John A. Stewart (Author)
The standard historiography of eighteenth-century chemistry focuses on the chemical revolution. French chemists, most notably Lavoisier, replaced the phlogiston theory of combustion with a new one based on oxygen and modernized the chemical nomenclature. This history has largely been treated as internal to the history of chemistry. My dissertation decenters combustion and the French contribution by continuing modern work by Mi Gyung Kim (2003) and Georgette Taylor (2006) that locates elective attraction as the fundamental chemical theory in the second half of the eighteenth century. Also referred to as chemical affinity, this was an empirical theory that recorded the combining preferences of simples and compounds in order to understand and predict reactions. The development and demise of this theory extends well beyond the boundaries of chemistry as a technical subject. I establish the existence of an important affinity school in Scotland centered in the work of William Cullen (1710-1790), Joseph Black (1728-1799), and their students. These lecturers applied affinity not only to inorganic chemistry but also to medicine, including respiration, and the treatment of syphilis and smallpox. The application of affinity theory in the medically important study of mineral waters, led to the advancement of chemical analysis techniques, but also to serious experimental and theoretical problems for the affinity theory in the work of John Murray from 1815 to 1817. Well before this, however, Scottish chemists had applied affinity theory to agriculture. The Scottish Improvement movement of the eighteenth century focused the advancement of agricultural yields. Led by the third Duke of Argyll and Lord Kames, the Scottish great landowners attempted to rationalize agriculture through chemistry, and in turn advanced the careers of important affinity chemists like Cullen and Black. Commercial and industrial applications of affinity theory included the production of manures, the production and sale of artificial mineral waters, and the preparation of soda and alkaline salts for bleaching, a key process in the textile industry. As a consequence, the history of affinity chemistry cannot be understood without reference to the political, social, and economic issues that come to the fore in this dissertation.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/09(E), Mar 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1367586234.
Book
Boantza, Victor D.;
(2013)
Matter and Method in the Long Chemical Revolution: Laws of Another Order
(/isis/citation/CBB001420404/)
Article
Taylor, Georgette;
(2008)
Marking Out a Disciplinary Common Ground: The Role of Chemical Pedagogy in Establishing the Doctrine of Affinity at the Heart of British Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB000831682/)
Article
Donovan, Arthur;
(1976)
Pneumatic chemistry and Newtonian natural philosophy in the 18th century: William Cullen and Joseph Black
(/isis/citation/CBB000010859/)
Book
Donovan, Arthur L.;
(1975)
Philosophical chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment: The doctrines and discoveries of William Cullen and Joseph Black
(/isis/citation/CBB000011027/)
Article
Taylor, Georgette;
(2006)
Unification Achieved: William Cullen's Theory of Heat and Phlogiston as an Example of his Philosophical Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB000771294/)
Article
Kim, Mi Gyung;
(2008)
The “Instrumental” Reality of Phlogiston
(/isis/citation/CBB000960289/)
Article
Wolfgang Lefèvre;
(2018)
The Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787): A Document of Transition
(/isis/citation/CBB097357446/)
Book
Frercks, Jan;
(2008)
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: System der antiphlogistischen Chemie
(/isis/citation/CBB001020636/)
Article
Mauskopf, Seymour;
(2002)
Richard Kirwan's Phlogiston Theory: Its Success and Fate
(/isis/citation/CBB000470885/)
Article
Kim, Mi Gyung;
(2011)
From Phlogiston to Caloric: Chemical Ontologies
(/isis/citation/CBB001024703/)
Article
Perrin, Carleton E.;
(1982)
A reluctant catalyst: Joseph Black and the Edinburgh reception of Lavoisier's chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB000003718/)
Chapter
Vickers, Neil;
(2011)
Aspects of Character and Sociability in Scottish Enlightenment Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001251015/)
Article
Kawashima, Keiko;
(2003)
Madame Lavoisier et l'Essai sur le phlogistique
(/isis/citation/CBB000470206/)
Article
Silva, Marcos Rodrigues da;
(2013)
Ensino de ciências: realismo, antirrealismo e a construção do conceito de oxigênio
(/isis/citation/CBB001420650/)
Article
Boantza, Victor;
(2008)
The Phlogistic Role of Heat in the Chemical Revolution and the Origins of Kirwan's “Ingenious Modifications...Into the Theory of Phlogiston”
(/isis/citation/CBB000774842/)
Article
Nicholas W. Best;
(2016)
Lavoisier’s “Reflections on Phlogiston” II: On the Nature of Heat
(/isis/citation/CBB776078651/)
Book
Black, Joseph;
Anderson, R. G. W.;
Jones, Jean;
(2012)
The Correspondence of Joseph Black
(/isis/citation/CBB001200114/)
Article
Kearney, Will;
(2011)
That Beautiful Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001450580/)
Chapter
Rocca, Julius;
(2007)
William Cullen (1710--1790) and Robert Whytt (1714--1766) on the Nervous System
(/isis/citation/CBB001032145/)
Article
Ladyman, James;
(2011)
Structural Realism versus Standard Scientific Realism: The Case of Phlogiston and Dephlogisticated Air
(/isis/citation/CBB001211459/)
Be the first to comment!