An 1858 definition of synthesis, by English chemist John Bidlake, with etymology, as the "putting together the elements" of which a chemical structure or compound is composed. [3] |
A free energy of formation view of human synthesis (see: human free energy); drawing modified from from American physicist Daniel Schroeder’s 2000 Thermal Physics textbook. [7] |
“It is the object of these researchers to do away with life as an explanation, wherever organic chemistry is concerned.”
"Solely by a combination of time and ordinary affinities."
“In a word, in the order of organic synthesis, the essential point resides in the formation of the first from the elements, that is, in that of the carburets [hydrocarbons] of hydrogen and the alcohols; it is this which wipes out in principle all the lines of demarcation between mineral chemistry and organic chemistry. Thus synthesis extends its consequences form the elements up to the domain of the most complicated substances [human molecules] without our being able to assign any limit to the process. Among the organic compounds we know to how to make … up to those which exist in nature, such as the sugars and the nitrogenous principles of animal origin, we pass from one term to the other by insensible degrees, and we cannot see any absolute barrier or break which we may with any appearance of certitude fear to find unsurpassable. We can then affirm that organic chemistry is henceforth founded on the same base as mineral chemistry. In these two sciences, synthesis as well as analysis results from the same forces, applied to the same elements.”