Fors, Hjalmar (Author)
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans raised a number of questions about the nature of reality and found their answers to be different from those that had satisfied their forebears. They discounted tales of witches, trolls, magic, and miraculous transformations and instead began looking elsewhere to explain the world around them. In The Limits of Matter, Hjalmar Fors investigates how conceptions of matter changed during the Enlightenment and pins this important change in European culture to the formation of the modern discipline of chemistry. Fors reveals how, early in the eighteenth century, chemists began to view metals no longer as the ingredients for “chrysopoeia”---or gold making---but as elemental substances, or the basic building blocks of matter. At the center of this emerging idea, argues Fors, was the Bureau of Mines of the Swedish State, which saw the practical and profitable potential of these materials in the economies of mining and smelting. By studying the chemists at the Swedish Bureau of Mines and their networks, and integrating their practices into the wider European context, Fors illustrates how they and their successors played a significant role in the development of our modern notion of matter and made a significant contribution to the modern European view of reality.
...MoreReview Cesare Pastorino (2015) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Bulletin for the History of Chemistry (pp. 120-121).
Review Ursula Klein (July 2016) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Technology and Culture (pp. 668-670).
Review John Powers (2016) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 420-422).
Review David Knight (2015) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 387-388).
Review Ferdinando Abbri (2016) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 246-249).
Review Jonathan Simon (2015) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 117-119).
Review David Philip Miller (2016) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology (pp. 110-112).
Review Paul Lucier (2016) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society (pp. 228-230).
Review Abney Salomon, Charlotte A. (2015) Review of "The Limits of Matter: Chemistry, Mining, and Enlightenment". Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science (p. 82).
Article
Fors, Hjalmar;
(2007)
Kemi, paracelsism och mekanisk filosofi. Bergskollegium och Uppsala cirka 1680--1770
(/isis/citation/CBB001220351/)
Book
Eric R. Scerri;
Elena Ghibaudi;
(2020)
What Is A Chemical Element? A Collection of Essays by Chemists, Philosophers, Historians, and Educators
(/isis/citation/CBB142422947/)
Article
Fors, Hjalmar;
(2014)
Elements in the Melting Pot: Merging Chemistry, Assaying, and Natural History, c. 1730--60
(/isis/citation/CBB001550418/)
Article
Ferdinando Abbri;
(2019)
Discovering Elements in a Scandinavian Context: Berzelius’s Lärbok i Kemien and the Order of the Chemical Substances
(/isis/citation/CBB930122067/)
Article
Knight, David;
(August 2007)
Davy and the Placing of Potassium among the Elements
(/isis/citation/CBB001221270/)
Book
MacLeod, Roy;
(2000)
Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise
(/isis/citation/CBB000110572/)
Article
Akeroyd, Michael;
(2010)
The Philosophical Significance of Mendeleev's Successful Predictions of the Properties of Gallium and Scandium
(/isis/citation/CBB001034532/)
Book
Ursula Klein;
(2016)
Nützliches Wissen: Die Erfindung der Technikwissenschaften
(/isis/citation/CBB775261184/)
Chapter
Farzad Mahootian;
(2020)
Kant, Cassirer, and the Idea of Chemical Element
(/isis/citation/CBB657452257/)
Chapter
Joachim Schummer;
(2020)
The Operational Definition of the Elements: A Philosophical Reappraisal
(/isis/citation/CBB928776970/)
Chapter
Eric R. Scerri;
(2020)
The Many Questions Raised by the Dual Concept of “Element”
(/isis/citation/CBB802086327/)
Article
Alfonso-Goldfarb, Ana Maria;
Ferraz, Marcia H. M.;
(2013)
Gur, Ghur, Guhr or Bur? The Quest for a Metalliferous Prime Matter in Early Modern Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001252456/)
Chapter
Joseph E. Earley;
(2020)
Origins of the Ambiguity of the Current Definition of Chemical Element
(/isis/citation/CBB476358998/)
Chapter
Robin Findlay Hendry;
(2020)
The Existence of Elements, and the Elements of Existence
(/isis/citation/CBB387242449/)
Book
Giovanni Cipriani;
(2020)
La cultura medica e chimico-farmaceutica, di lingua francese e di lingua inglese e la sua diffusione in Italia, fra la metà del Settecento e l'inizio dell'Ottocento
(/isis/citation/CBB843431224/)
Book
Piroska Balogh;
Dezső Gurka;
(2019)
Changes in the Image of Man from the Enlightenment to the Age of Romanticism: Philosophical and Scientific Receptions of (physical) Anthropology in the 18-19th Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB052431813/)
Article
Pier Remigio Salvi;
(2021)
Discovering Oxygen: Experimental Techniques and Logic of a Great Chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele
(/isis/citation/CBB414666961/)
Article
Fors, Hjalmar;
(2009)
“Away! Away to Falun!”: J. G. Gahn and the Application of Enlightenment Chemistry to Smelting
(/isis/citation/CBB000951933/)
Article
Rocke, Alan J.;
(2005)
In Search of El Dorado: John Dalton and the Origins of the Atomic Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB000650660/)
Article
Fauque, Danielle;
(2003)
La réception de la théorie atomique en France sous le Second Empire et au début de la IIIe République
(/isis/citation/CBB000740651/)
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