"It can be argued that man has practised chemistry from the time he learned to control fire."
Chemistry first started in the paleolithic period (2 million - 10,000 years ago) with the dicovery of fire. Later, during the neolithic period (8000 B.C. to around 1500 B.C.) chemical processes had advanced to the use of fire to smelt metals, pottery making, beer and wine production as well as making glass and dying textiles.
It was not until the 6th Century, with the Greeks, that people started to formulate theories with regards to chemistry. Thales of Miletus first proprosed the idea of an element or primary sumbstance that everything was made up of and this was water. Anaximines of Miletus took it furthur but using air as the primary substance. He claimed that it could be transformed to other substances through thinning (into fire), and thinkening (into clounds, wind rain, earth).
Empodocles of Agrigentum (c.495 - 435 B.C.) saw fire, earth, air and water to be the elements that could undergo change through the loss or gain of properties through actions of the opposing forces of Love and Strife. Anbaxagoras of Clazamenae had the idea of "seeds" of substances that occured naturally. Somethink like bread would contain mostly seeds of bread but contains the seeds of hair and flesh that could be seperated by processes such as digestion.
Also available were the views of the Atomists whgo believed the universe was made up of atoms moving in a void. It was Democritus of Abdera (c.460 - 370 B.C.) who first proposed this.
Plato adopted the idea of the four elements and added a fith element associated with the heveans. Aristotle took this furthur naming the element ether and described it as the perfect element of the heavens. This was the view that held.
During the middle ages, chemistry still developed, but only in the context of the equiment used. This was due to the growth of medicine and alchemy. In particular the art of distillation was refined, making more substances available. By the late 18th Century technology had advanced to include such equipment as cruicibles, flasks, tongs and balances accurate to 0.1 mg.
In both the 17th and 18th centuries chemistry undertook a "revamp" of it's ideas and theories. This was started mainly by the philosophical thoughts of Francis Bacon who strongly rejected Aristotle's views regarding the five elements. The ideas of Atoms was adopted largely due to the work on physical matter (inparticular, gases) by scientists such as Boyle and Newton. Knowledge of acids and salts was also expanded. This is the era that started "modern chemistry" as a formal discipline.
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