Excerpt from The Study of Chemical Composition an Account of Its Method and Historical Development With Illustrative Quotations
The study of composition constituting as it does so fundamentally important a part of the science of chemistry, may be considered a subject well suited for separate treatment. In my presentation of the doctrine of chemical composition I have tried to show how the empirical knowledge comprised in it has been obtained, what the initial discoveries were and how these have been established. It has been my aim to demonstrate in the earlier part of the book that the notation by which we represent chemical composition can be developed from a purely empirical basis, independent of any hypothesis concerning the ultimate constitution of matter. In the subsequent treatment of the subject of composition on the basis of the atomic and molecular theory, I have endeavoured to keep sharp and clear the boundary between facts and hypotheses, to direct attention to the existence and position of this separating line, and to emphasise those special features of the argument which bring out the nature and function of hypotheses, their place and importance in the science of chemical composition. Although anxious to trace separately the historical development in the discovery and in the establishment of certain laws and classes of phenomena, I have made no attempt to produce anything sufficiently complete or even sufficiently proportioned to deserve the name of history. I have preferred to deal in greater detail with a few researches, especially such as I could repeatedly utilise from various points of view, than to treat a greater number more cursorily, believing in the truth and wisdom of what Lavoisier said more than a century ago, that "in such matters as these the choice of proofs is more important than their number."
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