Irish, Stephen T. (Author)
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 60, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 234-254
This essay proposes a new interpretation of the Calculus of Chemical Operations of Benjamin Collins Brodie Jr. (1817 1880). Its goals are to re-assess Brodie's motivations and to suggest reasons why they have not been apparent. It is argued that a central purpose of the Calculus was to justify a new theory of the elements. Brodie hoped to use this to ground a heuristically useful classification scheme embracing all chemical substances. Had he succeeded, he might have realised a similar project pursued previously by Charles Gerhardt, the theorist who most heavily influenced his work. Brodie shared Gerhardt's ideal of classifying chemical substances through series relations, later grounded in types. He believed that this required a revised understanding of the elements. However, Brodie never completed his projected classification, for which parts I and II of the Calculus were preliminary.
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