarchs were hopeful that the claims of alchemy were true. Alchemy, though it largely passed from popularity, continued on. There have been experiments, even in the 20th century, that attempted transmutation, notably using nuclear power and particle acceleration.
However, during the seventeenth century, alchemy dwindled steadily in importance and in the eighteenth century became what we would today call chemistry. This transition was made by Robert Boyle. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. He separated chemistry from alchemy and gave the first precise definitions of a chemical element, a chemical reaction, and chemical analysis. At the same time Antoine Lavoisier who is known as the "father of modern chemistry" stated the first version of the law of conservation of mass wrote the first extensive list of elements and helped to reform chemical nomenclature.

Scientifically speaking, even though alchemy and chemistry are not two different subjects they have differences and similarities between them. Like, in alchemy trial and error method was being used but in chemistry scientific experiments are preferred. What actually alchemists did was randomly mixing various substances and willing to find something. But in chemistry, nothing finds randomly all chemists uses the experimental and scientific theoretical knowledge in a balanced way. As we can see chemistry is Experiments based on the “scientific grounds”. On the other hand they have some similarities too for example, we can say that both of them are the pioneers of science and the laboratory equipment they use is same.
As a conclusion we can say that alchemy and chemistry are two terms that complete each other. Alchemy is the history of chemistry and chemistry is the development of the alchemy. I wonder how our lives would be without modern chemistry but still living with alchemy?