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Article ID: CBB860790234

Good Names but Better Symbols: The Establishment of Chemical Notation as a Nomenclatural Corrective at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (2021)

O'Neil, Sean Thomas (Author)

Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 68
Issue: 4
Pages: 331-364

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2021.1983695

DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2021.1983695

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Communication within scientific contexts Methodology of science; scientific method Chemistry Equations and formulae Signs and symbols Terminology and nomenclature 19th century 18th century

Although the Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787) is best known for its reform of chemical names, it also proposed to reform chemical symbols. However, historians have generally concluded that, unlike its nomenclatural counterpart, the Méthode's new system of symbols had very little impact. This article argues otherwise. First, drawing on printed and, to a lesser extent, manuscript evidence, it demonstrates that the Méthode's new symbols circulated more widely than previously assumed. Second, and more importantly, it demonstrates that advocates of the new symbols used them to redress problems in chemical nomenclature. Despite the Méthode's thoroughness, the new nomenclature harboured certain shortcomings, raising the possibility of an obligation to revise names that were only recently “revolutionary.” Furthermore, not all chemical practitioners were eager to dispose of all the older names completely. Advocates of the new symbols addressed such problems by establishing symbols as modifiable designations for substances that could be readily updated, thereby alleviating the seeming need to do so in names as well. Subsequently adapted for Daltonian and Berzelian symbols, this practice of designing chemical symbols to compensate for the use of infelicitous or familiar chemical names soon became commonplace, and, indeed, it underwrites aspects of chemical communication still today.

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