During Europe15 ~16th century, industry and commerce in feudal society developed gradually, and capitalist handicraft workshops gradually formed. In order to develop capitalism and production, improve production tools and equipment and improve their efficiency, the emerging bourgeoisie needed natural science, opposed the dominant religious theology and feudalism at that time, and began to look for useful philosophy and natural science from ancient Greek and Roman culture, playing the banner of "reviving classical culture", so it was called the Renaissance. An important achievement of the Renaissance is the rise of natural science.
During this period, astronomical telescope, microscope, thermometer, hygrometer and mercury barometer appeared one after another, which revealed many unprecedented natural mysteries for people and provided experimental research tools for people to carry out scientific experiments and establish modern natural science.
1492, C.Colombo (about 145 1 ~ 1506), a navigator who was born in Italy and moved between Portugal and Spain, arrived in America and discovered the new continent. Six years later, the Portuguese bypassed Africa and opened a route to India. By the beginning of16th century, the first round-the-world trip was successful. All these achievements are inseparable from the adoption of compass, the improvement of shipbuilding and navigation technology and the development of geography and astronomy.
These sailing activities opened people's eyes, and prompted people to stop staying in the limited information and absurd views bound by religion in the Middle Ages, and began to observe nature directly, which promoted the revival of culture.
The most important scientific discovery in the Renaissance was the sun-centered theory of the Polish astronomer Copernicus (N.Copernicus, 1473~ 1543), who was the greatest attack on religious theology at that time. Since 1506, Copernicus has established an observatory and made its own instruments. After repeated observation and calculation, he published "On the Operation of Celestial Bodies" in 1543, founded the theory of the solar system, and put forward that the earth and other planets are constantly revolving around the sun, breaking the geocentric theory.
The geocentric theory was put forward by Ptolemy, an Egyptian astronomer in the 2nd century A.D. He believed that the center of the universe is the earth, and planets such as the sun and the moon revolve around the earth in turn. This theory is used by religion. Religion preaches that God created human beings in his own image and placed them at the center of the universe-the earth. God makes the sun, moon and stars revolve around the earth, bringing light to people day and night. Therefore, for more than a thousand years, the center of the earth has been said to be "absolute authority", and anyone who opposes it will be persecuted and punished. So the theory of celestial bodies was banned, and the Pope ordered that the sun center be accused of "heresy".
However, despite the religious ban, scientists continue to study and develop Copernicus' theory. German astronomer J Kepler (157 1 ~ 1630) inherited Copernicus' thought and expounded the basic laws of the rotation of planets around the sun. Italian physicist Galileo (1564 ~ 1642) further discovered many laws of celestial motion. Although the Catholic church threatened him to give up his belief in Copernicus, Galileo was forced to sign, but declared: "The earth is still turning anyway." Truth is on the side of materialism and science, not idealism and religion.
Bruno (G.Bruno, 1548 ~ 1600), a famous Italian materialist philosopher in Renaissance, was burned alive by the Inquisition in a square full of flowers for accepting and developing Copernicus' sun-centered theory, propagating materialistic world outlook and advocating ancient atomism.
However, no one can stop the pace of social progress, capitalism has replaced feudalism, progressive ideas have finally broken through the shackles of religion, materialism and science and technology have flourished.
The philosophy of the emerging bourgeoisie is based on the achievements of natural science obtained by experiments, which requires observing the objective world and understanding the world through experiments. The British philosopher Bacon (F.Bacon, 156 1 ~ 1626) shouted loudly to learn about nature by experiment! He wrote in the book New Tools: "Science is experimental science, and science lies in arranging perceptual materials in a rational way. Induction, analysis, comparison, observation and experiment are the main conditions of rational methods. " He put forward the slogan "knowledge is power".
