Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chronological table
- List of abbreviations
- 1 A young provincial in Paris
- 2 The apprentice of Arcueil
- 3 Personal influences and the search for laws
- 4 Collaboration and rivalry
- 5 The volumetric approach
- 6 Scientific research
- 7 Professor, Academician and editor
- 8 A scientist in the service of government and industry
- 9 A new technique and the dissemination of technical information
- 10 Scientist and bourgeois in the political arena
- 11 The legacy
- Appendix: select correspondence
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
3 - Personal influences and the search for laws
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chronological table
- List of abbreviations
- 1 A young provincial in Paris
- 2 The apprentice of Arcueil
- 3 Personal influences and the search for laws
- 4 Collaboration and rivalry
- 5 The volumetric approach
- 6 Scientific research
- 7 Professor, Academician and editor
- 8 A scientist in the service of government and industry
- 9 A new technique and the dissemination of technical information
- 10 Scientist and bourgeois in the political arena
- 11 The legacy
- Appendix: select correspondence
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
‘If one were not animated with the desire to discover laws, they would often escape the most enlightened attention’
Gay-LussacIt would be simple to list Gay-Lussac's main scientific achievements. It is less easy, probably more valuable, to investigate how he was able to achieve what he did. Important scientific results have emerged from a variety of contexts – from isolated geniuses as much as scientific societies, from practical men as well as theoreticians, from wild speculation and from severely disciplined reasoning. In different countries and different periods the methods and goals of science have covered a range of possibilities. What did Gay-Lussac see as the job of the scientist? Why should he have followed one line of investigation rather than another? Who influenced him and, if there was such influence, how was it exerted?
For a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique science meant physical science and he would have sufficient mathematical training to apply this to his research. A graduate would also have some knowledge of chemistry, and although those bent on military or engineering careers may have felt this was an unnecessary component of the syllabus, it was a reflection both of the number of chemists who had shaped the syllabus and more generally of the recent appearance of chemistry as a new science with valuable applications in war and peace. Chemistry, now rid of its last vestiges of Aristotelian theory and alchemy, owed its success to generations of workers in the field.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Gay-LussacScientist and Bourgeois, pp. 43 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1978