Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology

Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefévre

Publisher:

MIT Press

Publication Date:

2007

Number of Pages:

345

Format:

Hardcover

Price:

45.00

ISBN:

9780262113069

Category:

Monograph

MAA Review
Table of Contents

We do not plan to review this book.

	List of Figures	ix

	Introduction Sample Chapter - Download PDF (53 KB)	1

	Part 1: Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science Contexts and Practices	5

	Introduction to Part I Sample Chapter - Download PDF (139 KB)	7

1	Commodities and Natural Objects Sample Chapter - Download PDF (71 KB)	11

1.1	Origin from the three natural kingdoms	11

1.2	Commodities	14

1.3	Learned inquiry into materials	19

2	Practices of Studying Materials in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry	21

2.1	Experimental history (historia experimentalis)	22

2.2	Technological improvement	31

2.3	Experimental inquiries into the imperceptible dimension of substances	37

2.4	The many dimensions of material substances	58

3	Why Study Classification?	63

3.1	Selectivity	63

3.2	Ontological shifts	66

3.3	Productivity	68

3.4	Diversity	74

3.5	Representing chemical classifications	76

	Part II: A World of Pure Chemical Substances	81

	Introduction to Part II	83

4	1787: A New Nomenclature	87

4.1	The anti-phlogistic task force	88

4.2	Chemists’ request for a new chemical nomenclature	91

4.3	The new nomenclature: A divide?	92

4.4	Classification in the Méthode	94

5	The Tableau de la Nomenclature Chimique	97

5.1	Description of the Tableau	97

5.2	The formal classificatory structure of the Tableau	106

6	Classifying According to Chemical Composition	109

6.1	Pure chemical substances	109

6.2	Composition	112

6.3	The arduous career of the analytical method	115

7	Simple Substances and Paradigmatic Syntheses	127

7.1	Classification of simple substances	128

8	Operations with Pure Chemical Substances	135

8.1	Reversible operations in metallurgy	136

8.2	Reversible operations in pharmaceutical salt production	142

8.3	A chemistry of pure substances takes shape: Geoffroy's affinity table of 1718	147

9	Classification of Pure Chemical Substances before 1787	155

9.1	Classification of substances in affinity tables	155

9.2	The classifications of minerals before 1787	163

10	A Revolutionary Table?	179

10.1	Reaping the rewards of a century	179

10.2	Classification and Chemical Revolution	182

10.3	The classification's transitoriness	185

10.4	Classification and nomenclature	187

	Part III: A Different World Plant Materials	193

	Introduction to Part III	195

11	Diverse Orders of Plant Materials	199

11.1	Commodities from the vegetable kingdom	199

11.2	Natural historical modes of identification and classification	201

11.3	Pharmaceutical and artisanal modes of classifying plant materials	205

12	Ultimate Principles of Plants: Plant Analysis prior to 1750	211

12.1	Separation of the ultimate chemical principles	211

12.2	Simplicia, vegetable juices, and the ultimate principles of plants	213

12.3	Meanings of "plant analysis"	216

13	The Epistemic Elevation of Vegetable Commodities	221

13.1	Chemists’ grouping together of proximate principles of plants after 1750	221

13.2	Plants and animals as "organized" or "organic" bodies	232

13.3	A second ontological shift circa 1790 The coming into being of "organic substances"	245

14	The Failure of Lavoisier's Plant Chemistry	255

14.1	Lavoisier's analytical program for classifying plant and animal substances	255

14.2	Theoretical limits of Lavoisier's analytical program	266

15	Uncertainties	273

15.1	Ambiguities and disagreement in chemists' identification and classification	273

15.2	What were the taxonomic consequences of the Lavoisierian analytical program?	276

16	A Novel Mode of Classifying Organic Substances and an Ontological Shift around 1830	285

16.1	The ontological shift in the 1830s: stoichiometric substances	288

16.2	The trajectory of ontological shifts in plant chemistry	291

	Conclusion: Multidimensional Objects and Materiality	295

	References	307

	Name Index