Overview

Before the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, all the natural sciences were grouped together under the heading of "natural philosophy." But by 1800 many had become separate disciplines, with distinct subject matters and investigative methods. During the later nineteenth century, however, it became increasingly clear that discoveries in one science often had major consequences for another, and many scientists sought to recover the previous unity between the sciences. One result was the rise of "physical chemistry," which united ideas and techniques from both physics and chemistry.

Background

By the early nineteenth century, physics and chemistry had segregated into two distinct fields. Physics studied the general motions of bodies in space and time according to mathematical laws due to the action of various "forces." Chemistry focused on the discovery, analysis, synthesis...