Late nineteenth‐century opponents of atomism questioned whether the evidence required any notion of an atom. In this spirit, Duhem developed an account of the import of chemical formulas that is clearly neutral on the atomic question rather than antiatomistic. The argument is supplemented with specific inadequacies of atomic theories of chemical combination and considerably strengthened by the theory of chemical combination provided by thermodynamics. Despite possible counterevidence available at the time, which should have tempered some of Duhem's concluding remarks, there (...) was no atomic theory of chemical combination, which is wholly a product of the twentieth century. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm, SE‐106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In recent years the Chemical Revolution has become a renewed focus of interest among historians of science. This interest isshaped by interpretive strategies associated with the emergence anddevelopment of the discipline of the history of science. The disciplineoccupies a contested intellectual terrain formed in part by thedevelopment and cultural entanglements of science itself. Threestages in this development are analyzed in this paper. Theinterpretive strategies that characterized each stage are elucidatedand traced to the disciplinary interests that gave rise to them. Whilepositivists (...) and whigs appropriated the history of science to thejustificatory and celebratory needs of science itself, postpositivistslinked it to philosophical models of rationality, and sociologists ofknowledge sought its sociological reconstruction. Since none of thesestrategies do justice to the complexity of historical events, a modelof the Chemical Revolution is outlined which upholds the autonomyand specificity of history and the methods used to study it. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy of science regards theoretical reasoning, based on the example of Euclidian geometry, as the hallmark of a mature science. There is, however, a parallel tradition of practical reasoning based on specific cases that goes back to Aristotle. In this paper I argue that practical reasoning is an essential part of the practice of chemistry and should be understood and appreciated on its own merits rather than regarded as a symbol of the immaturity and inferiority of chemistry as a (...) science. (shrink)

‘Read until you hear the voices’; so the maxim goes for those who would engage with the Victorians. Let us try with Thomas Henry Huxley:A great chapter in the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to (...) read, with your own eyes, tonight. Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature. (shrink)

This article examines the development of pneumatic medicine as practised by Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes and Joseph Priestley, and the support for their experimental trials by other Dissenting doctors and industrialists including Boulton, Watt and Wedgwood. The article examines their belief that if one could create the conditions under which `good air' could be manufactured — where the work of Dissenting chemists and doctors was embraced rather than condemned, supported rather than attacked — then conditions, political and medical, under which (...) a healthy country will flourish will prevail. Contra the claim made by Roy Porter that doctors, such as Erasmus Darwin, were `profoundly troubled by what they saw as the counterproductive impact on health produced by the spread of progressive ideas, refined culture, and modern, commercial, urban values', I believe that it was precisely those progressive values that led Dissenting doctors and pneumatic chemists to believe that by applying the same principles that led to the phenomenal industrial and commercial success of their friends like Boulton, Watt and Wedgwood, they could improve population health by attempting to reform simultaneously politics and therapeutics. (shrink)

In this article, from the characterization of technoscience of the English historian J. Pickstone and the recognition of the importance of models and modelling in research and teaching of chemistry, the term technochemistry is introduced as a way of chemical knowledge. With the above new possibilities, rethinking the chemistry curriculum is opened.

This paper suggests that the cases made for atoms and the aether in nineteenth-century physical science were analogous, with the implication that the case for the atom was less than compelling, since there is no aether. It is argued that atoms did not play a productive role in nineteenth-century chemistry any more than the aether did in physics. Atoms and molecules did eventually find an indispensable home in chemistry but by the time that they did so they were different kinds (...) of entities to those figuring in the speculations of those natural philosophers who were atomists. Advances in nineteenth-century chemistry were a precondition for rather than the result of the productive introduction of atoms into chemistry. (shrink)

In questa nota storico-critica, anche contestualmente alla nozione di cambio concettuale toulmiano, si vuol riflettere sull'opportunità metodologica di un ritorno, in senso heideggeriano, all'autenticità dell'originario pensiero filosoco greco sia per meglio chiarire i termini dei rapporti fra pensiero scientico e teologia sistematica sia per inquadrare, in maniera più coerente e maggiormente comprensiva, le principali concezioni della dottrina eucaristica della teologia cattolica che, ripensate entro l'impianto ontoteologico heideggeriano, avvaloreranno e giusticheranno le teorie transustanziali rispetto a quelle consustanziali.