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CHEMISTRY
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CHEMISTRY
Our Past, Present, and Future

edited by
editors Choon Ho Do
Preben Maegaard
Anna Krenz
Attila E. Pavlath
Wolfgang Palz

The Rise of Modern Wind Energy

Wind Power
for the World
Published by
Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.
Penthouse Level, Suntec Tower 3
8 Temasek Boulevard
Singapore 038988

Email: editorial@panstanford.com
Web: www.panstanford.com

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Chemistry: Our Past, Present, and Future

Copyright © 2017 Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or
to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee

through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not
required from the publisher.

ISBN 978-981-4774-08-6 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-315-22932-4 (eBook)

Printed in the USA

 Contents

Preface xiii

Introduction 1
Choon Ho Do and Attila E. Pavlath

Part I: Chemistry Inherited from the Universe

1. Chemistry in the Universe, Our Body, and Our Life 9
Sunney I. Chan and Andrew P. Yeh
1.1 The Very Beginning of the Universe 9
1.2 Alchemy and Alchemist 10
1.3 The Very Beginning of the Beginning of Modern
Chemistry 12
1.4 Dalton’s Atomic Theory: Emergence of Modern
Chemistry 13
1.5 Periodic Table of Elements 15
1.6 Quantum Chemistry and the Nature of the
Chemical Bond 15
1.7 The Emergence of Life 16
1.8 Modern Biology Is All Chemistry 19
1.9 Molecular Building Blocks of a Cell 24
1.10 Central Dogma of Molecular Biology 25
1.11 Applications of Molecular Biology 28
1.12 Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics 30
1.13 Enzymes as Perfect Catalysts 31
1.14 Can We Learn from Biology to Develop More
Efficient Chemical Catalysts for Chemical
Manufacturing? 32
1.15 Greener Chemistry 34
1.16 Future of Chemistry 34
2. Chemistry in Human History 39
Mary Virginia Orna
2.1 The Value of History 39
2.1.1 Valuing the Past 39
2.1.2 Purpose of Human Activity 40
2.1.3 Building on Precedent 40
vi Contents

2.1.4 Materials on Hand 40

2.1.5 Origins of Material Culture 41
2.2 Uses of Natural Substances 41
2.2.1 Introductory Remarks 41
2.2.2 Observation Results in Application 41
2.2.3 Improving on Nature through Knowledge 42
2.3 The Basics of Survival 42
2.3.1 Inventiveness 42
2.3.2 Control of the Environment 43
2.3.3 How Gunpowder Changed the World 43
2.4 Control of the Necessities of Life: Food 46
2.4.1 In the Beginning 46
2.4.2 Agriculture 47
2.4.3 Salt 48
2.5 Control of the Necessities of Life: Clothing 49
2.5.1 Introduction 49
2.5.2 Nature of Polymers 50
2.5.3 Coloring Fibers 50
2.5.4 Emergence of the Dye Industry 51
2.6 Control of the Necessities of Life: Shelter 55
2.6.1 Introduction 55
2.6.2 Clay, Stone, and Wood 55
2.6.3 Metals 57
2.6.4 Glass 58
2.7 Communication 60
2.8 Measurement 63
2.8.1 Introduction 63
2.8.2 Quantitative Experimentation 64
2.8.3 Conservation of Mass 64
2.9 Chemistry’s Role in the Development of
Medicine 65
2.9.1 From the Medical School in Salerno
to Universities 65
2.9.2 The Body in Movement 65
2.9.3 Healing the Body, Healing the Soul:
Hospitals 66
2.9.4 Anesthetics and Antiseptics 66
2.9.5 Laboratory 67
 Contents vii

2.9.6 Pharmacology 67
2.10 Conclusion 69
3. Did Chemistry Change the World? 73
Attila E. Pavlath
3.1 Introduction 73
3.2 Construction Materials 75
3.2.1 Wood 75
3.2.2 Metals 76
3.2.3 Plastic 80
3.2.4 Leather and Textile 81
3.2.5 From Pottery to Glass through Ceramic 82
3.3 Conclusion 84
Part II: Contributions of Chemistry
4. Agriculture 87
Livia Simon Sarkadi
4.1 Introduction 87
4.2 Development of Agriculture 88
4.2.1 Brief Chronology of Main Achievements 89
4.3 Chemical Fertilizers and Soil Nutrients 96
4.4 Crop Protection and Pest Management 98
4.5 Livestock Production and Protection 103
4.5.1 Brief History of Livestock Production 104
4.5.2 Veterinary Medical Care 105
4.6 New Challenges for Agriculture 107
4.7 Closing Words 110

5. Food: Supply and Health 113

Livia Simon Sarkadi
5.1 Introduction 113
5.2 Brief History of Food Chemistry and Nutrition 114
5.3 Food Availability 119
5.4 Food and Health 120
5.4.1 Food and Its Classification 120
5.5 Food Preservation 127
5.6 Food Additives and Ingredients 133
5.7 Food Packaging 137
5.8 Closing Words 139
viii Contents

6. Energy 141
James Wei
6.1 Fossil Fuel: Fire and Combustion 142
6.1.1 Fuel Mining, Refining 142
6.1.2 Combustion Process 148
6.1.3 Safety, Health, and Environment 150
6.2 Biofuel 154
6.2.1 Biochemical Fermentation of Food 154
6.2.2 Biochemical Fermentation of Biomass 156
6.2.3 Thermochemical Reactions of Biomass 157
6.3 Batteries 158
6.4 Nuclear Power 160
6.4.1 Mining and Fuel Enrichment 160
6.4.2 Nuclear Reactor Process 164
6.4.3 Safety, Health, and Environment 166

7. Medication: Diagnosis 169

Veronica Németh
7.1 Introduction 169
7.2 Diagnostic in Clinical Laboratory 170
7.2.1 Historical Perspective 170
7.2.2 We Prefer Testing to Tasting 172
7.2.3 Enzymes in Blood Serum: Enzyme
Diagnostics 173
7.2.4 Laboratory Diagnosis of Myocardial
Infarction 174
7.2.5 Application of Dry Chemistry in Clinical
Chemistry 175
7.2.6 The Strip Technique 176
7.3 The Inside of Our Body Becomes Transparent 178
7.3.1 X-Rays Triumph 178
7.3.2 Petites Curies 181
7.3.3 X-Ray Detection 182
7.3.4 Further Development of X-Ray Technology 184
7.3.5 CT Scan 184
7.3.6 Development of CT Apparatus 186
7.3.7 Isotopes in Diagnostics 188
 Contents ix

7.3.8 Scintigraphic Procedures 189

7.3.9 Positron Emission Tomography 191
7.3.10 Diagnosis in a Magnetic Field 194
7.3.11 Contrast Materials 195
7.4 A Small Detour: Crystal Structure Determination 197

8. Medication: Curing 203

Erika Godor and Dorottya Godor
8.1 Introduction 203
8.1.1 Examples of the Impact of Chemistry
on Medicine—in Raw Numbers and
in Social Terms 204
8.1.2 Chapter Aim 205
8.1.3 Versatility of Medicinal Chemistry 206
8.1.4 Current Trends in Drug Development 207
8.1.5 Drug Safety: A Lesson from the Past 208
8.1.6 Where Next? 208
8.2 Pain Management 208
8.2.1 Aspirin 209
8.2.2 Morphine 213
8.3 Inflammation Management 229
8.3.1 Glucocorticoids 229
8.3.2 The Steroid Story 236
8.3.3 Closing Remarks 238
8.4 Psychotherapeutic Agents 239
8.4.1 Antidepressants 240
8.4.2 Closing Remarks 247
8.5 Hormonal Contraceptives 248
8.5.1 Pearls on the Pill 248
8.5.2 Prelude to the Pill 249
8.5.3 Conceiving the Pill 251
8.5.4 Closing Remarks: The Power of the Pill 259
8.6 Insulin 259
8.6.1 Insulin and Diabetes 260
8.6.2 Life with Diabetes in the Past 262
8.6.3 Prelude to the Discovery of Insulin 263
8.6.4 Discovery of Insulin 264
 Contents

