The element of the table: Visual discourse and the preperiodic representation of chemical classification

Configurations

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 41-75

  Cohen, Benjamin R ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750386037     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.2005.0001     Document Type: Review

References (150)

1. On the issue of visual cognition (refer here to the work of Barbara Stafford, notably Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994).
2. On the complex issue of nomenclature and language, in general, I refer to the work of Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1970).
3. With particular attention to chemistry, see Jan Golinski, "Chemistry in the Scientific Revolution: Problems of Language and Communication," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Lindberg and Robert Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 367-396;
4. Jan Golinski, idem, Science as Public Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
5. Jan Golinski, idem, "The Chemical Revolution and the Politics of Language," Eighteenth Century 33:3 (1992): 238-251.
6. And with even more particular attention to chemistry's tables, see Lissa Roberts, "Setting the Table: The Disciplinary Development of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as Read Through the Changing Structure of Its Tables," in The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument, ed. Peter Dear (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 99-132;
7. Lissa Roberts, idem, "Filling the Space of Possibilities: Chemistry's Transition from Art to Science in the Eighteenth Century," Science in Context 6 (1993): 511-553.
8. Ursula Klein has articulated the concept of the "paper tool," and it is from her that I extend the idea. See, in particular, Ursula Klein, "Paper Tools in Experimental Cultures," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 32:2 (2001): 265-302;
9. Ursula Klein, idem, "Berzelian Formulas as Paper Tools in Early Nineteenth-Century Chemistry," Foundations of Chemistry 3 (2001): 7-32;
10. idem, ed., Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences (Boston, Mass.: Kluwer, 2001);
11. idem, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
12. There is a growing body of literature in Science Studies that deals with visual representations in science as nonreducible to linguistics and as deserving of specific attention. Martin Rudwick, "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science, 1760-1840," History of Science 14 (1976): 149-195
13. is a seminal work in this regard. Some more recent works are Brian Baigrie, ed., Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992);
14. Steve Woolgar and Michael Lynch, eds., Representation in Scientific Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990);
15. Barbara Stafford, Artful Science (above, n. 1);
16. Barbara Stafford, idem, Good looking (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996);
17. Alex Soojung-Kim Park, "Visual Representation and Post-constructivist History of Science," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 28 (1997): 139-171;
18. and Klein, Tools and Modes of Representation (above, n. 1).
19. Interestingly, David Knight contributes an essay to Baigrie, Picturing Knowledge, which contends that the visual language of chemistry developed in the nineteenth century. Knight does not consider the table in his review of visual representations in chemistry, except to say that the trajectory of visualization in chemistry led from pictures and illustrations to tables and diagrams; the view I develop in this paper in part undermines the separation that Knight offers between a picture and a table: David Knight, "Illustrating Chemistry," in Picturing Knowledge, pp. 135-163.
20. In addition, recent philosophical literature clarifies and extends arguments made with the theory of symbols offered in Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1976)
21. by noting the differences between a linguistic visual representation - in which the sequence of letters, each of which has a shape that is arbitrarily defined, is the important factor - and a pictorial visual representation, where the arrangement in space of the elements is the important factor in making meaning. See Michael Ruse, "Are Pictures Really Necessary? The Case of Sewell Wright's 'Adaptive Landscapes,'" in Baigrie, Picturing Knowledge, pp. 303-337;
22. Laura Perini, "Explanation in Two Dimensions: Diagrams and Biological Explanations," Biology and Philosophy (forthcoming);
23. Laura Perini, idem, "Visual Representations and Evidence: Why Do Scientists Use Figures to Defend Their Hypotheses?" (unpublished manuscript).
24. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 35.
25. Michel Foucault also observes the dual temporal direction of the table, in that with any extant classificatory table, where knowledge from the past is compiled, there are "black squares left to accommodate the invisible" (Foucault, Order of Things [above, n. 1], p. 136).
