I Consider Nature A Vast Chemical Laboratory

In Every Combustion There Is Disengagement Of The Matter Of Fire Or Of Light. A Body Can Burn Only In Pure Air [oxygen]. There Is No Destruction Or Decomposition Of Pure Air And The Increase In Weight Of The Body Burnt Is Exactly Equal To The Weight Of Air Destroyed Or Decomposed. The Body Burnt Changes Into An Acid By Addition Of The Substance That Increases Its Weight. Pure Air Is A Compound Of The Matter Of Fire Or Of Light With A Base. In Combustion The Burning Body Removes The Base, Which It Attracts More Strongly Than Does The Matter Of Heat, Which Appears As Flame, Heat And Light.

Experiments Upon Vegetation Give Reason To Believe That Light Combines With Certain Parts Of Vegetables, And That The Green Of Their Leaves, And The Various Colors Of Flowers, Is Chiefly Owing To This Combination.

As Ideas Are Preserved And Communicated By Means Of Words, It Necessarily Follows That We Cannot Improve The Language Of Any Science, Without At The Same Time Improving The Science Itself; Neither Can We, On The Other Hand, Improve A Science Without Improving The Language Or Nomenclature Which Belongs To It.

Thus, While I Thought Myself Employed Only In Forming A Nomenclature, And While I Proposed To Myself Nothing More Than To Improve The Chemical Language, My Work Transformed Itself By Degrees, Without My Being Able To Prevent It, Into A Treatise Upon The Elements Of Chemistry.

Mathematicians Come To The Solution Of A Problem By The Simple Arrangement Of The Data, And Reducing The Reasoning To Such Simple Operations, To Judgments So Brief, That They Never Lose Sight Of The Evidence That Serves As Their Guide.