8.6.5 Making the Experiments Work 266

8.6.6 Getting the Elixir Right 267
8.6.7 First Diabetes Patients on Insulin 268
8.6.8 Getting the Nobel Prize: Resentments
Resolved 269
8.6.9 Romantic Stories behind the Mass
Production of Insulin 269
8.6.10 Lab-Grown Human Insulin 273
8.6.11 Closing Remarks: The Impact of Insulin 273
9. Regenerative Medicine: Repairing Body 281
Young Ha Kim
9.1 Artificial Organs 283
9.1.1 Artificial Kidney 283
9.1.2 Artificial Heart 285
9.1.3 Artificial Eye Lens 289
9.1.4 Limitations of Present Artificial Organs 292
9.2 Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering 294
9.2.1 Cell Therapy 294
9.2.2 Biohybrid Organs 297
9.2.3 Tissue Engineering 300
10. Transportation 305
James Wei
10.1 Vehicles: Frame, Wheel, Ship Planks 307
10.1.1 Frame Material 307
10.1.2 Wheel and Rubber Tire 311
10.1.3 Ship Caulking and Tar 313
10.2 Power, Fuel, Engine 315
10.2.1 Fuel 316
10.2.2 Engine, Lubricant 322
10.3 Navigation: Compass 324
10.4 Infrastructure: Roads 327
10.4.1 Tar and Asphalt 328
10.4.2 Concrete 329
11. Communication and Entertainment 331
Attila E. Pavlath
11.1 Introduction 331
 Contents xi

11.2 Process of Communication 332

11.2.1 Advanced Synthetic Materials 333
11.2.2 Communication Devices 333
11.2.3 Storing Information 347
11.3 Entertainment 358
11.3.1 Computers 360
11.4 Closing Word 362
Part III: Chemistry and Activities
12. Problems and Solutions: Activities of Chemists and
Educators for the Public 367
Attila E. Pavlath
12.1 Public Image of Chemistry 367
12.2 Chemistry Has an Undeserved Public Image 367
12.3 Is It Important to Improve the Public Image
of Chemistry? Does It Make Any Difference? 370
12.4 What Is Needed? 371
12.5 Science Education 372
12.6 Creation of Interest toward Science 372
12.7 Role of Individual Chemist and Chemical Societies 375

13. What Can Chemistry Do for the Future? 381

Choon Ho Do
13.1 Introduction 381
13.2 The Future May Come Differently 385
13.3 Future Issues 386
13.3.1 Artificial Photosynthesis 387
13.3.2 New Energy Sources: Generation and Saving 390
13.3.3 Materials 399
13.3.4 Climate Control 402
13.3.5 Human Life and Health 405
13.3.6 Humans and Nature 408
13.3.7 Changes in the Desert 410
13.3.8 Use of Oceans and Seas 412
13.3.9 Space Travel: A Never-Ending Quest 416
13.4 Prospects: All Is a Matter of Chemistry and Us 421
xii Contents

14. Chemistry in Africa: Progress and Application 427

Temechegn Engida

14.1 Introduction 427

14.2 Traditional Medicine, Indigenous Practices,
and Chemistry in Africa 428
14.3 Chemistry Research in Africa 434
14.4 Chemistry for Sustainable Development in Africa 439

Index 447
 Preface
It is hard to imagine what our life would be without the numerous
developments chemistry has provided in the past and is still
providing for our everyday life. Just review our ordinary daily
activities for a single day, from the moment we wake up to the
time when we fall asleep. What would we do without toiletries,
food, clothing, footwear, window glass, electric light, TV sets,
telephones, etc.? All of these and much more are created by the
wonders of chemistry. The list is very long and in their absence of
chemical developments, we would be in the Stone Age.
Unfortunately, society is largely ignorant about the importance
of chemistry. The discoveries of chemistry should be evident
in various pieces of equipment frequently used every day; in
materials that make our lives easier, more comfortable, and
more pleasant; medications that ease pain and prevent and cure
diseases, just to mention a few. Why is the general public unaware
of all this? Are all of these advantages just taken for granted
assuming that they just happen to be there? Apparently most
people do not think about this. Why is it so difficult for the public
to realize what life in our world would be like had chemistry not
brought about those numerous discoveries? One does not have
to be a scientist to be logical about this if these benefits are placed
in the spotlight. Unfortunately, human nature is not perfect. It is a
well-known fact that a catastrophe is more likely to capture
the public’s attention than a happy event. It is evident that the
contributions of chemistry have to be publicized in plain language
without any confusing chemical terms. That made us to realize
the importance of this book as a means to enlighten anyone who
picks it up.
Prof. Attila Pavlath, former president of the American
Chemical Society and co-editor to this publication, was very much
aware of the importance of public understanding of chemistry.
During his presidency in 2001, his team launched a project titled
“Technology Milestones from the Chemist’s View” to disseminate
the importance and application of chemistry in various fields to
the public. The idea for the present book came from a paper by
xiv Preface

co-editor Prof. Choon H. Do, former President of the Korean

Chemical Society, titled “Public Understanding of Chemistry
and Communication Programs” as presented at the 14th Asian
Chemical Congress held in Bangkok, Thailand, in September 2011.
Consequently, the publisher kindly supported the development
of a book including this concept. We realized it is our job and
responsibility to change the public’s perception of chemistry
generally referred to as the Public Image of Chemistry. Hopefully,
this book will enlighten the public and will support new chemical
developments for a better future. The speed of the progressing of
chemistry in connection with biology, physics, and engineering
and its effects becomes faster and greater than ever before and
will lead to better life for future generation.
The purpose of this book is to help its readers understand and
appreciate chemistry, the discipline that builds the world, drives
our lives, and keeps us healthy and safe. The book also aims to
help the public realize that chemical knowledge is essential for the
development of society and for the betterment of their lives now
and in the future, too. The book also aims to help even a non-
scientific person “think” or “consider” questions like “how, ” “why,”
and “what” one can do for a better life—through chemistry.
We designed this book to lead readers into a broad range of
chemistry topics in three parts divided into 14 chapters: In the
first part, the book describes the relationships among chemistry
and the Universe, our body, health, and our history. In the second
part, consisting of eight chapters, the book describes the
contributions of chemistry to the enrichment of our present life,
which were made possible through the effects of chemistry in the
fields of agriculture, food, energy, medicine, health, transportation,
and communication.. In the third part, the book describes
activities for the image of chemistry, for our future, and for
chemistry in Africa, where ancient developments need to be
further clarified.
We tried to make this book a tool for readers to understand
in clear, non-technical language the benefits of chemistry with the
hope that the reader’s perception of chemistry would be based on
correct information and not on media hype. Also, we have made
an attempt to highlight the results of the discoveries rather
than how chemists accomplished them. For example, we talk
about the Haber–Bosch synthesis as the tool of making possible
 Preface xv

artificial fertilizers that enabled us to feed the world, not

necessarily describing in detail the experimental conditions for
doing so.
We were very fortunate to be able to gather excellent
chapter contributors for this book and we thank them for
their contributions: Prof. Sunney Chan, Dr. Erika Godor,
Dr. Dorottya Godor, Dr. Temechegn Engida, Prof. Young
Ha Kim, Prof. Mary Virginia Orna, Prof. Veronika Németh,
Prof. Livia Simon Sarkadi, Prof. James Wei, and Dr. Andrew Yeh.
We thank the Publishers and Directors, Mr. Stanford Chong
and Ms. Jenny Rompas, for giving us the opportunity to produce
this book and Mr. Arvind Kanswal for his team’s professional
editing.
We acknowledge the permission of using many images and
tables.

