Tate, Gregory (Author)
Analogy, the comparison of one set of relations to another, was essential to Humphry Davy’s understanding of chemistry. Throughout his career, Davy used analogical reasoning to direct and to interpret his experimental analyses of the chemical reactions between substances. In his writing, he deployed analogies to organise and to explain his theories about the relations between physical processes and between the properties of different chemical elements and compounds. But Davy also regularly expressed two concerns about analogical comparison: first, that it was founded not on the rational interpretation of facts but on imaginative speculation; and second, that it was a kind of rhetoric, the persuasiveness of which depended not on material evidence but on misleading figures of speech. This article discusses the influences that informed Davy’s ambivalent assessment of the value of analogy, and it examines the distinct yet overlapping ways in which this assessment was expressed in his notebooks, his lectures and treatises on chemistry, his philosophical writings, and his poetry.
...MoreArticle Frank A. J. L. James; Sharon Ruston (2019) New Studies on Humphry Davy: Introduction. Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 95-102).
Article
Sharon Ruston;
(2019)
Humphry Davy: Analogy, Priority, and the “true philosopher”
(/isis/citation/CBB548675852/)
Chapter
Chabot, Hugues;
(2006)
Les Origines d'un nouvel élément chimique: l'affaire du chlore
(/isis/citation/CBB001024261/)
Book
Holmes, Richard;
(2008)
The Age of Wonder
(/isis/citation/CBB001024401/)
Article
Hattie Lloyd Edmondson;
(2019)
Chivalrous Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB716686962/)
Article
Knight, David;
(August 2007)
Davy and the Placing of Potassium among the Elements
(/isis/citation/CBB001221270/)
Book
Stock, John Edmonds;
(2003)
Memoirs of Thomas Beddoes, M. D
(/isis/citation/CBB000330959/)
Chapter
Frank A. J. L. James;
(2018)
The Subversive Humphry Davy: Aristocracy and Establishing Chemical Research Laboratories in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB343237491/)
Thesis
Fisher, Amy Alice;
(2010)
An Arc Across Fields of Study: Electricity in Physics and Chemistry (1751--1807)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562739/)
Book
Fullmer, June Z.;
(2000)
Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist
(/isis/citation/CBB000111591/)
Article
Golinski, Jan;
(2012)
Humphry Davy: The Experimental Self
(/isis/citation/CBB001231164/)
Article
Frank A. J. L. James;
(2019)
Humphry Davy’s Early Chemical Knowledge, Theory and Experiments: An Edition of His 1798 Manuscript, “An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light” from The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Courtney Library, MS DVY/2
(/isis/citation/CBB662505737/)
Article
Andrew Lacey;
(2019)
New Light on John Davy
(/isis/citation/CBB433584959/)
Article
Frank A. J. L. James;
Sharon Ruston;
(2019)
New Studies on Humphry Davy: Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB704125685/)
Article
Grossman, Mark I.;
(2010)
William Higgins at the Dublin Society, 1810--20: The Loss of a Professorship and a Claim to the Atomic Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001022725/)
Article
Rubin, Mordecai B.;
(2010)
The Development of the Mercury Lamp
(/isis/citation/CBB001232513/)
Article
David Knight;
(2019)
Sources and Resources for Davy: 1960 and Now
(/isis/citation/CBB992122289/)
Article
William Lynch;
(2015)
Thresholds of Change: Why Didn’t Green Chemistry Happen Sooner?
(/isis/citation/CBB031301470/)
Article
Vangelis Koutalis;
(2014)
Making discoveries for a better life vs. bringing fruits to the national treasury: Davy, Babbage, Brewster and the (ongoing) struggle for the soul of science
(/isis/citation/CBB203024543/)
Article
Kurtis Hessel;
(2016)
The Romantic-Era Lecture: Dividing and Reuniting the Arts and Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB239805148/)
Article
Ernst Kenndler;
(2021)
Capillary Electrophoresis and its Basic Principles in Historical Retrospect. Part 2. Electrophoresis of Ions: the Period from its Discovery in 1800 till Faraday’s Lines of Electric Force in the 1840s.
(/isis/citation/CBB767332776/)
Be the first to comment!