Between science and craft: The case of berthollet and dyeing

Summary

In Éléments de l'art de la teinture, Claude-Louis Berthollet (1748–1822) organized and described knowledge of a chemical craft in terms of contemporary chemical science. The resulting intellectual structure of his treatise established a programme and method for the subsequent improvement of dyeing. Berthollet's descriptive and hierarchical systematization of knowledge rendered problems intelligible and isolated them so that they could be attacked and solved by methodical experimentation. This double-edged processes of solving practical problems, first cognitively and then experimentally, provides a key to understanding the way science has contributed to rapid and systematic technological change.