Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:14:19.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Origin of the Concept Chemical Compound

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ursula Klein
Ursula Klein
Affiliation:
Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftstheorie, Berlin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Most historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in this paper is that modern chemisty started with the concept of the chemicl compound, which emerged at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, without any signifivant influence of the corpuscular theory. Rather the historical reconstruction of the emergence of this concept shows that it resulted from the reflection on the chemical operations in the sixteenth-century metallurgy and seventeenth-century pharmacy. I argue that the reversibility of these operations and their understanding as crafts (metallurgy) or chemical arts (pharmacy) were decisive factors for the emergence of the first ideas about chemical compounds in the seventeenth-century pharmaceutical works written by pharmaceutically trained authors, influenced by the Paracelsian image of nature. There is a direct line of descent from these authors to E.F.Geoffroy (1675–1742), who integrated the first scattered ideas of chemical compound into a general concept comprising chemical artefacts as well as natural bodies.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 163 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agricola, Georg. 1556. De re metallica, 12 books. Basel.Google Scholar
Agricola, Georg. [1556] 1950. Georgius Agricola: De re metallica. Translated by Hoover, H. C. and Hoover, L. H.. New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agricola, Georg. [1556] 1985. Vom Bergkwerck, 12 books. First German translation, Basel 1557; reprinted Leipzig.Google Scholar
Beguin, Jean. [1610] 1615. Les Elemens de Chymie. Paris. Originally published as Tyrocinium Chymicum.Google Scholar
Biringuccio, Vanoccio. [1540] 1966. The Pirotechnia. Translated by Smith, C. S. and Gnudi, M. T.. Cambridge, Mass. Originally published as De la pirotechnia.Google Scholar
Boas, Marie. 1952. “The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy.” Osiris 10:412–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Marie. 1958. Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Boyle, Robert. [1661] 1680. The Sceptical Chymist. In Works, Vol. 1. London.Google Scholar
Boyle, Robert. 1666. The Origin of Forms and Qualities According to the Corpuscular Philosophy. In Works, Vol. III.Google Scholar
Boyle, Robert. 1772. The Works. Edited by Birch, Thomas. 6 vols. London.Google Scholar
Chalmers, Alan. 1993. “The Lack of Excellency of Boyle's Mechanical Philosophy.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24 (4):551–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clericuzio, Antonio. 1990. “A Redefinition of Boyle's Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy.” Annals of Science 47:561–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, I. Bernard. 1964. “Isaac Newton, Hans Sloane and the Academie Royale des Sciences.” In L'aventure de la science, 2 vols., edited by Cohen, I. B. and Taton, R., 61–116. Paris.Google Scholar
Crosland, Maurice. 1963. “The Development of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 24:369–441.Google Scholar
Darmstaedter, Ernst. 1926. Berg-, Probier- und Kunstbiichlein. Munich.Google Scholar
Debus, Allen G. 1977. The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2 vols. New York:Google Scholar
Debus, Allen G. 1991. The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France. New York.Google Scholar
Duhem, Pierre. [1902] 1985. Le mixte et la combinaison chimique: Essai sur l'évolution d'une idée. Paris.Google Scholar
Duncan, A. M. 1964. “Some Theoretical Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Tables of Affinity – I.” Annals of Science 18 (3): 177–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, A. M. [1785] 1979. Introduction to Bergmann, T., A Dissertation on Elective Attractions. London.Google Scholar
Eamon, William. 1984. “Arcana Disclosed: The Advent of Printing, the Books of Secret Traditions and the Development of Experimental Science in the Sixteenth Century.” History of Science 22:111–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eklund, Jon. 1975. The Incompleat cymist: Being an essay on the eighteenth century chemist in his laboratory, with a dictionary of obsolete chemical terms of the period.” Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Ercker, Lazarus. [1574] 1951. Lazarus Ercker's Treatise on Ores and Assaying. Translated from the German edition of 1580 by Sisco, A. G. and Smith, C. S.. Chicago.Google Scholar
Ercker, Lazarus. [1574] 1960. Beschreibung der allervornehmsten mineralischen Erze und Bergwerksarten. Frankfurt am Main. Reprint edited by Paul Reinhard Beierlein, Berlin:.Google Scholar
Freund, Ida. [1904] 1968. The Study of Chemical Composition: An Account of Its Method and Historical Development. Cambridge. Reprinted New York.Google Scholar
Geoffroy, Etienne François. 1704. “Maniere de recomposer le Souffre commun par la reunion de ses principes, et d'en composer de nouveau par le melange de semblables substances, avec quelques conjectures sur la composition des metaux.” AdS (HuM), 278–86.Google Scholar
