The Laboratory Challenge: Some Revisions of the Standard View of Early Modern Experimentation (2008)
Klein, Ursula (Author)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 99
Pages: 769--782
Edition Details: Focus Section: Laboratory History
Language: English
An examination of the use of the word laboratory before the nineteenth century yields two striking results. First, laboratory referred almost exclusively to a room or house where chemical operations such as distillation, combustion, and dissolution were performed. Second, a laboratory was not exclusively a scientific institution but also an artisanal workplace. Drawing on the historical actors' use of laboratory, the essay first presents (some necessarily scattered) evidence for the actual correspondence between artisanal and scientific laboratories in the eighteenth century. A particularly instructive case is the way the equipment of the laboratory of the Prussian Academy of Sciences was acquired. There was, in this case, a direct transfer of instruments, vessels, and materials from a pharmaceutical to an academic laboratory. The essay then argues that we ought to distinguish between two different experimental traditions in the early modern period: experimental philosophy and the laboratory tradition that meshed studies of nature with technological innovation.
...MoreDescription Focuses on examples from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and from coorespondence between artisanal and scientific laboratories in the 18th century.
Article Kohler, Robert E. (2008) Lab History: Reflections. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (p. 761).
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