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University Press.

In the 18th century, the concept of 'affinity', 'principle' and 'element' dominated chemical discourse, both inside and outside the laboratory. Although much work has been done on these terms and the methodological commitments which guided their usage, most studies over the past two centuries have concentrated on their application as relevant to Lavoisier's oxygen theory and the new nomenclature. Kim's affinity challenges this historiographical trajectory by looking at several French chemists in the light of their private thoughts, public disputations and communal networks. In doing so, she tells a complex story which points to the methodological and practical importance of industrial and medical chemistry. The following review highlights the advantages and snares of such an approach and makes a few historiographical points along the way.

2006

Foundations of Chemistry, 2012

Ursula Klein has argued that Geoffroy's table of chemical affinities, published in 1718, marked the emergence of the concepts of chemical compound and chemical combination central to chemistry. In this paper her position is summarised and then modified to render it immune to criticism that has been levelled against it. The essentials of Geoffroy's chemistry are clarified and adapted to Klein's picture by way of a detailed comparison of it with Boyle's corpuscular chemistry that proceeded Geoffroy's by over half a century. The idea that Geoffroy's notion of chemical combination marked a significant turning point in the emergence of modern chemistry is defended against the charge that it is Whiggish. Keywords History of chemistry Á Chemical compound Á Chemical combination Á Affinity tables Á Ettiene Geoffroy Á Robert Boyle Klein's thesis My aim in this paper is to refine and elaborate on Ursula Klein's account of the origin of the concept of chemical compound, an account that I regard as basically correct, and importantly so. In this opening section I summarise what I see as the essence of her thesis as it appears in Klein (1994, 1995, and 1996), prior to putting my own slant on it and defending it against possible lines of criticism. Klein rightly insists that the concept of chemical combination that is taken for granted in modern chemistry is not timelessly obvious but needed to be put in place. She argues that this had happened by early in the eighteenth century but not before. Most notably, the novel conception was embodied in the table, published in 1718, by Etienne Geoffroy (1996) displaying chemical substances and the relative degrees with which they combine together, a table often regarded as the first of the affinity tables that became a key feature of eighteenth-century chemistry.

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...

HYLE. International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 9.2, 191-218, 2003

This paper suggests a sufficiently consistent, if preliminary, sketch of the semiotic structure and the aesthetic and heuristic functions of metaphor in science, particularly in chemistry. A propositional concept of metaphor, as underlying previous theories, is disputed. Metaphor is instead semiotically explained as a form of semiosis by way of semasiotropy – a concept developed out of Leopold Kretzenbacher’s research in iconotropy. The function of scientific metaphor as an aesthetic agent of creative inference is discussed in terms of Harald Weinrich’s image field theory (Bildfeldtheorie). In science, the increase in complexity through the heuristic process is subsequently reduced by strict selection of accepted research.

University of Bristol (l uk.bl.ethos.805631 ), 2020

ABSTRACT It is claimed that alchemy and alchemists/early modern chymists contributed substantially to proto-chemistry in important ways. To a significant degree, sound science was being practised in the Latin West during the seventeenth century, though not all criteria were met consistently across all nations at all times. This thesis will: (1) Define the criteria for best practice of science (specifically chemistry) using a Wittgensteinian approach; (2) Examine the level to which such criteria were appreciated and adhered to across a representative sample of chemical practices during the seventeenth century. As a counteraction to the extremely negative perceptions of alchemy, often associated with the occult, I demonstrate a dynamic, international community, whose operational practices, far from being unscientific, included many of the criteria which are regarded in modern times as essential prerequisites of science. Determining exactly what constitutes good science is problematic, especially since it is disputed by some that science can even be distinguished from non-science. Therefore, a Wittgensteinian 'family resembles' approach to analysis of science has been selected, establishing the essential characteristics by which good science can be recognised. These criteria are divided into two groups, one designated ‘core requirements’ plus further ‘desirable’ elements. By evaluating various Early Modern chymistry textbooks, operational procedures, research communities and other components, I conclude that many of the criteria for good science were extant in the period in the Latin West. There are a few criteria which are under-represented or absent, for example, Popperian falsificationism and an inconsistent application of scepticism. The overall conclusion is the core criteria of critical reasoning, robust experimentation techniques, challenges to authorities and many of the important values and methods were present within a research community that had developed significantly in the Early Modern period, spanning Europe during the seventeenth-century and beyond.