Choon Ho Do
Attila E. Pavlath
Introduction

Choon Ho Doa and Attila E. Pavlathb

aPresident of the Korean Chemical Society, 2010
bPresident of the American Chemical Society, 2001

Human beings are the results of a variety of chemical molecules

and living by energies produced through chemical reactions of
nutrients and oxygen in air and the use of materials, clothes,
houses, cars, shoes, medicines, computers, TV, books, lightings,
etc., made of chemical substances. We cannot be born, live, and
survive without chemical reactions. The whole world is made
of chemicals. The interactions of these chemicals are chemical
reactions, and the study of the properties of these chemicals
and reactions is chemistry.
Nevertheless, people do not think about these facts and
are afraid of chemicals. They do not understand chemistry and
chemicals correctly: They like pure water, clean air, medicines,
perfumes and cosmetics, vitamins, and food supplements, but
they are suspicious about or ignore fungicides, herbicides,
artificial fertilizers, toxic substances, contaminants, etc. The
materials we like and/or dislike are all chemicals.
Chemistry, as everything else in our life, is not perfect. There
is always a risk, which may cause some problem. It may be an
unexpected explosion in a chemical reaction or the release of a
toxic material into our atmosphere. No action in our life has zero
risk. We face many possible dangers from the day we are born. All
medications, regardless of how beneficial they are, carry a risk
clearly stated by the manufacturer by giving a long list of generally
low but still more than zero probability of undesirable side
effects. We accept those risks since we want the cure and we
judge that the possible benefits outweigh the possible harmful
side effects. To give an example, we pay little attention to the fact
 Introduction

that in the United States every day more than 80 persons (30,000
persons per year) die in automobile accidents. Nevertheless,
everyone gets confidently into the car regularly balancing the
benefits against the possible dangers.
Then why do many people become suddenly concerned
about and even hostile toward chemistry when some shortcomings
of chemistry are reported once in a while? It is logical to assume
that because the rare accidents related to chemicals are frequently
reported in large headlines and the numerous benefits of
chemistry generally are ignored or at best relegated to a note on
the fifteenth page, they skew our mind about the ratio of good
and bad. Frequently, people have become more and more
convinced that chemistry represents a danger in our life.
Therefore, we need to understand chemistry and chemicals and
the consequence of their interactions.
Why is it important? You might assume, especially if you are
not involved in any chemistry-related activities, that it is of no
concern to you and it makes no difference in your life. However,
this is not true! If the public does not understand the benefit of
chemistry, they will not support its practice. The end result is
less chemical research and development, less number of new
products, and less improvement on existing ones we use in our
life. Chemical scientists understand the governing principles and
properties of chemicals, and chemical reactions occur among
chemicals. They know HOW it is done. However, the public must
realize WHAT chemistry has done and what the consequences
are if chemistry is downplayed and also realize the reasons why
we need continuous developments in chemistry.
Why do we need fresh air? Why do we need clean water to
drink? Why do we need healthy food? Why do we need gasoline
to drive a car? What does gasoline do for the car? What will
happen if we breathe bad gas? What will happen to our body if
we drink polluted water? What gives color pictures on TV when
it is switched on? These questions are related to chemicals and
chemical reactions. Whether you believe it or not, whether
you like it or not, our life is sustained by chemical reactions
and chemicals. Why? It is because our body and our Universe are
made up of chemicals. Living organisms and inorganic materials
are chemicals. We cannot avoid chemicals and we cannot live
without chemicals. Every day we need amenities essential to
 Introduction 

our modern life, e.g., food, cloth, cars, housing, TV, smart phones.
To produce these items, we have to produce more materials by
better processes and in an economical way. All these are related
to chemistry. We need chemicals and therefore it is necessary
to understand chemistry for not only our existence sustenance
but also improvement of our future.
The goal of this book is to show not just the important benefits
of chemistry, but also reasons why chemistry is needed in the
present time and in the future to solve problems ahead of us,
whether you like it or not. Where and how to provide food for
citizens to escape from hunger? How to get necessary energies
for our living? How to develop medicines to cure diseases and
healthy life? How to supply clean water to drink? What to do to
prevent and reduce crimes? How to detect smuggling? How to
detect fake items?
Sciences and technologies progress rapidly. So does society.
You, as a human, whether you are a decision maker or an ordinary
person, have to decide many things: not only scientific matters
but also ethics for you and your family and society. That is why
the public needs to understand chemistry to make a better choice
or decision because most things and events are related to
chemistry.
We hope that after reading this book, you will appreciate
the benefits of chemistry. We also hope you will keep a proper
balance between the benefits and problems in a rational and
not sensationalist way. We have tried to make the book easily
readable with joy and thoughtfulness. We hope this book will give
you the tool to present the benefits of chemistry to your friends
and neighbors in a simple non-scientific language and to help
change their negative opinion about chemistry, too.
The book is composed of three parts consisting of 14 chapters.
Following is a brief description of the parts and the chapters.
Readers may start from any chapter because each chapter describes
a different subject and is independent of each other.
Part I. Chemistry Inherited from the Universe. Images
and perception on chemistry and comprehensive description
are given for the need of understanding chemistry for our better
future both personally and globally. This part is composed of
the following three chapters.
 Introduction

Chapter 1. Chemistry in the Universe, Our Body, and Our

Life. This chapter describes the chronological point of views of
relationship between chemistry and the Universe, development of
modern chemistry from alchemy, periodic table, chemical bonds,
life, and biology. It also describes the relationship between biology
and chemistry and the importance of the understanding of
molecular biology for our future.
Chapter 2. Chemistry in Human History. Chemistry and the
development of human history are discussed from philosophical
and practical points of view. The chapter describes the ways in
which humans took advantage of chemistry for their survival in
their use of natural products, foods, materials, clothes, shelter,
medicines, and communication.
Chapter 3. Did Chemistry Change the World? YES, chemistry
did change our life from the world of cavemen to the modern
world in terms of the development of materials. This chapter
describes the developments related to wood, metals including
copper, iron, aluminum, titanium, tungsten, lithium; bronze, plastics,
leather, textile, glass, and ceramics.
Part II. Contributions of Chemistry. This part covers the
every range of our life to realize how “chemistry made our present
life possible” discussing the numerous achievements and effects
of chemistry. The achievements of chemistry for human beings
in the past are the basis of our present life and will be the driving
force and lead to a better life in the future. The part is composed
of the following eight chapters, from Chapter 4 to Chapter 11.
Chapter 4. Agriculture: Without chemistry helping the
improvement of agricultural production by fertilizers and pesticides,
supply of food, and benefits of new technologies, we would not
have enough food for the ever-increasing population of the world.
Chemistry also enhanced the flavor, appearance, and nutritional
value of the food. It has also helped with livestock production,
protection, and veterinary medical care.
Chapter 5. Food: Supply and Health: It is not enough to
produce food. Chemistry’s health is essential for its preservation
in healthy, safe, and affordable conditions. It continuously meets
the challenges of agricultural productivity, water, healthy food,
food safety, process efficiency, and supply chain waste.
Chapter 6. Energy: Energy is needed everywhere: in residence,
commerce, and industry. Chemistry plays numerous roles in
 Introduction 

