Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1008/en

in the consciousness of the human being, through perception and concept, into a sum of properties. Their delimitation and assignment to this or that substance is the research concern of physics. Their constellation is such that each substance-element has a specific affinity to other substances. They can react with one another. When this occurs, the starting substances vanish from the field of view and, as a synthesis, a new substance arises — with surprisingly new properties. Beginning and end are connected by a discontinuous event. For example, hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) are gases. Their affinity to one another is so immense that they react in an explosive manner. They vanish, and water steps forth — the substance richest in properties, the foundation of all life. A leap takes place from a less densely to a more densely condensed state of aggregation. When water is subjected to electrolysis under expenditure of energy, the starting elements re-emerge as gases. In the transition from the gaseous to the liquid state — as indeed in every reaction between substances — the factor of time enters the picture. A process is accomplished. This processual activity in the world of substances is pre-eminently the concern of chemistry. It can be followed empirically in its reactive accompanying phenomena, yet as such it withdraws from perceptibility. In the chemical process, forces are at work that are laid down in the being of the substance and its properties. The forces in motion during the process rest, before the start and at the end of the reaction, in a state of stillness — congealed into form. In the form, the substance becomes sense-perceptible and, in its physical properties of measurability, countability and weighability, calculable.