At 4:20 honestly you need to revise. The Greeks and any mediterraneans know that sea-water when drying on the skin or on a stone or some smooth surface leaves a crust of salt - salt being "the rough ones giving the taste".
Are you sure that Boyle and all those renaissance people did not have evidence for "atoms combining"? They knew, of course, that iron combined with water creates rust, and more important, cement or mortar was invented in the antiquity. Of course their knowledge wasn't enough to understand oxydation - still they used it. One thing which helps understanding the history of man and chemistry is the search for gold, detection of the elements, but only with Lavoisier began the understanding of chemical processes and heat, and later electricity in acid and metals.
Hey, thanks for the feedback, and thanks for watching! To answer your first comment, what you've described is evidence that there's a solute dissolved in sea water, but as I said, they had no empirical evidence for the existence of atoms making up all this matter. With your second comment, you're describing substances combining to form other substances. They of course knew that that happens, but without any evidence or real knowledge of atoms existing. For instance, the fact that iron combines with water & oxygen to make rust doesn't directly point to the existence of the atom. Dalton's work, along with his law of multiple proportions, was the first real indicator that matter consists of individual atoms that combine in very specific ratios. Apologies if any of this was unclear in my video, but I hope most people understand what I was saying 🙂
@@Chemistorian :: Thank you so much for response! No of course they had no empirical evidence that salt crust is NaCl was a molecule. Thank you for the enhanced explanation. Yes you are of course right that the existence of atoms was un-proven for that many years. What I think is important is that humans began observing and using the processes and got an inkling that there were elements. We should not underestimate the knowledge and engineering of our forefathers. Perhaps the idea of uncuttable mass is almost inevitable, when you think of how you can divide and divide the matter, fantasizing about a knife which could not cut the matter at hand into smaller pieces, the knife itself consisting of matter - but that is no proof, of course.
There was plenty of empirical evidence to support atomism as a concept! Think about how the greeks would have seen giant boulders break into smaller stones that would in turn be broken into pebbles and gravel and sand and.. well the inference they drew was that any substance is divisible, but the purely logical contribution (the NON empirical aspect) was that there had to be a limit to the recursiveness of division. There cannot be boulders without stones, and there cannot be stones without pebbles, and there cannot be pebbles without grains of sand, etc. The logical contribution was the idea that existence is not an infinite regression, hence existence has to have a root, or a primitive from which complex phenomena is derived. These are the atoms. No less amazing conceptually, but it is a concept born from empirical observation!
Not really. The Greek philosophers ,mostly the Platonic academics, did not like the idea of infinity or infinitesimals, notably in their rejection of irrational numbers. They thought all numbers could be expressed as ratios of whole numbers and that they extended the idea so that matter must also have a smallest unit, like a whole number. That was the idea of the atom.
@@alistairmackintosh9412 But Demokritos is the standard source for conceptualizing the atom, and he was born 30 years before Plato. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that there WAS plenty of empirical observations that supported atomism
@@alistairmackintosh9412 Platonists entirely rejected atomism. Plato himself said that if he could round up all of the atomists' books and burn them, he would.
@@notyournickname There was indeed lots of empirical observations that supported atomism, and inferences & extrapolations from those observations (though, not all them very good). De Rerum Natura actually goes into quite a lot of detail exploring them all.
Yes and no. They had the first atomic theory about the nature of matter. And over millennia of years we made better theories. But in the end we still don't know everything that is to know about the nature of matter.
This was so interesting I didn’t want it to finish! Looking forward to the next instalment x
At 4:20 honestly you need to revise. The Greeks and any mediterraneans know that sea-water when drying on the skin or on a stone or some smooth surface leaves a crust of salt - salt being "the rough ones giving the taste".
Are you sure that Boyle and all those renaissance people did not have evidence for "atoms combining"? They knew, of course, that iron combined with water creates rust, and more important, cement or mortar was invented in the antiquity. Of course their knowledge wasn't enough to understand oxydation - still they used it. One thing which helps understanding the history of man and chemistry is the search for gold, detection of the elements, but only with Lavoisier began the understanding of chemical processes and heat, and later electricity in acid and metals.
Hey, thanks for the feedback, and thanks for watching!
To answer your first comment, what you've described is evidence that there's a solute dissolved in sea water, but as I said, they had no empirical evidence for the existence of atoms making up all this matter.
With your second comment, you're describing substances combining to form other substances. They of course knew that that happens, but without any evidence or real knowledge of atoms existing. For instance, the fact that iron combines with water & oxygen to make rust doesn't directly point to the existence of the atom.
Dalton's work, along with his law of multiple proportions, was the first real indicator that matter consists of individual atoms that combine in very specific ratios.
Apologies if any of this was unclear in my video, but I hope most people understand what I was saying 🙂
@@Chemistorian :: Thank you so much for response! No of course they had no empirical evidence that salt crust is NaCl was a molecule. Thank you for the enhanced explanation.
Yes you are of course right that the existence of atoms was un-proven for that many years. What I think is important is that humans began observing and using the processes and got an inkling that there were elements. We should not underestimate the knowledge and engineering of our forefathers.
Perhaps the idea of uncuttable mass is almost inevitable, when you think of how you can divide and divide the matter, fantasizing about a knife which could not cut the matter at hand into smaller pieces, the knife itself consisting of matter - but that is no proof, of course.
great vid, I learned a lot! thanks for sharing
Nice video!! Love it... I always questioned about how the ancient philosphers came with that idea by only rasoning, incredible!
I love the cheery music in the background of the newsreel about the atomic bomb test. 🙄
Please, can I know name of this old documentary you're using in the video.
Hey.... your new subscriber, I just love your content ❤
You seem like you'll become a well liked youtuber
Even Buddhism predicted this on the sane time.
Thank you
I believe, like most sound logic of the day throughout history, that they made all of this up but it was coincidentally similar to later discoveries
Easy. You flip a coin. Matter is either continuous substance or else it's discrete particles. If you're speculating about what it is, you pick one.
There was plenty of empirical evidence to support atomism as a concept! Think about how the greeks would have seen giant boulders break into smaller stones that would in turn be broken into pebbles and gravel and sand and.. well the inference they drew was that any substance is divisible, but the purely logical contribution (the NON empirical aspect) was that there had to be a limit to the recursiveness of division. There cannot be boulders without stones, and there cannot be stones without pebbles, and there cannot be pebbles without grains of sand, etc. The logical contribution was the idea that existence is not an infinite regression, hence existence has to have a root, or a primitive from which complex phenomena is derived. These are the atoms. No less amazing conceptually, but it is a concept born from empirical observation!
Not really. The Greek philosophers ,mostly the Platonic academics, did not like the idea of infinity or infinitesimals, notably in their rejection of irrational numbers. They thought all numbers could be expressed as ratios of whole numbers and that they extended the idea so that matter must also have a smallest unit, like a whole number. That was the idea of the atom.
@@alistairmackintosh9412 But Demokritos is the standard source for conceptualizing the atom, and he was born 30 years before Plato. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that there WAS plenty of empirical observations that supported atomism
@@alistairmackintosh9412 Platonists entirely rejected atomism. Plato himself said that if he could round up all of the atomists' books and burn them, he would.
@@notyournickname There was indeed lots of empirical observations that supported atomism, and inferences & extrapolations from those observations (though, not all them very good). De Rerum Natura actually goes into quite a lot of detail exploring them all.
why is this shit being spammed on my home page
Giants!
They didnt.
Yes and no.
They had the first atomic theory about the nature of matter.
And over millennia of years we made better theories.
But in the end we still don't know everything that is to know about the nature of matter.
I thought that one guy did