The Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787): A Document of Transition

Abstract

The Méthode de nomenclature chimique, published by the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1787, is rightly praised as a landmark in the history of early modern chemistry. It is also – though less rightly – considered to be a fruit of Lavoisier’s Chemical Revolution. In fact, main features of the Méthode’s nomenclatural and classificatory proposal rest on fundamental chemical conceptions that were shared by adherents of the phlogistic chemical system as well. After a short presentation of the Méthode’s four authors (Berthollet, Fourcroy, Guyton de Morveau, and Lavoisier) and the circumstances of their collaboration, my paper will focus on those features of the Méthode that illuminate decisive achievements of the entire community of eighteenth-century chemists, as well as those features that reveal an unsettled state of many of its convictions.