What Was Revolutionary about the Chemical Revolution?

Abstract

THE CHANGES TO CHEMICAL theory and practice that took place in late eighteenth-century France were truly revolutionary because of the radical nature of the theoretical and methodological changes that occurred, because they were deliberately so, and because that was the start of a tradition in the philosophy of chemistry. What makes the Chemical Revolution unique among scientific revolutions is that it was anticipated by both philosophers and scientists before it occurred. This meant that the chemists who effected those changes were aware of the subversive nature of their reforms and carried out the revolution in a deliberate fashion. Three major shifts in the science of chemistry coincided in late eighteenth-century France to make the Chemical Revolution the turning point in the history of chemistry: Oxygen chemistry overthrew the reigning phlogiston theory; a cadre of prominently political chemists reformed chemical terminology, providing a new system of names based on oxygen theory; and an empiricopragmatic conception of elements as simple substances replaced a waning belief in hypostatical chemical principles. This last shift (although itself gradual) ensured that the revolutionary changes in theory and nomenclature would be the last truly radical reforms chemistry would ever need. Furthermore, the Chemical Revolution was itself a revolution in the philosophy of chemistry as it forced a change in tacit assumptions about the nature of both matter and scientific knowledge. Moreover, studies of this revolution have long shaped general philosophy of science and continue to do so. Cherry-picking the history of science for examples to fit an a priori philosophical theory should be even less acceptable in philosophy of the special sciences than in other branches of philosophy. If philosophers of science are to learn from history, it should be by analyzing changes within periods that historians recognize as revolutionary and giving a philosophical account. Hence the Chemical Revolution is a crucial point for even the most minimally naturalistic philosophy of chemistry. For some time now, historians of science have understood that the chemistry practiced before the 1770s cannot be dismissed as prescientific mysticism, as was once supposed.