daltonian

Updated: June 4, 2025

From this assumption, and the Daltonian conception of the atom, it follows that the quantities by weight of one element which are found to unite with one and the same weight of another element must always be expressible as whole multiples of one number.

M. M. Pattison (Matthew Moncrieff Pattison) Muir - The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

Every one appears always to maintain its unique integrity, gaining nothing and losing nothing. All this being true, it would seem as if the position of the Daltonian atom as a primordial bit of matter, indestructible and non-transmutable, had been put to the test by the chemistry of our century, and not found wanting.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 4

The solution of the problem of respiration will remind us that Anaxagoras half guessed the secret; and in those diversified studies which tell us of the Daltonian atom in its wonderful transmutations, we shall be reminded again of the Clazomenian philosopher and his successor Democritus.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 4

Thus Wollaston, though from the first he inclined to acceptance of the Daltonian view, cautiously suggested that it would be well to use the non-committal word "equivalent" instead of "atom"; and Davy, for a similar reason, in his book of 1812, speaks only of "proportions," binding himself to no theory as to what might be the nature of these proportions.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 4

Again, the laws of the effect of pressure and heat on gaseous bodies, the fact that they combine in definite proportions by volume, and that such proportion bears a simple relation to their combining weights, all harmonised with the Daltonian hypothesis, and led to the bold speculation known as the law of Avogadro that all gaseous bodies, under the same physical conditions, contain the same number of units.

Thomas Henry Huxley - The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century

His ultimate mixable particles can be compared only with the Daltonian atom, not with the molecule of the modern physicist, and his "infinite, self-powerful, and unmixable" particles are not comparable with anything but the ether of the modern physicist, with which hypothetical substance they have many points of resemblance.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

More and more general becomes the belief that the Daltonian atom is really a compound radical, and that back of the seeming diversity of the alleged elements is a single form of primordial matter. Indeed, in very recent months, direct experimental evidence for this view has at last come to hand, through the study of radio-active substances.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 4

The dense, the moist, the cold, the dark are contrasted with the rare, the warm, the dry, and bright; and the formation of stones is spoken of as a specific condensation due to the influence of cold. Here, then, we have nearly all the elements of the Daltonian theory of atoms on the one hand, and the nebular hypothesis of Laplace on the other. But this is not quite all.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

But the Daltonian hypothesis conceived, and nearly all the experimental efforts of the nineteenth century seemed to prove, that there are numerous classes of atoms, each differing in its very essence from the others. As the case stands to-day the chemist deals with seventy-odd substances, which he calls elements.

Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science — Volume 1

Even the atom is suspect and the claims of the elements to be elementary are rejected wholesale with something as closely resembling scorn as the scientist is ever able to attain. A scientific writer has recently said "What is undeniable is that the Daltonian atom has within a century of its acceptance as a fundamental reality suffered disruption.

Friedrich Engels - Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: "Anti-Duehring"