26. Nelson Goodman, writing on a theory of symbols, likewise echoes the sentiment when he writes that "if representing is a matter of classifying objects rather than that of imitating them, of characterizing rather than of copying, it is not a matter of passive reporting" (Goodman, Languages of Art [above, n. 2], p. 31). 1 need to note also that my discussion in the following is based on a study of table producers and of historically well-known chemical actors who used and responded to them - based on discussions of the tables that one finds in texts, memoirs, and journals - and not on lower-level practitioners who would come across such tables in daily use in schools or laboratories or lectures. I encourage and welcome more research into diaries, personal journals, and laboratory notebooks as a useful way to investigate the points 1 am making, or to study in a different way how the use of tables was aligned with daily laboratory practice. However, with overtures toward material practice and practical contexts, the present paper aims at furthering the conceptual and heuristic point about the role of the visual in the representation of classification.
27. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life (above, n. 3), p. 97.
28. Alistair Duncan, "Some Theoretical Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Tables of Affinity," Annals of Science 18 (1962): 177-194, 217-232;
29. Alistair Duncan, idem, "The Functions of Affinity Tables and Lavoisier's List of Elements," Ambix 17 (1970): 28-42;
30. Alistair Duncan, idem, Laws and Order in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
31. Lissa Roberts, "Setting the Table" (above, n. 1);
32. Lissa Roberts, idem, "Filling the Space of Possibilities" (above, n. 1);
33. Lissa Roberts, idem, "The Death of the Sensuous Chemist: The 'New' Chemistry and the Transformation of Sensuous Technology," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1995): 503-529.
34. Étienne-François Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports observés en Chimie entre différentes substances," Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences (1718): 202-212.
35. Geoffrey's was the first table of rapports, though not the first chemistry table to organize known substances. For predecessors to the eighteenth-century tables see John Christie and Jan Golinski, "The Spreading of the Word: New Directions in the Historiography of Chemistry 1600-1800," History of Science 20 (1982): 235-266.
36. By writing about collecting (a reference to knowledge already available) and directing (an intimation of where to go in the future) my phrasing sounds much like that used in a current debate about the reception of the periodic table of the elements. For this debate, see Stephen Brush, "The Reception of Mendeleev's Law in America and Britain," Isis 87 (1996): 595-628;
37. Eric Scerri, "Stephen Brush, the Periodic Table, and the Nature of Chemistry," Die Sprache der Chemie (1996): 169-176;
38. Eric Scerri and John Worrall, "Prediction and the Periodic Table," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 32 (2001): 407-452. The question debated by Brush and Scerri is whether the reception of the Mendeleevian periodic law after 1869 (and its ever-present representation in the periodic table) can be explained more accurately by crediting the law's accommodative or its predictive abilities. My view of chemistry tables differs from the sense deployed in the Brush and Scerri articles in two important ways: first, I am more interested in the use of the table in the practice of chemistry, rather than the question of theoretical viability; and second, 1 focus on the history of the chemistry table that precedes the introduction of the periodic table by well over a century. Developing the practical context of chemistry tables for the 150 years preceding the periodic table may shed light on Brush's and Scerri's broader arguments about accommodating or predicting chemical knowledge, but forcing that point is a subordinate goal of my work.
39. It is important to clarify that my purpose is to explicate the organizational table's role as a functional visual representation. My focus is not on the particular theoretical or metaphysical issues embedded within the compilation, presentation, and use of the tables, but on the fact that there are compilations, presentations, and uses of tables. 1 use historical examples and introduce philosophical questions only for the purpose of informing the points about the utility of those representative tools. The historical issues embedded within this paper are related mostly to the innovations of chemists over the years developing new forms of tabular representation to assist in their practices. My use of historical exemplars, however, is not meant for the purpose of producing a strict, progressive narrative; instead, it is for the sake of identifying common features of chemical practice in transhistorical contexts. Because of this, philosophical issues come into play as well - such as the role of the visual representation in knowledge-making, the differences between serial linguistic and spatial graphic representations, and the philosophy of praxis necessary to place the table inside the everyday activity of chemists. The two sets of issues, historical and philosophical, are not distinct from one another. For example, the philosophy of praxis - the use-value of the tables in practical settings - is a consistent element of the different tables, even though the circumstances surrounding those tables' developments differ markedly. Let me note as well that the episodic presentation of each table is not meant to infer a pseudo-genetic relationship from one table to the next - as might be the goal were my argument predicated on producing a historically progressive story - but rather to maintain a sense of clarity in presentation.