providing energy for everything: the extraction and refining of

fuels from nature, the processes in releasing energy, and the
management of safety and the environment.
Chapter 7. Medication: Diagnosis: In addition to developing
medicines, chemistry has helped doctors in diagnoses through
clinical laboratories and various diagnostic instruments. History
provides an insight into the development of the clinical application
of chemistry and the development of X-ray, computer tomography,
application of isotopes, positron emission tomography, and
magnetic resonance imaging.
Chapter 8. Medication: Curing: Chemistry always had a
major role in our health even before the development of novel
pharmaceuticals, creation of new medical equipment, and
refinement of diagnostic procedures for modern medicine. The
development of pain management, inflammation management,
psychotherapeutic agents, contraceptives, and a drug for diabetes,
insulin, represents just a few examples.
Chapter 9. Regenerative Medicine: Repairing Body:
Chemistry not only provides medicine to cure illness but also
makes possible the development of artificial organs and
biomaterials. This chapter discusses numerous examples such
as artificial kidney, heart, and eye-lens. Regenerative medicine
and tissue engineering are described, too. Cell therapy, bio-
hybrid organs, bio-artificial liver, and artificial pancreas are a few
examples of regenerative medicine.
Chapter 10. Transportation: To move from one place
to another whether on foot or by some machine is based on
chemistry, which contributed to transportation technology and
left its stamp on the culture of human activities. The development
of materials for vehicles, frames and wheels, fuels and engines,
navigation system, including compass and GPS, building of roads
using asphalt and concrete are the crucial factors.
Chapter 11. Communication and Entertainment: While
communication might be thought as the result of physics, chemistry
made the progress of electronic communication devices and
storage devices possible. This chapter describes the role of
chemistry in the development of cellular phones, electronics,
fiberglass, paper, ink, recording sounds and pictures, copy machines,
computers, and entertainment business, including movie films.
 Introduction

Part III. Chemistry and Activities. This part is composed

of three chapters, from Chapter 12 to Chapter 14. It includes
activities to improve the image of chemistry, roles of chemistry
for the future, and activities in Africa.
Chapter 12. Problems and Solutions: Activities of
Chemists and Educators for the Public: What is needed to
understand chemistry and how can the public image of chemistry
be improved? This chapter gives suggestions so the reader
can help overcome sensationalist negative media publicity.
Science teachers, chemists, and chemical engineers are urged to
participate in the improvement of the image of chemistry and
to create interest in science through science education.
Chapter 13. What Can Chemistry Do for the Future: While
no one can accurately predict the future, this chapter discusses
the possibilities in various areas such as artificial photosynthesis,
new energy resources, materials, climate control, human life and
health, human and Nature, change of desert, use of ocean and
sea, and space travel. These topics are described in a systemic
manner and not as individual chemical terms.
Chapter 14. Chemistry in Africa: Progress and Application:
Chemistry is essential for progress in underdeveloped countries.
This chapter lists methods and problems in chemical education. It
discusses how various natural materials were used for health and
agricultural purposes. Information is given on what type of research
is being done to investigate needed materials for the special
circumstances in those countries.
 Part I
Chemistry Inherited from the
Universe
Chapter 1

Chemistry in the Universe, Our Body,

and Our Life

Sunney I. Chan and Andrew P. Yeh

Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology,
1200 East California Blvd., Pasadena, California 91125, USA
sunneychan@yahoo.com

Chemistry is all about atoms and the interactions between

these atoms to form molecules that make up the world around
us: the air we breathe; the water we drink; the food we consume;
the clothing we wear; the sand we walk on; the minerals from
which we derive our copper, aluminum, gold, platinum, and
silver; the plastics we fabricate to make plexiglass sheets, adhesives,
and containers; the mortar and bricks we use to build our homes;
and so on. So it is meaningful to ask where all these atoms
come from.

1.1 The Very Beginning of the Universe

According to cosmologists, the universe began with the “Big Bang”
approximately 13.8 billion years ago. This is considered to be
the age of the universe. After the initial expansion, the universe
eventually cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic

Chemistry: Our Past, Present, and Future

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Copyright © 2017 Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.
ISBN 978-981-4774-08-6 (Hardcover), 978-1-315-22932-4 (eBook)
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10 Chemistry in the Universe, Our Body, and Our Life

particles: quarks, electron, proton, neutron, etc., and, later on,

atoms of simple elements. Massive clouds of these primordial
elements later coalesced via gravity to form stars and galaxies.1
The low-mass elements, hydrogen and helium, were produced
by primordial nucleo-synthesis (i.e., the combination of protons
and neutrons to form elemental nuclei) within the first several
minutes of the Big Bang. The nuclei of the heavier elements
were created later in stars by stellar nucleo-synthesis. With
subsequent cooling of the universe, stable hydrogen and helium
atoms began to form when the average energies of the nuclei
and electrons became sufficiently low. This took hundreds of
thousands of years. After about a billion years, giant clouds
of the cold atomic hydrogen and helium gas began contracting
under the influence of their mutual gravitational forces. As the
clouds condensed to higher densities, they warmed, and when
the temperature of the hydrogen gas reached a few million
degrees, nuclear reactions started in the cores of these proto-
stars. Eventually, the more massive chemical elements were
formed in the cores of the very massive stars.
The ordinary matter in our universe is made up of 94
naturally occurring chemical elements. The details of how these
various elements culminated within the planet of which we are
a part remain an area of intellectual inquiry and still occupy
the attention of researchers in geochemistry.
Approximately 73% of the mass of the visible universe is in
the form of hydrogen, the atom with the lowest mass. Helium
makes up about 25% of the mass. The remaining 2% are made
up of the more massive elements. This might seem like a
miniscule amount, but hardly less significant, as most of the
atoms on planet earth and in our bodies are a part of this small
portion of the matter of the universe.

1.2 Alchemy and Alchemists

The composition of matter has always been a fascination among
humans. We live in a world of molecules, so chemistry has to be
among one of our “closet friends.” “Earth, water, air, and fire”
were the first elements (Fig. 1.1).2 The earliest chemists, often
referred to as alchemists, were thought to be endowed with the
 Alchemy and Alchemists 11

power to transform matter from one form or another, including

the “creation of the fabled philosopher’s stone; the ability to
transmute base metals into the noble metals (gold or silver);
and the development of an elixir of life that would confer youth
and longevity.”3

Figure 1.1 The classical elements in Babylonia: Segment of the

macrocosm showing the elemental spheres of Terra (earth),
Aqua (water), Aer (air), and Ignis (fire). Robert Fludd. 1617.
Reproduced from Ref. 2.