2000

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2008

THE Hermetic Mystery-upon the higher interpretation of which I have spoken at considerable length in the previous paper and have created an analogy between its hidden meaning and that which I should term the centre of the Religions Mystery in Christendom-is the only branch of mystic and occult literature which lent itself to the decorative sense. I suppose that there are few people comparatively who at this day have any notion of the extent to which that sense was developed in the books of the adepts. It will be understood that in speaking now upon this subject I am leaving my proper path, but though the fact does not seem to have been registered, it is so utterly curious to note how a literature which is most dark and inscrutable of all has at the same time its lighter side-a side, indeed, of pleasant inventions, of apologue, of parable, of explicit enigma, above all of poetry. The fact is that alchemy presented itself as an art, its books were the work of artists; and for the sym-pathetic reader, even when he may understand them least, they will read sometimes like enchanting fables or legends. When in this manner some of the writers had exhausted their resources in language, they had recourse to illustrations, and I wonder almost that no one has thought to collect the amazing copper-plates which literally did adorn the Latin and other tracts of the seventeenth century.

Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 2004

Three basic ideas should be considered when teaching and learning chemical equilibrium: incomplete reaction, reversibility and dynamics. In this study, we concentrate on how these three ideas have eventually defined the chemical equilibrium concept. To this end, we analyse the contexts of scientific inquiry that have allowed the growth of chemical equilibrium from the first ideas of chemical affinity. At the beginning of the 18 th century, chemists began the construction of different affinity tables, based on the concept of elective affinities. Berthollet reworked this idea, considering that the amount of the substances involved in a reaction was a key factor accounting for the chemical forces. Guldberg and Waage attempted to measure those forces, formulating the first affinity mathematical equations. Finally, the first ideas providing a molecular interpretation of the macroscopic properties of equilibrium reactions were presented. The historical approach of the first key ideas may serve as a basis for an appropriate sequencing of the teaching and learning of chemical equilibrium. Finally, the paper aims also to encourage teachers to introduce historical and philosophical issues in their chemistry classrooms. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.: 2004, 5, 69-87]

American Journal of Physics, 2011

Substantia, 2019

In this essay, we aim to provide an overview of the periodic table's origins and history, and of the elements which conspired to make it chemistry's most rec-ognisable icon. We pay attention to Mendeleev's role in the development of a system for organising the elements and chemical knowledge while facilitating the teaching of chemistry. We look at how the reception of the table in different chemical communities was dependent on the local scientific, cultural and political context, but argue that its eventual universal acceptance is due to its unique ability to accommodate possessed knowledge while enabling novel predictions. Furthermore, we argue that its capacity to unify apparently disconnected phenomena under a simple framework facilitates our understanding of periodicity, making the table an icon of aesthetic value, and an object of philosophical inquiry. Finally, we briefly explore the table's iconicity throughout its representations in pop art and science fiction.

Centaurus. The International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects, 2019

While symbolic colour use has always played a salient role in science research and education, the use of colour in historic diagrams remains a lacuna within the history of science. Investigating the colour use in diagrams often means uncovering a whole cosmology otherwise not explicit in the diagram itself. The periodic table is a salient and iconic example of non-mimetic colour use in science. Famous is Andreas von Antropoff’s rectangular table of recurrent rainbow colours (1924); Alcindo Flores Cabral’s (1949) application of colour in his round snail form using the rgb scheme, Mazurs’ pine tree system (1967), speaking of warm and cold colours that he attributed to specific groups of elements – an attribution that we can relate back to humoralism and alchemy. From the first periodic tables in the 19th century on, individual researchers have used different colour regimes. While standardization may play an obvious role in chemistry and its diagrams, all the more impressive is the anarchistic use of colour in the respective diagrams up to today. This article focuses on periodical tables in chemical journals and text books and explores and compares the development of colour codes found in the few existing polychrome diagrams from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 2019