40. Geoffroy's table has been the subject of many historical treatments. See Duncan, "Some Theoretical Aspects" (above, n. 6);
41. Duncan, idem, Laws and Order (above, n. 6);
42. Frederic Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley: University of California Office for History of Science and Technology, 1989);
43. Frederic Holmes, idem, "The Communal Context for étienne-François Geoffroy's 'Table des Rapports,'" Science in Context 9 (1996): 289-311;
44. Ursula Klein, "E. F. Geoffroy's Table of Different 'Rapports' Observed between Different Chemical Substances - A Reinterpretation," Ambix 42 (1995): 79-100;
45. Ursula Klein, idem, "The Chemical Workshop Tradition and Experimental Practice: Discontinuities within Continuities," Science in Context 9 (1996): 251-287;
46. Roberts, "Setting the Table" (above, n. 1);
47. William Smeaton, "Geoffroy Was Not a Newtonian Chemist," Ambix 18 (1971): 212-214;
48. Stephen Weininger, "Contemplating the Finger: Visuality and the Semiotics of Chemistry," Hyle 4 (1998): 3-27.1 reference this historical work to discuss the use of the table, while leaving unattended other issues of debate concerning the overriding context of the introduction of the table to the Paris Academy of Sciences.
49. Holmes, "Communal Context" (above, n. 11), p. 308.
50. Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports" (above, n. 8), p. 203.
51. See Klein, "Communal Context" (above, n. 11)
52. for an extended discussion of the experimental basis for the order of the substances in the table. Note also that the table was neither exhaustive nor definitive - that is, as Duncan has observed in "Functions of Affinity Tables" (above, n. 6) the header substances were not an exhaustive list of all known substances at the time.
53. Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports" (above, n. 8), p. 203.
54. There has been considerable discussion in the literature over the meaning of "rapports," and whether or to what degree the affinity of the substances was set within a Newtonian attraction theory. Here, I interpret "rapport" in the sense of "relationship." See Smeaton, "Geoffroy" (above, n. 11);
55. Holmes, "Communal Context" (above, n. 11);
56. Klein, "Chemical Workshop Tradition" (above, n. 11), for more insight on the issue.
57. Trevor Levere states outright that "affinity tables were above all useful, in providing a summary of existing knowledge as well as a tool for predicting new reactions" (Trevor Levere, Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001], p. 48).
58. Geoffroy, "Table des differents rapports" (above, n. 8), p. 203.
59. Geoffroy, "Table des differents rapports" Ibid., pp. 210-212.
60. See Klein, "Chemical Workshop Tradition" (above, n. 11).
61. Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports" (above, n. 8), p. 203.
62. Wilda Andersen, Between the Library and the Laboratory: The Language of Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 61.
63. Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports" (above, n. 8), p. 203.
64. For the operational chemical-practitioner context see Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (above, n. 11);
65. Klein, "Chemical Workshop Tradition" (above, n. 11).
66. For the didactic and rhetorical context, see Owen Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975);
67. Christie and Golinski, "Spreading of the Word" (above, n. 8);
68. Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory (above, n. 21);
69. Christopher Ritter, "Re-presenting Science: Visual and Didactic Practice in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2001).
70. Perhaps this possible ambiguity stems more from the typically used theoretical association of prediction than from the practical component that I am stressing. In that case, the problem is historiographic and not rhetorical.
71. Torbern Bergman, An Essay on the Usefulness of Chemistry, and Its Application to the Various Occasions of Life (London: Murray, 1783).
72. See Duncan, Laws and Order (above, n. 6), pp. 110-170.
73. To be sure, Geoffroy indicated that such a consideration was at play in some of his results: "The theory of this operation [to precipitate corrosive sublimate] is the same as that of the preceding one; here it was carried out in solution - there, in the dry materials" (Geoffroy, "Table des différents rapports" [above, n. 8], p. 211).
74. See Torbern Bergman, "Disquisitio de attractlonibus electivis," Nova Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum Upsaliensis 2 ([1775] 1968): 161-250
75. trans. J. A. Schuffle, Dissertation on Elective Attractions. This is a reprint of the first edition of Bergman's dissertation.
76. The preceding paragraph owes much to William Smeaton, "Bergman, Torbern Olof," in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 2, ed. Charles Gillespie (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1980), pp. 4-8.
77. Torbern Bergman, A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, trans. unknown, 3rd ed. (London: Murray, 1785).
