Analytical Instrumentation and Instrumental Objectivity

Abstract

The bulk of this chapter is concerned with analytical chemistry during and for the first decade after World War II. At this time analytical chemistry underwent a radical change, which can most easily be characterized as a shift from wet chemistry to instrumental methods (Baird, 1993). Although this transformation of analytical chemistry may interest readers of this volume for a variety of reasons, I focus here on a shift in the concept and practice of a kind of objectivity. Objectivity is one of those concepts with generally positive connotations, but whose exact characterization proves elusive. A dictionary tells us that, as an adjective, objective applies to that which has “actual existence or reality.” Objective observation is “based on observable phenomena” and “uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1993, p. 940). Objectivity, it would seem, either sits next to truth or defines the right route to truth. What emerges here, however, is a more complicated concept—a concept with a history that serves various agendas through suitable shades of meaning and marriages of convenience with other concepts. The development of instrumental methods in analytical chemistry made possible fast, precise, and accurate analyses of a wide variety of important substances. Instrumental methods changed forever the metals industries, medical diagnosis, oil analysis, and forensic analytical chemistry, to mention a few highlights. In a very real sense, these developments in analytical chemistry made contemporary science and technology possible by opening up vast new continents of information about the world, which could be gained relatively easily and applied toward technological and/or scientific ends. I argue here that these developments in analytical chemistry established a paradigm for one kind of concept of objectivity. Ralph Müller, who will play a central role in this discussion, wrote in the January 1947 issue of the Analytical Edition of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (the journal that subsequently became Analytical Chemistry): . . .The true instrumental method of analysis requires no reduction of data to normal pressure and temperature, no corrections or computations, no reference to correction factors nor interpolation on nomographic charts. . . .