| In affinity chemistry, Bergman’s affinity reaction diagrams are a set of 64 affinity reactions, diagrammed in the Cullen reaction diagram style, of various wet and dry reactions, as published in Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman’s 1775 chemistry textbook A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, table I, as shown below (2625x1698px). Bergman's reaction diagrams are themselves derived from Cullen's reaction diagrams, both of which are precursors to modern chemical equations. Of note these 64 reactions served as the theoretical basis to the 36 human chemical reactions presented in German writer Johann Goethe's 1809 Elective Affinities. [2] |
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| Table I from Torbern Bergman's A Dissertation on Elective Attractions. |
| 1. Bergman, Torbern. (1775). A Dissertation on Elective Attractions. London: Frank Cass & Co. 2. (a) Adler, Jeremy. (1987). “Eine fast magische Anziehungskraft”. Goethe’s “Wahlverwandtschafte” und die Chemie seiner Zeit (“An almost Magical Attraction”). Goethe’s Elective Affinity and the Chemistry of its Time), Munich. (b) Adler, Jeremy. (1990). "Goethe's use of chemical theory in his Elective Affinities" (ch. 18, pgs. 263-79) in Romanticism and the Sciences - edited by Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, New York: Cambridge University Press. (c) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (preview), (ch. 10: Goethe’s Affinities, pgs. 371-421; ch. 16: Human Thermodynamics, section: History, pgs. 665-74). Morrisville, NC: LuLu. |