78. Interested readers should consult Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (above, n. 11), p. 58, for a reproduction of Bergman's 1775 table, as the reprint provides a nice visual impression of the growth and expansiveness of the table.
79. See note 11, above, for discussion of the possible Newtonian context of "affinity." In Nicholson's dictionary of 1795, the entry under "Affinity" says "SEE Elective Attraction" (William Nicholson, A Dictionary of Chemistry [London: Robinson, 1795], p. 171);
80. compare this to Macquer's earlier dictionary, where he describes "chemical characters" as those "used by many authors, and in tables of affinities" (Pierre Macquer, A Dictionary of Chemistry, English trans. [London: Cadell and Elmsly, 1771], p. 154).
81. Also see Mi Gyung Kim, "The Layers of Chemical Language I [and II]: Stabilizing Atoms and Molecules in the Practice of Organic Chemistry," History of Science 30 (1992): 69-96, 397-437
82. for a discussion of the fading role of affinity in classification schemes; and, more thoroughly and recently, Mi Gyung Kim, idem, Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).
83. Bergman, Dissertation on Elective Attractions (above, n. 28), p. v.
84. Duncan says that Thomas Beddoes was the anonymous translator: Duncan, Laws and Order (above, n. 6), p. 172.
85. Crosland claims that the translator was "probably J. Beddoes" (Maurice Crosland, Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962], p. 243).
86. Crosland makes a similar observation when discussing the debates over whether or not to use alchemical symbols in the eighteenth-century era when chemists were criticizing the use of such anachronistic (some would say, nonscientific) symbols. He notes that those critics still presented the symbols with explanations, "so that (they said) when the reader came across them in other works he might better understand them" (Crosland, Historical Studies [above, n. 30], p. 242).
87. Bergman, Essay on the Usefulness of Chemistry (above, n. 25), pp. 10, 15.
88. Nicholson, Dictionary of Chemistry (above, n. 29), pp. 251-252.
89. 0 Sentences," Philosophy 75 (2000): 377-381, for one view on the issue of efficiency, explanation, and the nonreducibility of spatial to linguistic representations.
90. Kim, Affinity (above, n. 29), p. 267. Kim goes on to explain that the same attempt to present the "sum total of chemical knowledge in an all-encompassing table" made evident the apparent flaws in such a unified paradigm. Those flaws were clearly visible with "the limit of such a representational format," even though efforts to improve the system - in part, with nomenclature reform - still sought "a systematic ordering and prediction of chemical actions" (pp. 267-268).
91. Despite the fullness of those works, Bergman believed that his "slight sketch will require 30,000 exact experiments to be brought to any degree of perfection" (Bergman, Dissertation on Elective Attractions [above, n. 28], p. 70). He hoped to do this himself, but, as he said, "the shortness of life" always gets in the way (ibid.).
92. Lissa Roberts comments that "the Brilliance of his symbolic depiction was that in contrast to discursive language, which described chemical activity step by step (unable to portray simultaneity of occurrence), it captured the whole of a given operation within the confines of its symbolic borders, mirroring the instrumental confines of the laboratory . . . and making the entire process observable at a glance" (Roberts, "Filling the Space of Possibilities" [above, n. 1], p. 528).
93. Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Hugues Maret, and Jean Durande, Élémens de chymie théorique et pratique (Dijon, 1777), p. 91
94. as quoted in Roberts, "Setting the Table" (above, n. 1), p. 116.
95. Also, see Ritter, "Re-presenting Science" (above, n. 23), pp. 34-53, for a discussion of Hassenfratz and Adet's contribution of graphical characters to the new nomenclature of Guyton et al.
96. See Crosland, Historical Studies (above, n. 30), pp. 144-152.
97. Note that Bergman died in 1784. Crosland gives details of Bergman's role in the reform of nomenclature. The French chemists of this era have received a great deal of attention; in fact, earlier historiographic overtures toward chemical history used the concept of a chemical revolution as a common area of focus. See Arthur Donovan, ed., "The Chemical Revolution: Essays in Reinterpretation," Osiris, 2nd ser., 4 (1988): 5-231, for more on this subject.
98. Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, "Sur les dénominations chymiques," Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts et metiers 19 (1782): 370-382;
99. Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Antoine François Fourcroy, and Claude Berthollet, Method of Chymical Nomenclature proposed by Messrs. de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet, and de Fourcroy; to which is added A New System of Chymical Characters, adapted to the Nomenclature, by Mess. Hassenfratz and Adet [1787], trans. James St. John (London: Kearsley, 1788);
100. Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry [1789], trans. Robert Kerr (Edinburgh, 1790).
101. The complex association of nature, language, and knowledge that was bound up in the pursuits of these chemists (and their mentors before them) has been the subject of numerous studies. See William Albury, "The Logic of Condillac and the Structure of French Chemical Theory, 1780-1801" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1972);
102. Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory (above, n. 21);
103. William Brock, The Norton History of Chemistry (New York: Norton, 1992), pp. 116-126;
104. Lissa Roberts, "Condillac, Lavoisier, and the Instrumentalization of Science," Eighteenth Century 33 (1992): 252-271;
105. Trevor Levere, "Lavoisier: Language, Instruments, and the Chemical Revolution," in Nature, Experiment, and the Sciences, ed. Trevor Levere and William Shea (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 207-233.
106. Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (above, n. 11), provides a concise review of many of these interpretations.
107. Roberts notes that Guyton's 1782 table differed little in the context of discursive structure from earlier organizational attempts, while the 1787 table challenged not only the names of substances but the entire disciplinary structure of chemistry: Roberts, "Setting the Table" (above, n. 1), pp. 119-122.
108. This correspondence has been discussed in greater length and detail in Seymour Mauskopf, "Richard Kirwan's Phlogiston Theory: Its Success and Fate," Ambix 49 (2002): 185-205.1 thank Professor Mauskopf for discussing an earlier version of his paper with me.
109. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers reference another instance of the use of a table in a theoretical argument, noting that Berthollet was able to draw "a radical conclusion [that] the direction of a reaction was not an absolute, determined by the elective tendencies of the bodies present," by using Bergman's tables (Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers, A History of Chemistry [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996], p. 72).
110. Richard Kirwan and Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, A Scientific Correspondence During the Chemical Revolution: Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Richard Kirwan, 1782-1802 [1788], Berkeley Papers in the History of Science, 17, ed. Emmanuel Grison, Michelle Goupil, and Patrice Bret (Berkeley, Calif.: Office for the History of Science and Technology, 1994), p. 44 (emphasis added).
111. Richard Kirwan and Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, A Scientific Correspondence During the Chemical Revolution: Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Richard Kirwan, 1782-1802 [1788], Ibid., p. 198.
112. Mauskopf, "Kirwan's Phlogiston Theory" (above, n. 43), pp. 198, 202.
113. Crosland discusses the relative successes and failures of the actual common use of these new symbols, noting in particular that, though favored by the four authors of the new nomenclature, they did not become commonly deployed (thus perhaps explaining why they are not well known, or at least discussed, anymore). He suggests that typographical issues lay at the root of the problem, since Hassenfratz and Adet's symbols were not easily reproduced: Crosland, Historical Studies (above, n. 30), pp. 247-252.
114. Hassenfratz and Adet in Guyton de Morveau et al., Method (above, n. 40), p. 192.
115. Ibid. Their "memoir" is included as a portion (pp. 191-214) of Guyton de Morveau et al., Method (above, n. 40).
116. Guyton de Morveau et al., Method, Ibid., pp. 195, 197.
117. Ritter, "Re-presenting Science" (above, n. 23), p. 47.
118. Guyton de Morveau et al., Method (above, n. 40), p. 236.
119. Roberts, "Setting the Table" (above, n. 1), p. 115.
120. Guyton de Morveau et al., Method (above, n. 40), p. 12.
121. Guyton de Morveau, Maret, and Durande, Élémens (above, n. 38), p. 89.
122. Stephen Weininger, in his analysis of visualization in chemistry, has noted the same function in that "the categories of what could possibly be known have already been prefigured by the nomenclature" (Weininger, "Contemplating the Finger" [above, n. 11], p. 12).
123. Guyton de Morveau et al., Method (above, n. 40), p. 9.
124. Weininger, "Contemplating the Finger" (above, n. 11), p. 8.
125. Dal ton's 1808 form of presentation was the first of its kind. A mere seven years later, though, six more chemists had published their own tables in similar formats, indicating the credibility quickly gained by such a system of ordering. See Alan Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), pp. 80-82.