My article has its point of departure among the artists of the 20th-century avant-garde, who worked with a distinct awareness of their modernity and yet adopted an intellectual vantage point that enlarged their vision, to the extent of allowing them to embrace at once modern art and the art of the Neolithic age. Among them T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, who variously responded to the drawings of Magdalenian artists, or to the art of Homer, while having recourse to modern science, chemistry especially, in order to explain literary phenomena. Such views are examined by focusing on the transformative power of the arts in Victorian and Edwardian culture and society. The article investigates such a scenario by dwelling first on the epistemic horizon in which science, art and literature conspire together to mould the modern mind. Subsequently the article moves à rebours, in order to suggest the possible reasons for such hermeneutic proximity. The strategy that allows the artists and critics to move forward and backwards in time is due to their insistence on analogy, which allows them to examine side by side the very modern and the very old. In addition to analogy, optical technology allows them to assess art from a visual point of view, thus emphasizing formal values: in sum the tools adopted have their symbolic and practical equivalent in chemistry. Such are the transformative powers that promote intermedial dynamics among the arts, and they date back to Victorian times, where they appear under the shape of the grid. The grid is the container in which the achievements of Victorian culture, industry and art are ordered and organized. The grid provides the structure to the Crystal Palace housing the Great Exhibition in 1851, and the grid is the structure presiding over modern chemistry, owing to the tabular arrangement of chemical elements envisaged by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and first published in 1869. Such grids suggest that the epistemic width invoked by the avant- garde artists—its wide connective capability, its conceptual emphasis on analogy among a variety of different experiences—can be traced back to the Victorian and Edwardian age.

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.

Ambix, 2007

The history of alchemy and early chemistry (or chymistry) has come a long way since George Sarton listed alchemy among the "pseudo-sciences" in the critical bibliography of the journal Isis. Alchemy is now studied as a serious subject in its own right and no longer viewed by most scholars in the field as an irrational precursor to the "properly" scientific discipline of chemistry. The role played by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry in this historiographical sea-change was vital, and it is fitting that this volume of essays published by its society journal Ambix ("one of the first journals in the History of Science to be published in the English-speaking world") should be published so close to the seventieth anniversary of the journal's first issue in May 1937. In his brief introduction, the distinguished historian of alchemy and chemistry Allen G. Debus, who has done so much himself to promote the study of early chemistry, emphasises the unparalleled significance of the journal in its coverage of the history of chemistry prior to 1800. Debus makes a judicious and intelligent selection from the journal's extensive backcatalogue, beginning with two articles from its historic first issue by Julius Ruska and F. Sherwood Taylor, running right through to some early pieces by some of the leading historians of alchemy of today (Lawrence M. Principe, William R. Newman and Bruce Moran are all represented here). Debus's selection neatly encapsulates the seismic shifts in the discipline: from the philological and textual-critical focus of the 1930s, through to the more social and cultural historical approaches of today, which seek to set the practices of alchemy and chymistry in the context of patronage systems, religious confessions or other social forms of knowledge construction. The volume also spans the history of alchemy from its murky beginnings in ancient Greece (represented here by studies of Pseudo-Democritus and the ancient "Origins of Greek Alchemy") to "the end of alchemy" in the work of Nicholas Lemery in eighteenth-century France (an "ending" currently being reappraised by contemporary scholars). Between these two extremes, we find a wealth of valuable material on some of the most significant areas of early modern chymistry. Debus's lifelong devotion to the Paracelsian tradition is reflected in his choice of several pieces, including an essay by one of the early doyens of the Society, Walter Pagel, whose views (which rather too loosely conflate Paracelsus's ideas with those of late-antique Neo-Platonists and gnostics such as Plotinus, Numenius and Valentinus), while they might not seem entirely convincing to today's researchers, have undoubted historical significance to the discipline. It is also good to see collected here Piyo Rattansi's pieces from the 1960s on the place of Paracelsianism and van Helmontianism in the Revolutionary and Restoration England of the seventeenth century, and Graham Rees's excellent pieces on the "semi-paracelsian" cosmology of Francis Bacon from the 1970s. The contrast offered by C. H. Josten's piece on Robert Fludd's Philosophicall Key (published in 1963) and Berthold Heinecke's 1995 study of Van Helmont is illuminating, marking as it does the shift between a period in which unreflective description seemed to