Alchemy played a significant role in the development of

early science. As a proto-science, it contributed a set of beliefs
and theories that ultimately led to the development of modern
chemistry and medicine. However, it was not until the 18th
century before the foundations of modern chemistry were laid.
12 Chemistry in the Universe, Our Body, and Our Life

1.3 The Very Beginning of the Beginning of

Modern Chemistry
Modern chemistry began with the discovery of nitrogen and
oxygen, the two principal components of air. Daniel Rutherford,
a Scottish chemist and physician, discovered nitrogen in 1772.4
It was a fraction of air that was unable to explode. Joseph
Priestley, a US chemist of British descent, discovered oxygen.5
In a series of experiments culminating in 1774, Priestley found
that air was not an elementary substance, but a mixture of
gases. Among them was the colorless and highly reactive gas
he called “phlogiston,” and the air was “dephlogisticated” upon
combustion. The great French chemist Antoine Lavoisier would
soon give the name “oxygen” to this highly reactive component
of air. Priestley’s discovery answered “age-old questions of why
and how things burn.”
Nitrogen and oxygen are the main components of air,
comprising 78% and 21% of the atmosphere, respectively. As
we shall discuss later, nitrogen and oxygen are vital ingredients
for living things and in manufacturing. The oxygen in the air we
breathe is crucial to cellular respiration. Aerobic organisms such
as humans cannot sustain life without oxygen. In contrast,
nitrogen gas is very inert. However, nitrogen is required for the
biosynthesis of the basic building blocks of plants, animals, and
other life forms. Before it can be used, the nitrogen gas needs to
be fixed and converted to more reactive forms. In nature, there
exist nitrogen-fixing bacteria that convert nitrogen gas into
ammonia. Nitrogen fixation is essential for agriculture and the
manufacture of fertilizer.
Also there would be no life, or life forms as we know them,
without water. For this reason, NASA’s exploration for life on
Mars began with the search for water. Water is the transparent
fluid that forms the world’s streams, lakes, and oceans, and
while it covers about 70% of the earth’s surface, only ~2.5% of
this is freshwater. We also observe it as rain and snow, and it
exists as fog, dew, and cloud as well. Water is the major
constituent of the fluids of living things. In a normal adult, about
60% of the body weight comes from water.
Another random document with
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 Although Palæolithic man worked so much in stone, he did not
build in it. Hence our knowledge of the kinds of shelters he made for
himself is almost nil. There are Upper Palæolithic “tectiform”
paintings which look as if they might be attempts to depict houses. It
is clear, moreover, that in this period the general development of the
mechanical arts was sufficiently advanced to allow of the
construction of some sort of rude edifices.
It is conceivable that as far back as the Lower Palæolithic simple
shelters of branches were constructed, or that skins may have been
hung over a few poles to keep off wind and rain. On account of the
perishable nature of the materials involved, it happens that there is
no proof either for or against such a supposition. It is possible that in
time, when patient excavations shall have revealed some particularly
well preserved site, the holes may yet be found in which the posts of
a Palæolithic hut were once set. In case of a fire, the carbonized
stumps might prove to have been preserved in place; or the butts of
the posts might have gradually rotted away and the space once
occupied by them have become filled with an earthy material of
different color and consistency from the surrounding soil. In this
lucky event, even the size and shape of the house might be
reconstructed from the relative positions of the post holes. From
evidence of just this sort some interesting ideas have actually been
obtained as to the houses and village plan of Neolithic European
peoples. Of course, the chances are much less that remains of this
sort would be preserved from the Palæolithic. But the method would
be equally applicable if favorable conditions offered; and it is in some
such way that we may hope in the future to learn a little about the
earliest habitations that mankind constructed. In any event the
example serves to illustrate the indirect and delicate means of which
the student of prehistory must consistently avail himself in his
reconstructions of the past; and gives reason to believe that all that
has been learned about early man in the last fifty years is very little
in comparison with what the ensuing generation and century will
bring to light.

79. Religion
 It has already been said that knowledge of religion, a non-material
thing, can be preserved from the remote past only by the most
roundabout means. It is conceivable that the people of the Upper
Palæolithic spent at least as much time in ceremonial observances
as in working flint. Analogy with modern uncivilized tribes would
make us think that this is quite likely. But the stone tools have
remained lying in the earth, while the religious customs went out of
use thousands of years ago and the beliefs were forgotten. Yet this
is known: As far back as the Mousterian, thirty thousand years ago,
certain practices were being observed by the Neandertal race of
western Europe which modern savages observe in obedience to the
dictates of their religion. When these people of the Mousterian laid
away their dead, they put some of their belongings with them. When
existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection with a belief in
the continued existence of the soul after death. We may reasonably
conclude therefore that even in this long distant period human
beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between
flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being. Even to say
that Neandertal man did not know whether his dead were dead,
implies his recognition of something different from life in the body, for
he recognized of course that the body had become different.
Whether the Neandertal race already held to the existence of spirits
distinct from man or superior to him, it is impossible to say.
The Upper Palæolithic Cro-Magnon peoples laid out the bodies of
their dead and sometimes folded them. They also sometimes
painted the bodies, and buried flint implements and food in the
graves. That is, funerary practices were becoming established. We
may assume that hand in hand with this development of
observances there went a growth of ritual and belief.

80. Palæolithic Art

The highest achievement of the men of the Old Stone Age is their
art. The perfection to which they carried this art is simply astounding
in view of the comparative meagerness of their civilization otherwise.
It is also remarkable how full-fledged this achievement sprang into
existence. The Lower Palæolithic seems to have been without a
trace of art. With the Aurignacian, simple carving and painting
appear; and while the acme of accomplishment was not reached
until the Magdalenian, the essential foundations of a graphic art of
high order were laid in the late Aurignacian.
The Upper Palæolithic people carved in ivory, bone, and horn;
they incised or engraved on flattened and rounded surfaces of the
same material; and they carved and painted the walls of caves. They
modeled at times in clay and perhaps in other soft materials, and
may have drawn or painted pictures on skins and on exposed rock
surfaces, for all we know; we can judge only by the remains that
have actually come down to us. This art is not a child-like, struggling
attempt to represent objects in the rough, nor is it a mere decorative
playing with geometric figures. These first human artists set boldly to
work to depict; and while their technique was simple, it was carried
to a remarkably high degree of perfection. A few bold strokes gave
the outlines of an animal, but they gave it with such fidelity that the
species can often be recognized at a glance. The Cro-Magnon
people must have developed a high power of mental concentration
to be able to observe and reproduce so closely. The most gifted
individuals perhaps practised assiduously to attain their facility.
Palæolithic art is very different from that of most modern savages.
The latter often work out decorative patterns of some complexity,
richness, and æsthetic value, but when they attempt to depict nature,
they usually fail conspicuously. The lines are crude and wavering.
Any head, body, and tail with four legs stands for almost any animal.
It is a reasonable representation of an abstraction that they
accomplish, not the delineation of what is characteristic in the visible
form. Both observer and painter, among most living savages, are
supposed to know beforehand that the drawing represents a fox and
not a bear. At most, some symbols are added, such as a bushy tail
for a fox or a fin for a whale. It is only in rare cases that any but
advanced nations break away from these primitive tendencies and
learn to draw things as they really appear. The ancient Egyptians
developed such a faculty, and among savages the Bushmen are
remarkably gifted, but, on the whole, successful realistic art is an
accomplishment of high civilization. It is therefore something of a
mystery how the Cro-Magnon men of the Aurignacian brought
themselves to do so well.

Fig. 20. Limestone statuette from

Willendorf, Austria. Characteristic
of Aurignacian treatment of the
female figure: the face and limbs
are abbreviated or only indicated;
the parts concerned with
reproduction are exaggerated.

