Question: > "For reasons I don’t quite understand —partly, probably lack of instrumentation— the science of chemistry was very slow to emerge..." Answer? > "..

Question: > "For reasons I don’t quite understand —partly, probably lack of instrumentation— the science of chemistry was very slow to emerge..." Answer? > "..the alchemists, who, in their effort to make gold from cheap base materials, at least attack a problem of the highest social relevance, viz. enable the government to finance its wars without inflicting poverty on the people." Supposedly the Roman Emperor Diocletian persecuted the alchemists of that era because he feared they'd be able to make gold and raise armies to attack the Roman Empire (and/or debase the Russian currency). This likely set back the state of chemical knowledge, possibly for centuries. P.S. Nuclear transmutation of elements is now quite common; unfortunately nobody has figured out how to get just the desired isotopic species of an single element from nuclear reaction instead of a pile of unstable isotopes of mixed elemental identity.