Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest For the Elements

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The first two chapter on the Greeks (the four elements, beginnings of atomic theory) and the Egyptians (beginnings of alchemy) are an OK start, but the book then takes a serious wrong turn, into meanderings on the historical development of the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method. Paul Strathern is a Somerset Maugham Award-winning novelist, and his nonfiction works include The Venetians, Death in Florence, The Medici, Mendeleyev's Dream, The Florentines, Empire, and The Borgias, all available from Pegasus Books. He struggled to find an underlying principle that would organize them according to sets of similar properties and eventually reaped the benefits of the pattern-recognition that fuels creativity.

Where there were missing elements in his early tables, Mendeleyev postulated that these represented elements not yet discovered. The dream, of course, was just a function of what the human brain normally does during sleep — organizing and consolidating the ideas, images, and bits of information that occupy our waking hours.As long as you understand that, you won't see an "arrow of scientific progress" illusion in the text at all. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. The author narrates the origins of chemistry from Ancient Greece to the present time in an almost vivid way that makes the story highly interesting and very informative. He would be proven correct, but no other scientist was willing to stake his reputation on a theory that depended on discoveries not yet made. From ancient philosophy through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role of one man’s dream.

After dutifully describing each's accomplishment, as a history of science requires you to do, the author delves into some personal tabloid factoid about the scientist, usually about their sexuality or their poor familial relations! Reading how scientific though emerged from this obscure practice is thrilling and understanding how scientists reasoned to get us to where we are today is incredible. It is also extremely well matched to the fascinating story adduced in this absorbing and enlightening book.

The author clearly gets annoyed with the religious meanderings and beliefs of some figures in the book but also conveys how some of these side quests ultimately led to the goal. From ancient philosophy, through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role of one man's dream.

So, if you're looking for a whistle stop tour of celebrities from the history of chemistry then this is the book for you. Strathern too frequently wanders off on overly extended tangents about historical figures like Sir Francis Bacon, certainly a man important to the history of science but not to the history of chemistry. Taking a traditional view of intellectual history, Strathern considers the 17th century as the era when the ‘new science’ of chemistry could at last ‘shed its oriental esoteric past.I'm a scientist and I value the scientific method but I'd argue that even today the method only gives us simplistic glimpses of the truth and I know better than to mock the people who came before me. Strathern evokes the frustration Mendeleyev is feeling as he approaches the problem again and again from different angles, all to no avail. I’m not sure how interesting it would be for someone who hasn’t taken chemistry and physics courses but I certainly enjoyed it! It was only when he reentered his own head under the spell of sleep’s uninhibited state that the disjointed bits fell into a pattern and the larger idea expressed itself.