In sculpture their first efforts were directed upon figurines. These

mostly represent the human female. The head, hands, and feet are
either absent or much abbreviated. In the body, those parts having to
do with reproduction and fecundity are usually heavily exaggerated,
but at the same time given with considerable skill (Fig. 20). It is likely
that these statuettes served some religious cult. At any rate, the
carvings in three dimensions often represent the human figure,
whereas two-dimensional drawings, etchings, and paintings mostly
represent animals and are much more successful than the human
outlines. In the Magdalenian, miniature sculpture of animals was
added to that of the human figure (Fig. 21).
Success in seizing the salient outline was the earliest
characteristic of the paintings and drawings. The first Aurignacian
engravings are invariably in profile and usually show only the two
legs on the immediately visible side. In time the artists also learned
to suggest typical positions and movements—the motion of a
reindeer lowering its head to browse, the way an angry bull switches
his tail or paws the ground, the curl of the end of an elephant’s trunk
(Figs. 22, 24). In the Magdalenian, all four legs are usually depicted,
and the profile, although remaining most frequent, as it is most
characteristic, is no longer the only aspect. There are occasional
pictures of animals from before or behind, or of a reindeer with its
head turned backward.

Fig. 21. Horse carved in mammoth ivory. From Lourdes, France. The spirited
portrayal of the neck, ears, eyes, and mouth parts is characteristic of
Magdalenian sculpture.

There are also some devices which look like the beginnings of
attempts at composition. The effect of a row of reindeer is produced
by drawing out the first few in some detail, and then suggesting the
others by sketching in their horns (Fig. 23). Artists were no longer
content, in the Magdalenian, always to do each animal as a solitary,
static unit. They were trying, with some measure of success, to
represent the animals as they moved in life and perhaps to combine
several of them into one coherent picture or to suggest a setting.
By this time they had also acquired considerable ability in handling
colors. The Aurignacian and Solutrean artists restricted themselves
to monochrome effects. They engraved or painted outlines and
sometimes accentuated these by filling them in with pigment. But the
best of the later painters in the Magdalenian—those, for instance,
who left their frescoes on the walls of the famous cave of Altamira in
Spain—used three or four colors at once and blended these into
transition tones.

Fig. 22. Engraving of a charging mammoth. On a fragment of ivory tusk found at

La Madeleine, France. While the artist’s strokes were crude, he was able to
depict the animal’s action with remarkable vigor. Note the roll of the eye, the
flapping ears, the raised tail expressive of anger.

While animals constitute the subjects of probably four-fifths of the

specimens of Palæolithic art, and human beings most of the
remainder, representations of plants and unrealistic decorative
designs are known. The latter seem to have begun to be specially
prevalent in the latest Magdalenian, as if in preparation of the
conventionalized, non-naturalistic art of the transitional Azilian and
Neolithic.

81. Summary of Advance in the Palæolithic

The history of civilization has herewith been outlined from its first
dim beginnings to about twelve thousand years ago—say to the
neighborhood of 10,000 B.C., as the historian would put it. Progress
is immensely slow at the outset, but gradually speeds up. The
tabulation in Figure 25 summarizes some of the principal features of
this evolution. This diagram does not pretend to be complete; it does
try to include some of the most important and representative
inventions, arts, and accomplishments of the Old Stone Age.

Fig. 23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd of reindeer, found in the grotto of La

Mairie, France. The impressionistic manner enabled the artist to suggest
rather effectively a large herd while drawing out only four animals.

Thus it appears that the Chellean and Acheulean periods are

characterized essentially by a single art, that of chipping implements
on a core of flint, plus perhaps the use of fire. The Mousterian
evinces progress: stone tools are now made from the flake as well
as the core, possibly are sometimes hafted, bone is occasionally
utilized, and there are the first indications of budding religion; four or
five entries are required to represent these culture traits.
The greatest advance comes from the Mousterian to the
Aurignacian; in other words, between the Lower and the Upper
Palæolithic. Three times as many accomplishments are listed as in
the Mousterian, and whole series of new inventions are now first met
with: body ornaments, bone implements, æsthetic products. This
sudden leap in the figures goes far to signalize the importance of the
division between the Upper and the Lower Palæolithic. In the
Solutrean and Magdalenian still further inventions or refinements
appear, until, when the Old Stone Age comes to a close,[12] the stock
of human civilization may be described as perhaps twenty times as
rich as at the beginning. These figures are not to be taken too
literally. The tabulation could easily have been compiled on a more
elaborate basis. But even then the relative proportion of culture
features in each period would remain approximately as here given.
And as regards the general fact of accumulation of civilization, and
its range and nature, the diagram may be accepted as substantially
representative of what happened.

Fig. 24. Magdalenian engraving, perhaps a composition: browsing reindeer among

grass, reeds, and water. Note the naturalistic movement suggested by the
legs and position of the head. Engraved so as to encircle a piece of antler.
Found at Kesslerloch, Switzerland.
Fig. 25. Growth of civilization during the Palæolithic.

The end of the Palæolithic thus sees man in possession of a

number of mechanical arts which enable him to produce a
considerable variety of tools in several materials: sees him
controlling fire; cooking food; wearing clothes, and living in definite
habitations; probably possessing some sort of social grouping, order,
and ideas of law and justice; clearly under the influence of some kind
of religion; highly advanced in the plastic arts; and presumably
already narrating legends and singing songs. In short, many
fundamental elements of civilization were established. It is true that
the sum total of knowledge and accomplishments was still pitifully
small. The most advanced of the Old Stone Age men perhaps knew
and could do about one thing for every hundred that we know and
can do. A whole array of fundamental inventions—the bow and
arrow, pottery, domestication of animals and plants—had not yet
been attempted, and they do not appear on the scene until the
Neolithic. But in spite of the enormous gaps remaining to be filled in
the Neolithic and in the historic period, it does seem fair to say that
many of the outlines of what civilization was ultimately to be had
been substantially blocked out during the Upper Palæolithic. Most of
the framework was there, even though but a small fraction of its
content had yet been entered.
 CHAPTER VII
HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION

82. Heredity.—83. Geographical environment.—84. Diet.—85. Agriculture.

—86. Cultural factors.—87. Cultural distribution.—88. Historical
induction.

82. Heredity
The first of the several factors through which it is logically possible
to explain the life and conduct and customs of any people is race or
heredity: in other words, the inborn tendencies, bodily and mental, of
the people that carry these customs. At first sight it may seem that
this element of race might be quite influential. Since peoples differ in
inherited characteristics of body—complexion, features, hair, eye
color, head form, and the like—these bodily inherited peculiarities
ought to be accompanied by mentally inherited traits, such as
greater or less inclination to courage, energy, power of abstract
thought, mechanical ingenuity, musical or æsthetic proclivities, swift
reactions, ability to concentrate, gift of expression. Such racial
mental traits, again, might conceivably be expressed in the conduct
and culture of each people. Races born to a greater activity of the
mechanical faculties would achieve more or higher inventions, those
innately gifted in the direction of music would develop more subtly
melodious songs, and so on.
Yet in every particular case it is difficult or impossible to establish
by incontrovertible evidence that heredity is the specific cause of this
accomplishment, of this point of view, or of this mode of life; that it is
the determining factor to such and such degree of such and such
customs. This is not a denial of the probability that inborn racial
differences exist. It is an affirmation of the difficulty, discussed in
Chapters I, IV, and V, of knowing what is inborn; and more
specifically, of the difficulty of tracing particular customary activities
back to particular racial qualities. The problem of connecting specific
race traits with specific phenomena of culture or group conduct, such
as settled life, architecture in stone, religious symbolism, and the
like,—of determining how much of this type of architecture or
symbolism is instinctive in the race and how much of it is the result of
traditional or social influences,—remains unsolved.
For example, should one try to apply to the explanation of the
mode of life or culture of the Indians of the Southwestern United
States biological facts, such as their head form, one would be
confronted by the difficulty that long heads are characteristic of some
of the town-building tribes, or Pueblos, and also of some of the tribes
living in brush huts. Broad heads are also found among both the
settled and nomadic tribes. The Pueblo Taos and non-Pueblo Pima
are narrow-headed, the Pueblo Zuñi and non-Pueblo Apache broad-
headed. So with the pulse rate, which has been already mentioned
(§ 70) as unusually slow among the Southwestern Indians. It is the
same for the nomadic Apache who lived by fighting, and for the Hopi
and Zuñi who are famous for their timidity and gentleness. Similar
cases might be cited almost endlessly. It is evident that they are of a
kind with the lack of correspondence between race and speech, or
race and nationality, among the European peoples.