Driven by the demand of production practice, inspired by the struggle between natural science and religious theology, and influenced by neo-materialist philosophy, modern scientific experiments flourished. By the17th century, European countries had established scientific organizations and societies, advocated scientific experiments and pursued scientific truth. 1665 after the establishment of the royal society, academies of science were established in Florence, Italy, Paris, France and Vienna, Austria. A large number of people of insight devoted themselves to scientific experiments, created various chemical instruments, set up chemical laboratories in their own residential courtyards, and conducted chemical experiments in public places.
Hales (S. Hales, 1677 ~ 176 1), a British priest, created the method of extracting mercury by drainage.
The Dutch drug dealer Kipp (1808 ~ 1864) invented the gas generator, which created conditions for the preparation, collection and research of gas. In order to obtain suitable filter paper, Swedish chemist J.J. Berzelius (1779 ~1848) ordered a special paper from the paper mill, which was made of very long fibers and made in winter. It is frozen under wet conditions to expand pores, thus improving filtration efficiency. He also pointed out that when the funnel cone angle is 60, the filtration is the fastest, the filter paper should not be higher than the funnel, and the filtrate should not be higher than the edge of the filter paper. The sensitivity of the balance he used has reached 1 mg.
People of insight include British aristocrat Boyle (R.Boyle, 1627 ~ 169 1) and English rural teacher Dalton (J.Dalton, 1766 ~ 1844), French lawyer A.L. lavoisier (A.L. 1743 ~ 1794), Swedish pharmacist Scheele (K.W.Scheele, 65438+/kloc). None of them had received formal chemistry education, but they all made discoveries or inventions in various chemical experiments and became chemists.
These scientific experiments are different from the practice of ancient working people, alchemists and ancient medical chemists. Although they also obtained some substances and discovered their physical and chemical properties, they did not simply look for and apply them, but explored and studied them, observed them in experiments, reasoned the experimental results, put forward hypotheses and theories, reported them in academic groups, and submitted them to the Academy of Sciences for discussion and appraisal.
Therefore, chemistry and physics are separated and stand out from natural philosophy and become an independent science. Since then, chemistry is no longer a simple production practice, a mysterious alchemy or alchemy, a single medical chemistry, but an independent science combining theory with practice, growing in constant chemical experiments.
In the19th century, due to more and more compounds found in experiments, compounds were divided into inorganic compounds and organic compounds. Organic compounds refer to hydrocarbons and their derivatives. Derivatives refer to the products produced by the substitution of atoms or atomic groups in the molecules of compounds by other atoms or atomic groups. For example, one hydrogen atom in ethane (C2H6) is replaced by the radical -OH, and ethanol (C2H5OH) is obtained. C2H6 is an organic compound, and C2H5OH is also an organic compound. Inorganic compounds are inorganic compounds. Studying the chemistry of organic compounds is organic chemistry, and studying the chemistry of inorganic compounds is inorganic chemistry.
At the same time, with the development of chemical experiments and the need of industrial production, analytical chemistry emerged as another branch of chemistry. Analytical chemistry can be divided into qualitative analytical chemistry and quantitative analytical chemistry.
19 at the end of the 20th century, a series of new discoveries appeared in physics, classical physics was impacted, chemistry developed and stepped into modern chemistry.
1895, German physicist W.C. Roentgen (1845 ~ 1923) discovered X-rays.
1896 French physicist a.h. Bekkerel (1852 ~ 1908) discovered that uranium can spontaneously radiate.
1897, the British physicist J.J.Thomson (1856 ~ 1940) discovered electrons.
Madame Curie (M.S.Curie, 1867 ~ 1934), a French physicist born in Poland, discovered the radioactivity of matter.
Thanks to the efforts of many scientists, the mystery inside the atom has been gradually uncovered, and many new physical methods for determining the structure of matter have been created, which has promoted the development of chemistry in the microscopic, theoretical and quantitative directions.
In addition, some marginal disciplines such as physical chemistry, biochemistry, polymer chemistry, environmental chemistry, geochemistry and marine chemistry have appeared one after another, which has made chemical science enter a more specialized research field.