ABSTRACT
"Science itself is becoming dynamical rather than mechanical; powers and agencies are discovered in nature itself, not less mysterious than those which miracle-workers spoke of. Man is able, through science, to exercise such powers as seem to attest the dominion of spirit over nature more completely than any signs they wrought". When applied to chemistry the term "dynamical" could imply some commitment to the idea of inorganic "development" or evolution, but it need not do so; in the authors we are considering, it does imply rejection of "mechanical" analogies, and interest in "forces" instead. From the time of Lavoisier down to our own century there was not only one paradigm available in chemistry, leading it inexorably towards objectivity. All bodies are probably composed of gaseous elements; material substances have been revealed by the progress of chemistry to be "mere phantoms of clouds and vapour". Rest, according to Oersted, is a dynamic equilibrium; he had an Heraclitean partiality to waterfalls.
