Editing Base (chemistry) (section)

==Etymology of the term==
The concept of base stems from an older [[alchemical]] notion of "the matrix":

{{Blockquote|The term "base" appears to have been first used in 1717 by the French chemist, [[Louis Lémery]], as a synonym for the older [[Paracelsus|Paracelsian]] term "matrix." In keeping with 16th-century [[animism]], Paracelsus had postulated that naturally occurring salts grew within the earth as a result of a universal acid or seminal principle having impregnated an earthy matrix or womb. ... Its modern meaning and general introduction into the chemical vocabulary, however, is usually attributed to the French chemist, [[Guillaume-François Rouelle]]. ... In 1754 Rouelle explicitly defined a neutral salt as the product formed by the union of an acid with any substance, be it a water-soluble alkali, a volatile alkali, an absorbent earth, a metal, or an oil, capable of serving as "a base" for the salt "by giving it a concrete or solid form." Most acids known in the 18th century were volatile liquids or "spirits" capable of distillation, whereas salts, by their very nature, were crystalline solids. Hence it was the substance that neutralized the acid which supposedly destroyed the volatility or spirit of the acid and which imparted the property of solidity (i.e., gave a concrete base) to the resulting salt. |[[William B. Jensen]]|The origin of the term "base"<ref name="Jensen">{{cite journal|author1-link=William B. Jensen |author=Jensen, William B. |title=The origin of the term 'base' |journal=The Journal of Chemical Education |year=2006 |volume=83 |page=1130 |url=http://www.che.uc.edu/Jensen/W.%20B.%20Jensen/Reprints/129.%20Base.pdf |issue=8 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304023719/http://www.che.uc.edu/Jensen/W.%20B.%20Jensen/Reprints/129.%20Base.pdf |archive-date=4 March 2016 |df=dmy |bibcode=2006JChEd..83.1130J |doi=10.1021/ed083p1130 }}</ref>}}