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From phlogiston to caloric: chemical ontologies

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Abstract

The ‘triumph of the anti-phlogistians’ is a familiar story to the historians and philosophers of science who characterize the Chemical Revolution as a broad conceptual shift. The apparent “incommensurability” of the paradigms across the revolutionary divide has caused much anxiety. Chemists could identify phlogiston and oxygen, however, only with different sets of instrumental practices, theoretical schemes, and philosophical commitments. In addition, the substantive counterpart to phlogiston in the new chemistry was not oxygen, but caloric. By focusing on the changing visions of chemical body across the revolutionary divide with a more sensitive probe into the historical actors’ material manipulations and linguistic usage, we can historicize their laboratory realities and philosophical agenda. An archeology of chemical bodies that configures the fragile stability of the material worlds chemists created in succession promises a philosophical horizon that would recognize our hybrid (natural–artificial) environment as an evolving investigative object of science.

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Notes

  1. For a cumulative bibliography, see Bret (1995).

  2. For an effort to resolve the semantic incommensurability and the implied ‘conceptual relativism’ in the Chemical Revolution, see Kitcher (1978).

  3. Lavoisier’s identification of phlogiston as a Stahlian doctrine was probably meant to diffuse the professional impact of his attack against the old guards in the Academy such as Macquer (Kim 2003).

  4. For the scientific salon around the Arsenal, see Goupil (1992).

  5. This is how Etienne Montgolfier relayed Lavoisier’s thought on the issue to his brother Joseph in a letter dated on Oct 2, 1783 (Fonds Montgolfier VII.4, Musée de l’Air et de l’espace, Bourget). Lavoisier was yet to announce this hypothesis to the Academy on Nov 12, without however using the algebraic formula.

  6. See the quote in Conant (1958: 33–35).

  7. For important clues, see Beretta (2001).

  8. Although this was an important thesis at the particular historiographical juncture, it is now woefully dated.

  9. For the layering technique, see Kim (1992, 2000).

  10. Spirits were the volatile products of distillation that rose up during the process and were collected after cooling. Unlike oils, they did not “swim” in water, and they did not burn easily. Unlike phlegms, they were clear liquids. Oils “swam” in water and were inflammable. Aqueous liquors or Phlegms were thick, insipid liquors that mixed with water. The earthly residue that remained at the bottom of the vessel could be dissolved to obtain the lixivial salt or fixed alkali and an earth.

  11. For the painstaking formulation of this program by Wilhelm Homberg and Etienne-François Geoffroy, see Kim (2003: 65–159).

  12. Venel, article “Sel & Sels” in Diderot’s Encocylopédie.

  13. Article “Feu (Chimie)” in Diderot’s Encyclopédie.

  14. Venel, article “Chymie ou Chimie” in Diderot’s Encyclopédie; for a more detailed exposition, see Kim (2009a).

  15. Recent biographies are Donovan (1993), Poirier (1996).

  16. Lavoisier, “Sur la manière d’enseigner la chimie,” quoted in Poirier (1996: 6, 11).

  17. Lavoisier (1862–1893, pp. 427–450).

  18. Ibid. quoted in Siegfried (1972: 65–66).

  19. First part of Guyton (1772). See Kim (2003: 240–246).

  20. Proès-verbaux de l’Académie royale des sciences, 91 (1772):31v-36r (added emphasis).

  21. On the confluence of these factors, see Guerlac (1961).

  22. Article “Chymie” in Diderot’s Encyclopédie.

  23. This marked transformation can be detected in the two younger authors of the new nomenclature, Fourcroy and Berthollet (Kim 2003: 391–438).

  24. Condillac claims that the first was the goal of his Grammaire and, the second, that of his Logique (1780); La Langue des Calculs (1798) in (Condillac 1801), v. 23, p. 1.

  25. For Kant’s role in forging “philosophy-as-epistemology,” see Rorty (1979: 131–164). The words Erkenntnislehre and Erkenntnistheorie were invented in 1808 and 1832, respectively (Gadamer 1993: 220).

  26. For Kant’s views on pre-Lavoisian chemistry, see Carrier (2001).

  27. For Kant’s own struggle with metaphysics and his turn to epistemology, see Beiser (1992).

  28. Similar efforts to contextualize the interaction between physics, mathematics and logical positivism are proposed in Richardson (2008), Friedman (2008).

  29. In calling for a ‘rapprochement’ between the two fields, Thomas S. Kuhn discusses these differences explicitly (1977).

  30. The field has been expanding rapidly, however, during the last decade or so.

  31. For the rhetorical use of scientific method in the emergence of the philosophy of science, see Yeo (1986, 1993). For the rhetorical construction of the very notion of ‘classical physics,’ see Staley (2008).

  32. An earlier example would be Hélène Metzger’s philosophical treatment of the chemical tradition, although her philosophical objectives did not counter the historiographical interpretation that Lavoisier’s contribution to modern chemistry consisted in his theoretical scheme; see Golinski (1987), Christie (1987), Chimisso (2001).

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Acknowledgments

This paper was initially put together for the conference at Duke University (March, 2007), “Do historians and philosophers of science have anything to say to each other?” I wish to thank professor Seymour Mauskopf for suggesting to put in more philosophical discussions and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on the flow of the argument.

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    Mi Gyung Kim

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Kim, M.G. From phlogiston to caloric: chemical ontologies. Found Chem 13, 201–222 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9116-y

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