In hmolscience, E.B. (c.1810-c.1880) was an English atheism philosopher noted for his 1851 religion and science debates contributions to the Jeremy Bentham themed periodical The Reasoner: and Theological Examiner, run by George Holyoake, wherein, in his discussions of English polymath William Whewell, he seems to have been the first to coin the term “human chemistry.”
Mackintosh | Holyoake
In 1850, John Mackintosh, in his pamphlet The Logic of Atheism: With Especial Reference to Mr. Holyoake's Pretended Refutation of Paley, wherein, he states the following:
“All Christians are knaves or fools.”
— George Holyoake (c.1845) (Ѻ)
In 1851, E.B., in The Reasoner (Ѻ), refuted Mackintosh on his anti-atheism; and Mackintosh refuted back, which seems to have runamuck into a debated about "name calling".
Human chemistry
In 1851, E.B. cited the following contentious quote by English polymath William Whewell, from his Bridgewater Treatise (1833):
“We can no longer maintain the infinite past duration of the earth; for chemical forces as well as mechanical tend to equilibrium. If, for instance, a large portion of the earth’s mass were originally pure potassium, we can imagine violent igneous action to go on so long as any part remained unoxidized; but when the oxidation of the whole has taken place, this action must be at an end; for there is no agency (physical) which can reproduce the de-oxidized metal. Thus a perpetual motion is incapable in chemistry, as it is in mechanics; and a theory of constant change, continued through infinite time, is untenable.”
E.B. then, in semi-objection to the above, employed the term “human chemistry” as follows: [1]
“Potassium is a compound of certain elements which exist abundantly in nature: the operations of nature can resolve potassium, or gold, or man, into their elements, and build up new gold, new potassium, and new men, by laws unknown indeed to human chemistry, but which we must (arrogantly or not) for the present hesitate to pronounce undiscoverable.”
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Education
E.B. may have been possibly a mathematician or physicist of sorts, as he cites the first book of Euclid.
Quotes
The following are noted quotes:
“Nature’s operations, as far as we have yet observed them, proceed by inexorable atheistical laws, and every new discovery of natural laws is a new blow to the tottering dogma of a ‘moral governor’ and mechanical contriver, the offspring of dark and ignorant ages.”
— E.B. (1851), commentary on John Mackintosh’s “The Logic of Atheism” [2]
References
1. E.B. (1851). “Hard Hits by the Author of the Creed of Error” (“human chemistry” pg. 326), The Reasoner: and Theological Examiner, 10(228-259): 326-28.
2. E.B. (1851). Pamphlets of the Opponents (III): Commentary on “The Logic of Atheism” by John Mackintosh (pgs. 410-12; quote, pg. 414), in: The Reasoner: and Theological Examiner, 10.
