The Aether in Late Nineteenth Century Chemistry

Abstract

INTRODUCTION IN the later part of the eighteenth century the played a significant role in chemical theory, especially as formulated by William Cullen in Scotland but also, in a different context, in Lavoisier's chemical revolution.! However, in the following century the lost most of its chemical significance, at the same time becoming increasingly important as a foundation of physics. At the end of the century, science often taken to be simply identical with the sciences of optics and electrodynamics. In his history of chemistry of Ig05, Ernst von Meyer mentioned the only in connexion with Greek and Indian philosophy, and then only to point out how strange the idea of an aethereal element to the modern mind. is unnecessary to point out how widely the above views of the Greek philosophers with regard to the elements deviate from the conceptions of modern he wrote.2 And yet, in the same year appeared the third English edition of one of the classical works of chemistry, Mendeleev's Principles of Chemistry, containing as an appendix the essay An attempt towards a chemical conception of the ether.3 In fact, the played a not insignificant role in the chemistry of the late nineteenth century; a role Meyer either unaware of or unwilling to admit. One may even be entitled to speak of a trend of chemistry in which the cultivated as a chemical agent or substance. It is the aim of the present work to outline the development ofaether chemistry in the period c. 1860-1g05. Relying on published sources, the paper pays special attention to Mendeleev's view and offers a broad survey of other contributions. There never existed a school or coherent research tradition ofaether chemistry and the aether will therefore have to be dealt with separately. They were a heterogeneous group of scientists who only had in common that they attempted to make chemical sense of a substance which traditionally part of the physical world view. The problems they addressed were equally heterogeneous and ill-defined. Because of the paradigmatic status of the aether, the chemists did not have to justify its existence but only its chemical significance. The phenomena to be explained on the hypothesis of a chemical were, in many cases, the periodic system and the atomic weights of the elements. But empirical support and problem-solving power may not have been of primary importance. It appears that a strong motive for the chemists that, since the was there, it ought somehow to be incorporated into chemistry. Aether chemistry, as defined in the present paper, is largely restricted to works which dealt with the in a traditional chemical sense, i.e., in which it endowed with specific chemical characteristics or otherwise introduced for chemical purposes. Thus I will not consider the role of the in broader physical-chemical contexts such as photochemistry, spectroscopy or electrochemistry. References to the were frequent in these areas, but if these references were only to the physicists' luminiferous and imponderable aether-and they usually were-they did not signify a commitment to chemistry proper.