The chemists' style of thinking

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 365-378

  Bensaude Vincent, Bernadette ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS OUEST NANTERRE LA DÉFENSE   (France)

Author keywords

Alchemy; Atomism; Elements; Epistemology; Experiment; Laboratory; Operationalism; Style of thinking

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATTENTION; CHEMISTRY; HISTORY; HUMAN; INTELLIGENCE; KNOWLEDGE; LABORATORY; SCIENCE; THINKING;

ATTENTION; CHEMISTRY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 21ST CENTURY; HUMANS; INTELLIGENCE; KNOWLEDGE; LABORATORIES; SCIENCE; THINKING;

EID: 71249112420     PISSN: 01706233     EISSN: 15222365     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/bewi.200901385     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. One of the earliest historians of chemistry, Hermann Kopp (1817-1892), already pointed out the issue of the identity of the discipline he belonged to. In pointing out the changes in methods and goals over time he tried to debunk the illusion of an a-historical essence of chemistry. Hermann Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Brunswick: F. Vieweg und Sohn 1843-47, vol. I, p. 4-5.
2. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Isabelle Stengers, A History of Chemistry, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1996, p. 3-8.
3. Alistair Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition, London: Gerald Duckworth 1994, Vol. 1, p. 3.
4. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking (see note 3), p. 7.
5. Ludwik Fleck, Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache: Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv, Basel: Schwabe m 1979.
6. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking (see note 3), p. x-xi.
7. I take the phrase investigative pathway from Frederic Larry Holmes. Although Holmes used it for understanding the personal trajectories of individual scientists, I want to extend the metaphor of the pathway to emphasize the trails that lead historical development in science in one direction rather than in any other. (Holmes Frederic L., Investigative pathways. Patterns and stages in the careers of experimental scientists, New Haven: Yale University Press 2004.)
8. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking, (see note 3), p. xi.
9. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking, (see note 3), p. 6.
10. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking, (see note 3), p. 7.
11. See in particular Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, Boston: Zone Books 2007.
12. Ian Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers, Historical Ontology, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2002, pp. 178-199.
13. Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers (see note 12), p. 188
14. Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers (see note 12), p. 192
15. Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers (see note 12), p. 193-194
16. See the outline of his Course at the Collège de France in 2002-2003 and the full text of his final lecture on May 9, 2006. http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/historique/ian_hacking.ht m
17. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking (see note 3), p. 425.
18. The chemical revolution is mentioned only once (p. 527) and Crombie explained the overthrow of phlogiston as well as the acceptance of Dalton's atom by the superiority of theories based on measurement.
19. Holmes Frederic L., La chimica nell'eta dei Lumi, in: Storia delle scienze Natura e Vita, vol. 3, Dall'Antichita all'illuminismo, Torino: Giulio Einaudi 1993, p. 478-525.
20. cit. p. 478. For a more detailed description of the chemical laboratory see
21. B. Bensaude-Vincent &Jonathan Simon, Chemistry, the Impure Science, London: Imperial College Press 2008, pp. 55-80.
22. See Hélène Metzger, La Chimie. Chapter 2 Le laboratoire au XVIIe siècle, in: M.E. Cavaignac ed., Histoire du monde, vol. XIIII, 4th part, Paris: E. Boccard 1930, pp. 11-17.
23. Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefevre, Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2007. The similarity of the subtitle A Historical Ontology with the title of Hacking's 2002 volume where he discusses the notion of style of scientific reasoning may not be a mere coincidence.
24. Joachim Schummer, Scientometric studies on chemistry I: The exponential growth of chemical substances, 1800-1995, Scientometrics 39 (1995), 107-123.
25. Scientometric studies on chemistry II: Aims and methods of producing new chemical substances, Scientometrics 39 (1995), 125-140.
26. Challenging standard distinctions between science and technology: the case of preparative chemistry, Hyle 3 (1997), 81-94.
27. In the Renaissance, chemistry was often referred to as spagyria or the spagyric art, a term which, according to a dubious etymology spread by seventeenth-century chymical textbooks, derived from the Greek span (to pull apart) and ageirein (to put together) Newman, William, and Larry Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2003, p. 90.
28. Bachelard, Gaston, Le matérialisme rationnel, Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1953, reprint PUF, 1990, p. 22.
29. Berthelot, Marcellin, La synthèse chimique, Paris: Alcan 1876, p. 275 (in the 1897 edition).
