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A view of the chemical revolution through contemporary textbooks: Lavoisier, Fourcroy and Chaptal*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Affiliation:
Département de Philosophie, Université Paris X, 200 Avenue de la République, F-92100, Nanterre Cedex, France.

Extract

Scientific textbooks are often said to deliver a stereotyped kind of knowledge, which conceals rather than reveals the real making of science. They may, however, alternatively be regarded as of peculiar interest for historians of science. An over-mechanical application of the Kuhnian concepts of ‘scientific revolution’ and ‘normal science’ can lead to the neglect of the internal dynamics of ‘normal science’. Scientific textbooks may provide a better understanding of the process of normalization in science.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1990

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References

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22 Ibid., 5th edn, Paris, An II, T.I, p. viij.

23 For a detailed presentation of this book and information about its reception, see Smeaton, W.A., Fourcroy, chemist and revolutionary, 1755–1809, Cambridge, 1962, pp. 191195Google Scholar, Fourcroy's twelve headings in the Philosophie chimique, 1792Google Scholar, were: (1) The action of light; (2) the action of caloric; (3) the action of air in combustion; (4) the nature and action of water; (5) the nature and action of earth, and the formation of alkalis; their roles in combinations; (6) the nature and properties of combustible substances; (7) the formation and decomposition of acids; (8) the union of acids with the earths and alkalis; (9) the oxidation and solution of metals; (10) the nature and formation of vegetable matter; (11) the passage of vegetables to the state of animal matter, and the nature of the latter; (12) the spontaneous decomposition of vegetable and animal matters.

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43 The drafts kept in the Archives de l'Academie de Science (Folder 1260), include two projects. One, dated 12 December 1792, only detailed the first and the second part under the heading ‘Table des chapitres d'un cours de chimie expérimentale’. The second, dated 18 December 1792, is entitled ‘Table générale d'un cours de Philosophie expérimentale’ and gives an outline of six parts, though the second one is lacking.

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50 Ibid., p. xxiij.

51 Ibid., p. xxx.

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