126. Dalton was a devoted visual scientist, leaning often on the explanatory power of the graphical and pictorial over the linguistic. In fact, a recent interpreter has considered that "visual practice was important, perhaps crucial to Dalton's chemistry" (Ritter, "Re-presenting Science" [above, n. 23], p. 69).
127. In addition, see also Crosland, Historical Studies (above, n. 30), pp. 256-264;
128. Arnold Thackray, John Dalton: Critical Assessments of His Life and Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).
129. John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, part 1 (London: Bickerstaff, 1808), p. 219, and part 2 (London: Bickerstaff, 1810), p. 546.
130. Note here that the table's role is not facilitated by its own visuality - one of my main arguments in the other cases - except insofar as it is used in conjunction with the figures. This tandem presentation complicates the nature of the visual representation that I have been careful to keep disentangled in previous examples: before, the table itself could be treated as a visual representation, not just the symbols inside it; now, there are clearly different and complementary symbol systems to consider. As I note below, the periodic table does demonstrate both tasks - the dual role and the visual facilitation of that role - on its own.
131. Dalton, New System (above, no. 61), part 1, p. 220.
132. Klein, "Beizelian Formulas" (above, n. 1), p. 20.
133. Ursula Klein, "The Creative Power of Paper Tools in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry," in idem, Tools and Modes of Representation (above, n. 1), pp. 13-34, on p. 15.
134. The complete explication of how a "paper tool" fits into the larger category of tools in general is beyond the scope of the present paper. In brief, though, a sufficient philosophy of technology on this count would have to address the structuring and informing presence of any tool as well as the extent to which practitioners are constrained by those tools - be they paper tools, hammers, institutions, or texts. I thank an anonymous reviewer for noting the larger issues at stake when utilizing Klein's paper-tool concept. For further commentary on these questions, see Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools (above, n. 1).
135. See Klein, Tools and Modes of Representation (above, n. 1).
136. Ritter has in fact discussed Dalton in the context of paper tools, noting as well that typographical limitations go far in explaining why his figures were not manipulated in any widespread fashion: see Christopher Ritter, "An Early History of Alexander Crum Brown's Graphical Formulas," in Klein, Tools and Modes of Representation (above, n. 1), pp. 35-46.
137. Scerri discusses the table as a paper tool, a point to which I return soon: see Eric Scerri, "The Periodic Table: The Ultimate Paper Tool in Chemistry," Tools and Modes of Representation, ibid., pp. 163-177.
138. John Dalton, "Lecture 17 - Chemical Elements," in Henry Roscoe and Arthur Harden, A New View of the Origin of Dalton's Atomic Theory (1896; London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 14. The lecture was given on 27 January 1810.
139. Ibid.
140. By this I hope to avoid the reduction of either the paper tool or the chemistry-table-as-visual-representation to only a semiotic or signification characterization or only an instrumental one.
141. Eric Scerri considers the periodic table "The Ultimate Paper Tool" (above, n. 67).
142. However, the periodic table's function as a paper tool is not far different from the role of preperiodic tables and schemes of organization, and thus I would not consider it ultimate. The basic distinction I would make between Scerri's discussion of paper tools and my own is that Scerri treats them as theoretical tools (see Eric Scerri "The Ultimate Paper Tool" ibid., pp. 163-166), whereas I emphasize their role as (not necessarily atheoretical) elements of and for practice.
143. One area of inquiry that touches on these issues is the study of textbooks in the history of science. For good entry points into this area, relating specifically to chemical textbooks, see Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, "A View of the Chemical Revolution through Contemporary Textbooks: Lavoisier, Fourcroy and Chaptal," British Journal of the History of Science 23 (1990): 435-460;
144. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Anders Lundgren, eds., Communicating Chemistry: Textbooks and Their Audiences, 1789-1939 (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2000).
145. Andersen, Between the Library and the Laboratory (above, n. 21), p. 4.
146. Andersen, Between the Library and the Laboratory, Ibid., p. 51.
147. Foucault, Order of Things (above, n. 1), p. 131.
148. Foucault, Order of Things, Ibid.
149. Stafford, Artful Science (above, n. 1), p. 238.
150. See note 9.