Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)
A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Szabadváry F.: Tömegmegmaradás elve; mérés és számolás a kémiában
compounds cannot be formed optionally. One can feel in their texts the struggle to express something in words that they feel, but cannot formulate. A young military engineer waring the biblical name of Jeremiah Benjamin Richter was discharged from the Prussian army due to disciplinary reasons. After his unsuccessful military career he matriculated at the university of Königsberg and attended the lectures of Immanuel Kant, who expounded the view that a science is a science to that extent as it contains mathematics. It appears probable that Kant cited chemistry in his lecture as a narrative discipline, since it is incapable of formulating anything in the language of mathematics. The lectures of Kant had an extraordinary and direct effect on the progress of chemistry, because Jeremiah Benjamin decided to search for mathematics in chemistry. He did this deliberately and quoting Kant, as he described it in the preface of his book. He contemplated a small phenomenon which led him to the right solution. He reflected on the problem that the products formed in the reaction of neutral compounds are always neutral. Why is that so? He began to weight. He analyzed the composition of many thousands of salts, starting materials as well as reaction products. From the result he stated that if he knows the weight proportions of the acid and basic components of the starting salts in a double decomposition reaction, he can tell those of the reaction products in advance. That is, he determined the equivalents, which he termed mass numbers, and noted them in peculiar, but in principle correct formulas expressing the essence of our reaction equations. All this he described in a three-volume book entitled Anfangsgründe der Stöchiometrie which appeared in 1792. The word stoichiometry invented by him and in use up to the present for chemical calculation means measurement of smallest proportions. This brilliant work produced no effect at all and was read only by few. I can personally testify that: the library of the Technical University Budapest owns an example of this rare book. It was I who cut its pages some twenty years ago, nobody had read this copy before me. This is not accidental. Richter wanted to find more mathematics in chemistry than is present in it. He determined his ,,mass numbers", in modern terminology the equivalents of the various anions and cations. He then attempted to find some mathematical relationship between these mass numbers. He got it into his head that the mass numbers of acid constituents yield a geometrical progression, those of basic constituents an arithmetical progression. However, his experimental results did not comply with his idea. What he did was to arbitrarily change the results and in this way obtain the progressions. When a scientist has some preconception, he will be inclined to force his concept on his results, on Nature. He groups and regroups his data, he levels them and touches them up until finally they confirm his idea. This is a very dangerous stumbling-block that occurs much more often than one would think. Anybody who is experimenting knows what joy it is when the results agree with what was expected, and how depressing it is hen the instrument indicates something else. It is easy to become captivated by one's own ideas: this could be the subject of another lecture, enumerating a large number of historical examples. Let us content ourselves with Richter to illustrate that experimental results must not be handled arbitrarily, for it is easy to measure, but difficult to interpret the results correctly. The instrument will always indicate something. ..
