![]() Such reduction does not destroy its charm but adds understanding to sensation,Īnd this understanding only deepens our delight. With the ever-astonishing power of human reason (as potent then as now) - toĭiscover this reduction of the world to its components, the chemical elements. Of the early chemists - with the crude experimental techniques available also Linked, as letters are linked to form a literature. Yet all this wonder springs fromĪbout one hundred components that are strung together, mixed, compacted, and Wonder is multiplied almost beyond imagination. Add to that the ingredient of life, and the The real world is a jumble of awesome complexity and immeasureable charm.Įven the inanimate, inorganic world of rocks and stone, rivers and ocean, airĪnd wind is a boundless wonder. By being in the middle, undemanding and not particularly generous, it can spin lasting alliances rather than hasty conspiracies. If it were more avid for electrons, it would soon satisfy its tendency to bond and would lack the opportunity for subtle conspiracy with others. Were it readier to give up its electrons, it would do so at the demand of another atom, and then find that it had not retained sufficient electrons to bind other atoms in a precise disposition. Moreover, it is even content with its own company, and can make extensive liaisons with itself, forming chains, rings, and trees of atoms. Carbon is mild in its demands on the alliances it makes. Sitting as it does in the middle of the northern coast, it is neither an aggressive shedder of electrons, as are elements to the left, nor is it an avid receiver, like the atoms to its right. The essential reason for this latent power of a single region is, as noted, carbon’s intrinsic mediocrity, its lack of self-assertion. One concerns the overarching power of carbon to participate in molecule formation, a power that results in such complexity of structure and collaboration that the alliances it forms become alive and can reflect upon themselves. There are several points we need to tie up before leaving this aspect of alliances in the kingdom. Into the Land of the Chemical Elements (1995) Immediately south of nitrogen is phosphorus, which was first isolated by theĭistillation and treatment of urine - an indication of the lengths to whichĬhemists are prepared to go, or perhaps only a sign of the obsessive, The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is
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