[Ostwald on catalysis] Abstracts
volume 15, pages 705-706 (1894) [Reader's Note: Ostwald chose to state his theory of catalysis in the course of an abstract which he prepared for an article by F. Stohmann on the heats of combustion of foodstuffs. He disagreed with Stohmann's definition of catalysis and so devoted most of the abstract to a discussion of his own ideas.] After a historical introduction the author brings together the essential values for the heat of combustion of the most important ingredients of nutrients as determined by him and his students. Some general considerations of this are discussed in which the author points out in a praiseworthy manner the great significance of catalytic phenomena for physiology. After a summary of the views of different investigators on this problem, he formulates his own, in which he defines catalysis in the following way: "Catalysis is a condition of movement of the atoms in a molecule of a labile body which follows the entrance of the energy emitted from one body into another and leads to the formation of more stable bodies with loss of energy." The abstractor has several objections to make to this definition. First, the assumption of a "condition of movement of the atoms in a molecule " is hypothetical and therefore not suitable for purposes of definition. Also, that is plainly not a loss of energy. What is more, in describing characteristic conditions of catalysis, a loss of free energy can follow under conditions even of absolute energy uptake. | |
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