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( Mineralogy)
Mineralogy is an Earth Science focused around the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization. Early speculation, study, and theory of mineralogy was written of in ancient Babylonia, the ancient Greco-Roman world, ancient and medieval China, and noted in the prana of Sanskrit texts from ancient India.[1] They included the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder which not only described many different minerals but also explained many of their properties. Systematic scientific studies of minerals and rocks developed in post-Renaissance Europe.[2] The credible study of mineralogy was founded on the principles of crystallography and microscopic study of rock sections with the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.[2] The ancient Greek writers Aristotle (384–322 BC) and Theophrastus (370-285 BC) were the first in the Western tradition to write of minerals and their properties, as well as metaphysical explanations for them. The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote his Meteorologica, and in it theorized that all the known substances were composed of water, air, earth, and fire, with the properties of dryness, dampness, heat, and cold.[3] The Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus wrote his De Mineralibus, which accepted Aristotle's view, and divided minerals into two categories those affected by heat and those affected by dampness.[3] The metaphysical emanation and exhalation (anathumiaseis) theory of the Greek philosopher Aristotle included early speculation on earth sciences including mineralogy. According to his theory, while metals were supposed to be congealed by means of moist exhalation, dry gaseous exhalation (pneumatodestera) was the efficient material cause of minerals found in the earth's soil.[4] He postulated these ideas by using the examples of moisture on the surface of the earth (a moist vapor 'potentially like water'), while the other was from the earth itself, pertaining to the attributes of hot, dry, smoky, and highly combustible ('potentially like fire').[4] Aristotle's metaphysical theory from times of antiquity had wide-ranging influence on similar theory found in later medieval Europe, as the historian Berthelot notes
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