(with Seymour Mauskopft and William R. Newman) ‘An Introduction to Chemical Knowledge in the Early Modern World’, Osiris, 26 (2014), 1-15. (original) (raw)
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A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century covers the period from 1700 to 1815. Setting the history of science and technology in its cultural context, the volume questions the myth of a chemical revolution. Already boasting a laboratory culture open to both manufacturing and commerce, the discipline of chemistry now extended into academies and universities. Chemists studied myriad materials - derived from minerals, plants, and animals - and produced an increasing number of chemical substances such as acids, alkalis, and gases. New textbooks offered opportunities for classifying substances, rethinking old theories and elaborating new ones. By the end of the period – in Europe and across the globe - chemistry now embodied the promise of unifying practice and theory.
The General Science Journal, 2022
This work resumes the results of a bibliographic research on the Scientific Revolution in chemistry. Documents from the history of science and the history of chemistry have been used up to the middle of the 19th century, especially those relating to the 18th century. Lavoisier's Elementary Treatise on Chemistry has been used as the original document of 18th century chemistry. The results have been obtained by contrasting the opinions of the authors used and using the historiographical data provided in their works. A scheme was first outlined and then completed which attempts to represent the main milestones in the constitution of scientific chemistry. After a brief introduction to the Scientific Revolution, two major stages in the history of chemistry are considered: the era of pre-scientific chemistry up to the 16th century, and the constitution of scientific chemistry from that century onwards. The first stage includes a review of early chemical knowledge, Greek philosophy of matter, alchemy, industrial chemistry and iatrochemistry. The second stage coincides with the rise of scientific experimentation and includes the phlogiston revolution, the chemistry of gases, the chemistry of precise measurements that with Lavoisier already reaches the level of a true experimental and theoretical science, including the internationalization of the chemical nomenclature for a variety of chemical substances that will not stop growing. This stage culminates with the establishment of the first general laws of chemistry and the atomic theory of matter.
Substantia
When presented with a new multivolume series on the history of chemistry, one cannot help but compare it to J. R. Partington's masterful four-volume A History of Chemistry. The new six-volume A Cultural History of Chemistry reviewed here, however, is really a different beast and should not be viewed as a simple attempt to update Partington's previous series. As highlighted by series editors Peter Morris and Alan Rocke in the Series Preface that begins each volume, "This is not a conventional history of chemistry, but a first attempt at creating a cultural history of the science." As such, this series brings together 50 contributors in an effort to present the first detailed and authoritative survey of the impact of chemistry on society, as well as how society has influenced and impacted chemical practice and thought. Spanning from the earliest applications of the chemical arts in antiquity up through the present, this cultural history is split into six volumes, eac...
Ambix, 1983
Untersuchungen, ed. by Alwin Diemer (Studien zur Wissenschaftstheorie, 4) Meisenheim, 1970, pp. 76-89. 3. See also examples in Eberhard Schmauderer [ed.], Der Chemiker im Wandel der Zeiten. Skizzen zur geschichtlichen Entwicklung des Berufsbildes, Weinheim, 1973. 4. Joannes Beguinus, Tyrocinium Chymicum, commentario illustratum a Gerardo Blasio, 2nd ed., Amsterdam (1669), p. 2, with the editor's footnote: "Cum experientia practicae veritatem theoriae corroboret, unice verum Chymiatriae studiosum eo allaborandum esse censemus, ut manuali experientiae noctu diuque incumbat, quo tandem dulcissima hujus artis usura frui possit". 5. See Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry, Cambridge, 1958, esp. pp. 205-8, and more recently Elisabeth Ströker, Theoriewandel in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Chemie im 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/Main, 1982, pp. 33-42.
The Invention of Theoretische Chemie : Forms and Uses of German Chemistry Textbooks, 1775–1820
Ambix, 2007
The most significant outcome of an analysis of the German chemistry textbooks published between 1775 and 1820 was the emergence of the concept of theoretische Chemie. Rather than providing fundamental explanations for substances, affinities or reactions, theoretische Chemie ordered the available chemical facts. For the large group of university-based chemists who lacked technical facilities for experimental research, building these kinds of ordered systems proved an adequate way of contributing to chemistry. Furthermore, theoretische Chemie was important for the self-image of chemistry as a science by offering a framework for integrating new knowledge from various nonscientific fields of practice. In spite of this function, textbook authors discussed their very different ordered systems merely in terms of didactic appropriateness rather than in terms of scientific justification or correspondence with nature.