Filling the Space of Possibilities

Eighteenth-Century Chemistry's Transition from Art to Science

Bibliographic Data

ID4516118
AuthorsLissa Roberts (0000-0002-9370-8467, San Diego State University, corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume6
Issue2
Pages511-553
Publication date1993-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889700001496
OpenAlexW2083897833
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited21

The ArgumentThis paper charts eighteenth-century chemistry's transition from its definition as an art to its proclaimed status as a science. Both the general concept of art and specific practices of eighteenth-century chemists are explored to account for this transition. As a disciplined activity, art orients practitioners' attention toward particular directions and away from others, providing a structured space of possibilities within which their discipline develops. Consequently, while chemists throughout the eighteenth century aspired to reveal nature's "true voice," the path of their investigations was directed by and toward their laboratory manipulations. So long as the chemical community maintained an ethos of polite cooperation and eschewed theoretical wrangling, this point was hidden by a rhetoric of "matter of fact" reporting. But as "facts" mounted in the 1770s and 1780s, especially in pneumatic chemistry, cooperation gave way to contention as chemists sought to name and organize their findings without the guidance of a communally accepted "natural" system. Lavoisier and his fellow "new" chemists offered a forceful solution to this dilemma by introducing a revolutionary network of theories, nomenclature, and instruments that unabashedly fused the productive manipulation of their laboratory work with what they claimed as the structure and activity of nature

Archaeology · Dilemma · Epistemology · Ethos · Linguistics · Politeness · Rhetoric · Sociology · Chemistry · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · Philosophy

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