83. Geographical Environment

When it comes to the second factor by which culture might
theoretically be explained—physical environment or geography—
similar difficulties are encountered.
It is of course plain that a primitive tribe under the equator would
never invent the ice box, and that the Eskimo will not keep their food
and water in buckets of bamboo, although it is possible that if the
Eskimo had had bamboo carried to them by ocean currents, they
would have been both glad and able to use it. The materials and
opportunities provided by nature may be made use of by each
people, while other materials not being provided, other arts or
customs can therefore not be developed. But evidently this
correspondence is mainly negative. Not performing an act because
one lacks the opportunity by no means proves that the opportunity
will necessarily lead to the performance. Two nations will live where
there is ice to store and one will invent and the other fail to invent the
ice chest. Whole series of peoples possess bamboo and clay, and
yet some of them draw water in bamboo joints and others in pots.
Obviously, natural environment does impose certain limiting
conditions on human life; but equally obviously, it does not cause
inventions or institutions.
The native Australians have wood and cord and flint but do not
make bows and arrows. Their civilization had not advanced to the
point where they were able to devise an efficient bow, and the
requisite idea failed to be carried to them from elsewhere as it was to
other peoples who also did not invent the weapon. The Polynesians,
on the other hand, seem once to have had the weapon, as
evidenced by their retaining it as a toy, but to have disused it,
perhaps because they specialized on fighting with spears and clubs.
Modern civilized people fight at long range, but have let bows go out
of use, except for sport, because their knowledge of metallurgy and
chemistry centuries ago progressed to the point where they could
produce firearms. Development or lack of development or
specialization of other cultural activities—social causes—thus
determine more directly than other factors whether or not a people
employ the bow and arrow. Of those mentioned, the Australians are
the only ones with whom a factor of natural environment might be
alleged to enter: namely, their isolation, which cut them off from
communications and the opportunity to learn from other races. Yet
such isolation is as much a matter of inability to traverse space as it
is a matter of physical distance. A developed art of navigation would
have abolished the Australian isolation. Thus, this seemingly
environmental cause of a cultural fact depends for its effectiveness
on a co-existing cultural cause. It is the latter which is the most
immediate or specific cause.
In general, then, it may be concluded that the directly determining
factors of cultural phenomena are not nature which gives or
withholds materials, but the general state of knowledge and
technology and advancement of the group; in short, historical or
cultural influences.

84. Diet
The greater part of the Southwest is arid. Fish are scarce. The
result is that most of the tribes get little opportunity to fish. Most of
these Southwestern Indians will not eat fish; in fact, think them
poisonous. This circumstance might lead to the following inference:
nature does not furnish fish in abundance; therefore the Indians got
out of the habit of eating them, and finally came to believe them
poisonous. At first blush this may seem a sufficient explanation. But
it is well to note that the explanation has two parts and that only one
of them has to do with nature: the habit of not eating fish because
they are too scarce to make it worth while. As soon as one proceeds
to the second step, that the disuse led to aversion and then to a false
belief of poisonousness, one has gone on to a different matter.
Disuse, aversion, and belief lie wholly within the field of human
conduct. To derive a psychological phenomenon, such as a belief,
from another psychological phenomenon such as a particular disuse,
because this disuse is founded on a geographical factor, would of
course be a logical fallacy. It can also be shown not to hold, since we
prize caviar and oysters and venison in proportion to their rarity.
Scarcity in this case thus leads to the contrary psychological attitude,
and either fails to establish beliefs or establishes favorable ones.
Again, either through a change in climate or through the
improvement of trade, a food that was scarce may become plentiful.
Or a people may remove to a new habitat, different from that in
which their customs of eating were formed. If environment alone
were the dominating cause of their customs, these customs should
then immediately alter. As a fact, a group sometimes adheres to its
old customs. The immediate cause of such conservatism is habit or
inertia or inclination toward superstition or fear of taboo, all of which
are mental reactions expressed in folkways or social customs. Thus
environment remains at most a partial and indirectly operating
cause.
 A case in point is that of the Jews. It is often said that the Jew’s
prohibition against eating pork and oysters and lobsters originated in
hygienic considerations; that these were climatically unsafe foods for
him in Palestine. This explanation is more simple than true. Ancient
Palestine was an arid country in which hogs could not be raised with
economic profit, and so they were not raised; and the Philistine and
Phœnician kept the Jew from the coast along which he might have
obtained shellfish. Eating neither food, he happened to acquire a
distrust of them; having the distrust, he rationalized it by saying that
it was foreign and wicked and irreligious to act counter to his habits
—just like the Pueblo Indian; and in the end had the Lord issue the
prohibition for him. Yet this outcome is a long way from the starting
point of natural environment. The environment may indeed be said to
have furnished the first occasion, but the determining causes of the
taboos in the Mosaic law are of an entirely different kind—distrust,
custom, rationalization, psychological or cultural factors. If doubt
remains, it is dispelled by the orthodox Jew of to-day, whose
environment thrusts some of his forbidden foods at him as
economically and hygienically satisfactory, whereas he still shudders
at the thought of tasting them.
If this sort of cultural crystallizing of custom and subsequent
rationalizing or ritual sanctioning takes place among civilized and
intelligent people, the like must occur among uncivilized tribes.

85. Agriculture
Attempts have been made to derive the invention of agriculture
from climatic factors. The first theory was that farming took its rise in
the tropics, where agriculture came naturally, almost without effort,
under a bounteous sky. Only after people had acquired the habit of
farming and had moved into other less favorably endowed countries,
did they take their agriculture seriously in order to survive. But a
second, equally plausible, and quite contradictory theory has been
advanced, which looks toward the duress rather than the easy favors
of nature. On the basis of conditions among the modern Papago
Indians and the ancient inhabitants of the Southwest, it has been
argued that it must have been the peoples of arid countries who
invented agriculture, necessity driving them to it through shortage of
wild supplies.
Between such flat opposites, the choice is merely one of
unscientific guessing. In this particular case of the Southwest it is
certain that both guesses are wrong. Agriculture did not come to the
natives of this area because nature was favorable or because it was
unfavorable. It came because through increase of knowledge and
change of attitude, some people in the region of Southern Mexico or
Guatemala or beyond first turned agriculturists, and from them the
art was gradually carried, through nation after nation, to the
Southwestern tribes, and finally even to the Indians of the North
Atlantic coast.
The reasons for acceptance of this explanation are several. First is
the distribution of native agriculture, whose practice was about
equally spread in the two American continents with its middle in or
near Central America. If a geographical diffusion of the art from a
center took place, its radiation or extension would probably be about
equal to the north and south. Then, the middle portions of the new
world held the greatest concentration of native population, such as
would have tended to produce a pressure in the direction of the
establishment of agriculture and would also normally be a
consequence of the continued custom of farming, as opposed to
unsettled life. Again, the Southwestern tribes planted only maize,
beans, and squashes; the Mexicans grew in addition tomatoes, chili
peppers, cacao, and sweet potatoes. It looks as if they had carried
their agriculture farther through having been at it longer. Then,
pottery has evidently spread out from the same center, and the two
arts seem to go hand in hand. Other evidence might be adduced,
such as archæological excavations and the botanical fact that the
home of the nearest wild relatives of the plants cultivated in the
Southwest is the central or middle American area (§ 183).
In short, the Southwestern Indians did not farm because nature
induced them to make the invention. They did not make the invention
at all. A far away people made it, and from them it was transmitted to
the Southwest through a series of successive tribal contacts. These
contacts, which then are the specific cause of Southwestern
agriculture, constitute a human social factor; a cultural or
civilizational factor. Climatic or physical environment did not enter
into the matter at all, except to render agriculture somewhat difficult
in the arid Southwest, though not difficult enough to prevent it. Had
the Southwest been thoroughly desert, agriculture could not have got
a foot-hold there. But this would be only a limiting condition; the
active or positive causes that brought about the Southwestern
agriculture are its invention farther South, the spread of the invention
to the North, and its acceptance there.
Of course this conclusion sheds no light on the causes of the first
invention in the middle American region. The ultimate origin of the
phenomenon has not been penetrated. But the prevalence of
agriculture in the aboriginal Southwest for several thousand years
past has been pretty certainly accounted for, and by an explanation
in terms of culture or civilization, or the activity of societies of human
beings.

