On the Distinctness of Chemistry

Abstract

Chemistry is concerned with all aspects of the changing of one kind of matter into another. It has many parts and all but one of these are so different from all the adjacent sciences that their distinctness is obvious; the exception is physical chemistry. The activities of its practitioners resemble prima facie those of physicists. These however deal with unchanging matter that retains its chemical identity, and virtually all their experimental information is numerical. The physical chemist's concerns are the nature, extent, and rate of chemical changes, and on these much information may be gathered by the observer's unaided senses.