30. Van Helmont, J.B. De febribus, Opuscula chap. 15, Nï¿1/226, p. 58 quoted in Newman, William, and Larry Principe, Alchemy tried in the Fire (see note 23), p. 180.
31. Diderot, De l'interprétation de la nature, 1753. Venel, Gabriel-Franï¿1/2ois article chymie, in Diderot, d'Alembert (ed.), Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 3, 1753, p. 420b. If most historical references in this paper are to French chemists, it is simply because I know more about the history of French chemistry than that of any other country. It does not mean that chemical styles should be thought of as national.
32. For instance, Nicolas Lemery's Cours de chymie, published in 1675 and reprinted until the mid eighteenth-century developed a Cartesian model of a number of chemical operations in the introductory chapter that were independent from the recipes collected in the rest of the volume.
33. See Michel Bougard, La chimie de Nicolas Lemery, apothicaire et médecin, (1645-1715), Turnhout: Brepols 1999.
34. Roald Hoffmann, What might philosophy of science look like if chemists built it, Boston University Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, Oktober 20, 2005.
35. The standard references on atomic debates in nineteenth-century chemistry are the three volumes by Alan J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century. From Dalton to Cannizzaro, Columbus: Ohio State University Press 1984; The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry. Berkeley: University of California Press 1993; Nationalizing Science. Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry, Cambridge MA: MIT Press 20 1. On the specific status of chemical atoms see B. Bensaude-Vincent, Atomism and Positivism: A Legend about French Chemistry, Annals of Science 56 (1999), 81-94.
36. Ursula Klein, The creative power of paper tools in early nineteenth-century chemistry, in U. Klein (ed.), Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publications 2001, pp. 13-34.
37. Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers (see note 12), p. 190
38. A. Kekulé, On some points of chemical philosophy, The Laboratory, I, july 27, 1867.
39. Reprint in R. Anschütz, August Kekulé, Vol. 2, Berlin 1929.
40. Quoted by Britta Görs, Chemischer Atomismus: Anwendung, Veränderung, Alternativen in deutschsprachigen Raum in der zweiten Hälfte des 19 Jahrhunderts, Berlin: ERS-Verl. 1999.
41. Georges Urbain, Les disciplines d'une science, Paris: Douin 1921, p. 11.
42. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences, vol. 1, comments on the year 1669, cited in He ́lène Metzger (1923), pp. 266-68.
43. Chemistry would perfectly fit the argumentation developed by Hacking in Representing and Intervening, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983.
44. Venel, article «principes», D'Alembert, Diderot, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 13, Paris: Briasson 1751, pp. 375-376.
45. Emile Meyerson, De l'explication dans les sciences, Paris: Alcan 1921, Eng tr. Explanation in the Sciences, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991, p. 407.
46. Hélène Metzger, La philosophie de la matière chez Lavoisier, Paris: Hermann, 1935.
47. On the compositional paradigm see R. Siegfried, B.J. Dobbs, Composition: A neglected Aspect of the Chemical Revolution, Annals of Science 24 (1968), 275-93.
48. Robert Siegfried, From Elements to Atoms, A History of Chemical Composition, Philadelphia: American Chemical Philosophy 2002.
49. B. Bensaude-Vincent, Lavoisier, Mémoires d'une révolution, Paris: Flammarion 1993.
50. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of relativity, New York: Dover Publications 1953. Chapter Conceptualization in natural science.
51. Alfred Nordmann, From Metaphysics to Metachemistry, in: Davis Baird, Eric Scerri, Lee McIntyre (eds.), Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: Springer 2006, pp. 347-362.
52. I judge that the laboratory style began about the time that Boyle made the air pump in order to investigate the spring of air. It is characteristic of styles that they have popular myths of origin. Schaffer and Shapin set out the myth of origin for laboratory style. Their hero is an instrument rather than a person. Hacking, Style for historians and philosophers (see note 12), p. 185. On the importance of the founder myth in chemistry
53. see B. Bensaude Vincent, Between history and memory: Centennial and bicentennial images of Lavoisier, Isis 87 (1996), 481-499.
54. On the neglect of chemistry in philosophy of science see Mary Jo Nye, From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry. Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800-1950
55. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press 1993.
56. J. Schummer, The philosophy of chemistry, Endeavour 27 (2003), 37-41.
57. Davis Baird, Eric Scerri and Lee McIntyre (eds), Philosophy of Chemistry, Synthesis of a New Discipline, Dordrecht: Springer Verlag: 2006, Introduction: The invisibility of chemistry, pp. 3-18
58. B. Bensaude-Vincent, Matière à penser, Essais d'histoire et de philosophie de la chimie, Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris Ouest 2008, pp. 13-21.
59. N. Russell Hanson: The irrelevance of history of science to philosophy of science, Journal of Philosophy, 59 (1962), 574-586.