86. Cultural Factors

Such cultural causes constitute the third set or kind of factors by
which civilization is explainable. If the example just discussed is
representative, it is clear that cultural factors ordinarily interpret more
phenomena of civilization, and interpret them more fully, than factors
either of racial heredity or physical environment.
It is different in zoölogy and botany. The forms and behavior of
animals and plants are explainable in terms of heredity and
environment because animals and plants have no culture. It is true
that the forms and behavior are determined also by other animals
and plants, their characteristics, habits, and abundance, but these
factors are in a larger sense part of the environment. They are at any
rate sub-cultural. But since anthropology deals with beings whose
distinctive trait in social relations is the possession of the thing that
we call culture, the factors which biology employs are insufficient. It
is not that heredity and natural environment fail to apply to man, but
that they apply only indirectly and remotely to his civilization. This
fundamental fact has often been overlooked, especially in modern
times, because the biological sciences having achieved successful
increases of knowledge and understanding, the temptation was great
to borrow their method outright and apply it without serious
modification to the human material of anthropology. This procedure
simplified the situation, but yielded inadequate and illusory results.
For a very long time the idea that man possessed and animals
lacked a soul influenced people’s thought to such a degree that they
scarcely thought of human beings in terms of biological causality, of
heredity and environment. Then when a reaction began to set in,
less than two centuries ago, and it became more generally
recognized that man was an animal, the pendulum swung to the
other extreme and the tendency grew of seeing in him only the
animal, the cultureless being, and of either ignoring his culture or
thinking that it could be explained away by resolving it into the
factors familiar from biology. The just and wise course lies between.
The biological aspects of man must be interpreted in terms of
biological causation, his cultural aspects in terms first of all of cultural
causation. After they have been thus resolved, the cultural causes
may reduce to ultimate factors of heredity and natural environment.

87. Cultural Distribution

The Southwest also provides an example of how cultural
phenomena can be seen to be arranged geographically so as to
yield a meaning or to outline their history, without reference to
climate or natural influences. Near the center of the area, in northern
New Mexico and Arizona, live four groups of Pueblo or town building
Indians—the Hopi, Zuñi, Keres, and Tewa or Tano—who represent a
sort of élite of the native culture. They farm, make pottery,
accumulate wealth in turquoise, are governed by priests, worship
under a remarkably complex set of rituals, which involve altars,
masks, symbols of all sorts, and a rude sort of philosophy.
As one goes from the Pueblo center to the less settled tribes, one
encounters first the Navaho, who are earth hut builders and farm but
little, yet share much of the Pueblo elaborateness of ritual, including
altars, masks, and symbols. A little farther out, among the Apache
and Pima, the cults have perceptibly diminished in intricacy and
symbolic value: altars and masks are lacking.
The simplification increases among the more remote Mohave,
whose cults are based on dreams instead of priestly tradition. Still
farther, on the shores of the Pacific among the Luiseño and
Gabrielino, some Pueblo traits can still be found; cult altars and
pottery, for instance. But agriculture, homes of stone, turquoise,
priests, and the majority of Pueblo institutions are unknown. Finally,
still farther away in central California, the Yokuts now and then show
a culture trait reminiscent of the Pueblos: grooved arrow
straighteners, perhaps, or occasional rudely made pottery vessels.
These are suggestive bits; fragments that have been whittled away
or toned down. Pueblo culture as a whole has vanished at this
distance. In its place the Yokuts possess quite different arts and
institutions and beliefs.
What is the significance of this gradual fading away of one type of
civilization and its replacement by others? Evidently that certain
influences have radiated out from the higher Pueblo center, and that
the effect of these has diminished in proportion to the number of
tribes they have passed through. The Pueblos have succeeded in
handing over the largest share of their civilization to the adjacent
Navaho—and no doubt also received most from them. The Apache
being more remote, were less affected; and so on to the farthest
limits of the influences.
It is also clear that a time element is involved. A people receiving
an art from another obviously acquires this later than the inventors.
Most traits which the central Pueblos share with peripheral tribes
may be assumed to have existed longer among the Pueblos, simply
because they possess more traits in their culture and the flow has
prevailingly been out from them. Thus they make uncolored, two-
colored, and three-colored pottery; the tribes on the margin of the
Southwest, uncolored pottery only; those beyond the range of
immediate Southwestern influence, no pottery at all. Unless
therefore there should be special reasons suggestive of a
degenerative loss of the art among the marginal tribes—and no such
reasons are known—the conclusion is forced that Southwestern
pottery was first made by the ancestors of the Pueblos or their
predecessors in the central part of the area, presumably as plain
ware, and that thence knowledge of the art was gradually carried
outward. However while simple pottery making was thus being taken
up by the tribes nearest to the Pueblo district, the Pueblos were
going ahead and learning to ornament vessels with painted designs.
In time this added art also spread to the neighbors, but meanwhile
these had passed knowledge of the first stage on to the tribes still
farther out than themselves; and meanwhile also the Pueblos had
perhaps gone on to a third stage, that of combining colors in their
decoration.
In this way, if nothing interrupted the even regularity of the
process, the focal people, with their lead in creating or inventing or
improving, might pass through half a dozen successive stages of the
art, or of many arts, while the outermost peoples were just beginning
to receive the rudiments. The intermediate tribes would show
attainment of a less or greater number of stages in proportion to their
distance from the center. In this event the main facts concerning the
pottery art of the Southwest could be represented by a diagram of a
step pyramid, each level or step picturing a new increment to the
basic art. The Pueblos would be at the peak of the pyramid, five or
six steps high, the near-by tribes a step or two lower; and so on to
the outermost, who remain at, or have only recently attained to, the
first or lowest level; while beyond these would be the non-pottery-
making tribes wholly outside the Pueblo sphere of influence.
Of course on the actual map the distribution of the various forms
or stages of pottery made does not work out with the perfect
regularity of our schematic diagram. Here and there a tribe has
migrated from its habitat and disturbed the symmetry of
arrangement; or the population of a district has been so thin that it
could live on wild products without resorting to agriculture, so that it
remained more or less nomadic and had no use for fragile pottery; or
a third group of tribes developed basket making to a pitch which
yielded excellent vessels, with the result that they were satisfied and
failed to take up pottery, or took it up half-heartedly, so that the art