Geoffroy, Etienne François. 1709. “Experiences sur les Metaux, faites avec le Verre ardent du Palais Royal.” AdS (HuM), (M) 162–76.Google Scholar
Geoffroy, Etienne François. 1718. “Table des differents rapports observes en Chimie entre differentes substances.” AdS (HuM), (M) 202–12.Google Scholar
Geoffroy, Etienne François. 1720. “Eclaircissements Sur la Table inseree dans les Memoires de 1718 concernant les Rapports observes entre differentes Substances,” AdS (HuM), (M) 20–34.Google Scholar
Glaser, Christopher. 1663. Traite de la Chymie. Paris.Google Scholar
Glaser, Christopher. [1663] 1677. The Compleat Chymist, or, A New Treatise of Chymistry. English translation, London.Google Scholar
Glauber, Johann Rudolph. 1646–1649. Furni noviphilosophies oder Beschreibung einer New-erfundener Distillir-Kunst. 5 vols. Amsterdam: Johann Fabel.Google Scholar
Glauber, Johann Rudolph. [1646–1649] 1689. Philosophical Furnaces. In The Works of the Highly Experienced and Famous Chymist John Rudolph Glauber, 1–99. London.Google Scholar
Goupil, Michelle. 1991. Du Flou au clair? Histoire de l'affinité chimique. Paris.Google Scholar
Guerlac, Henry. 1981. Newton on the Continent. Ithaca, N.Y.Google Scholar
Harré, Rom. 1961. Theories and Things. London.Google Scholar
Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 1989. Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise. Berkeley, Calif.Google Scholar
Homberg, Wilhelm. 1701. “Observations sur les Analyses des Plantes,” AdS (HuM), (M) 113–17.Google Scholar
Homberg, Wilhelm. 1702. “Essays de Chimie.” AdS (HuM), (M) 33–52.Google Scholar
Homberg, Wilhelm. 1703. “Essay de l'analyse du Souffre commun.” AdS (HuM), (M) 31–40.Google Scholar
Homberg, Wilhelm. 1708. “Memoire, Touchant les Acides & les Alcalis, pour servir d'addition a l'article du Sel principe,” AdS (HuM), (M) 312–23.Google Scholar
Hooykaas, R. 1935. “Die Elementenlehre des Paracelsus.” Janus 39:175–87.Google Scholar
Hoover, Herbert Clark, and Lou, Henry Hoover. 1912. “Appendix B.” In Agricola [1556] 1850, 609–15. London.Google Scholar
Kim, Yung Sik. 1991. “Another Look at Robert Boyle's Acceptance of the Mechanical Philosophy: Its Limits and Its Chemical and Social Contexts.” Ambix 38(1): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Ursula. 1994a. Verbindung und Affinitat. Die Grundlegung der neuzeitlichen Chemieander Wendevom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert. Basel-Boston-Berlin.Google Scholar
Klein, Ursula. 1994b. “Robert Boyle: Der Begriinder der neuzeitlichen Chemie?” Philosophia Naturalis 31 (1994), 1:63–106.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1952. “Robert Boyle and Structural Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century,” Isis 43:12–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Fèvre, Nicolas. [1660] 1664. A Compleat Body of Chymistry, by Nicasius Le Febure. English translation, London.Google Scholar
Le Fèvre, Nicolas. [1660] 1751. Traicte de la Chymie. 2 vols. Reprinted Paris, 5 vols.Google Scholar
Lemery, Nicolas. [1675] 1716. Cours de Chymie. Leiden.Google Scholar
Libavius, Andreas. [1597] 1606. Alchemia. Frankfurt am Main.Google Scholar
Libavius, Andreas. [1597] 1964. Die Alchemie des Andreas Libavius. Weinheim. German translation.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Arthur O. [1933] 1985. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Boston.Google Scholar
Metzger, Helene. 1923. Les doctrines chimiques en France du début du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIe siècle. Vol. 1. Paris.Google Scholar
Olschki, Leonardo. 1919–1927. Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur. 3 Vols. Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Pagel, Walter. [1958] 1982. Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance. Basel.Google Scholar
Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. 1930. Paracelsus Samtliche Werke. Translated into modern German by Aschner, Bernhard, from the 10-vol. Huser edition (1589–1591). Jena.Google Scholar
Partington, James Riddick. 1961–1970. A History of Chemistry. 4 vols. London.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jorg. 1992. “Experiment, Difference, and Writing: 1. Tracing Protein Synthesis,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (2):305–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rocke, Alan J. 1984. Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro. Columbus, Ohio.Google Scholar
Smeaton, W. A. 1971. “E. F. Geoffroy Was Not a Newtonian Chemist.” Ambix 18, 212–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Cyril Stanley. 1959. “Life of Biringuccio.” In Biringuccio [1540] 1966.Google Scholar
Stillman, John Maxson. 1960. The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry. NewYork.Google Scholar
Ströker, Elisabeth. 1968. “Element und Verbindung: Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte zweier chemischer Grundbegriffe.” Angewandte Chemie 80:747–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thackray, Arnold. 1970. Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry. Cambridge, Mass.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vidal, Bernard. 1989. La liaison chimique: Le concept et son histoire. Paris.Google Scholar