A material perspective on 18th-century chemistry

Abstract

Much has changed in the history of chemistry over the last few decades and this book reflects many of these historiographical shifts. Historians working in the field are no longer principally interested in tracing the lineage of the major modern theories that have shaped today’s chemistry. Instead, they aim at placing practices and theories concerning the material world in their historical context and analysing the intricate and subtle evolutions that they have undergone. In Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science, Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefevre propose an investigation of the history of chemical substances understood as ‘multidimensional objects of inquiry that could be investigated in practical and theoretical contexts and that amalgamated perceptible and imperceptible, useful and philosophical, technological and scientific, social and natural features’. (1) Their strategy for realising this bold project is to examine the relationship that chemists have to chemical substances through their methods of identification and their practices of classification. The idea of presenting a history of chemistry around materials rather than people is an excellent one. Furthermore, focussing on classification instead of matter-theory takes the authors away from the traditional vision of the history of chemistry as the evolution from false to true theories concerning the constitution of the world. There is already a well known model for a history of chemistry that avoids the high-ground of theory and takes seriously the practices that form the bedrock of the science; this is Archibald and Nan Clow’s masterly work, The Chemical Revolution, which examines the evolving chemical techniques related to the industrial revolution (Clow and Clow, Chicago 1952). Although published over 50 years ago, this approach never succeeded in generating an enduring school of history of chemical technology turning around the laboratory or workshop practices that characterize so much of chemistry. Nevertheless, while offering some elements of the history of chemistry as the history of its applications, Klein and Lefevre’s work is more