The Chemical Workshop Tradition and the Experimental Practice

Discontinuities within Continuities

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4516072
AutoresUrsula Klein (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, autor correspondente)
Ano1996
Volume9
Fascículo3
Páginas251-287
Data de publicação1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889700002507
OpenAlexW2134893803
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas13
Referências citadas18

The ArgumentThe overall portrayal of early modern experimentation as a new method of securing assent within a philosophical discourse sketched in many of the recent studies on the historical origin of experimentation is questioned by the analysis of the experimental practice of chemistry at the Paris Academy. Chemical experimentation at the Paris Academy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century originated in a different tradition than the philosophical. It continued and developed the material culture of the chemical work shops of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and explored epistemic objects which had rather loose connections to philosophy. On the other hand, I argue against the classical dichotomy between the work of the mind that of the hand, and for an epistemology of experimentation that acknowledges that experimental manipulation goes hand in hand with reflexion. In particuler, I argue against the view that chemists at the Paris Academy were "pragmatists" who merely gathered experimental facts and classified substances and operations without perplexing themselves over general conceptions. I claim that the chemists at the Paris Academy constructed a general conception framework which shaped the significance of their experiments. This conception that I call conception of the chemical combination, compound and reaction was rather quickly reified into an experimental fact. Despite its generality it was a genuine chemical conception rather independent of philosophy

Epistemology · Generality · Philosophy of science · Pragmatism · Sociology · Chemistry · History of Science and Medicine · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Probability and Statistical Research · Psychology