ABSTRACT
The two possible attitudes towards chemical formulae were brought out clearly in a paper in 1850 by Alexander Williamson, who became Professor of Chemistry at University College, London; and who, as President of the Chemical Society, sought in 1869 to convince his fellow chemists of the usefulness of the atomic theory. This chapter provides the clearest summary of Benjamin Brodie’s views that was ever published. The question of whether or not matter was atomic was, according to Brodie, not raised in the Calculus; the method was to be analogous to the application of algebra to geometry or to probability theory. In Brodie’s system, all substances are considered in the condition of perfect gases, under standard conditions of temperature and pressure; the ‘unit’ of ponderable matter is then that portion of it which occupies 1000 cc. On this ‘unit’, ‘operations’ are performed; and Brodie produced a glass cube and performed the operation of tapping it to illustrate this point.
