Spheres of Influence: Illustration, Notation, and John Dalton's Conceptual Toolbox, 1803–1835

Summary

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the English chemist John Dalton (1766–1844) developed his atomic theory, a set of theoretical commitments describing the nature of atoms and the rules guiding their interactions and combinations. In this paper, I examine a set of conceptual and illustrative tools used by Dalton in developing his theory as well as in presenting it to the public in printed form as well as in his many public lectures. These tools—the concept of ‘atmosphere’, the pile of shot analogy, and Dalton's system of chemical notation—served not just to guide Dalton's own thinking and to make his theories clear to his various audiences, but also to bind these theories together into a coherent system, presented in its definitive form in the three volumes of A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808, 1810, and 1827). Despite these links, Dalton's contemporaries tended to pick and choose which of his theories to accept; his system of notation failed to be adopted in part because it embodied the whole of his system indivisibly.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Professor Trevor Levere and to the other participants in his research class on instruments in the history of chemistry: Martha Harris, Victor Boantza, and Patricia Meindl. A version of this paper was presented at the Joint Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Science Society at the University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in the summer of 2004; I thank the audience and in particular our session commentator, David Knight, for their comments and questions. As well, two anonymous referees provided many valuable suggestions. My work is supported financially by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

¹An exception is Alan J. Rocke, ‘In Search of El Dorado: John Dalton and the Origins of the Atomic Theory’, Social Research 72 (2005), 125–58.

²John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808, 1810, 1827). Reproduced in facsimile by Wm. Dawson and Sons, London, 1964.

³This view of tools is offered by Robert E. Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago, 1994)

⁶Klein, ‘Creative Power’ (note 4), 14.

⁴Ursula Klein, ‘Techniques of Modelling and Paper-Tools in Classical Chemistry’, in Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science, edited by Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison (Cambridge, 1999), 146–66; “Introduction” (vii–xv) and “The Creative Power of Paper Tools in Early Nineteenth-Century Chemistry” (13–34) in Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences, edited by Ursula Klein (Dordrecht, 2001); and Ursula Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford, CA, 2003). Klein speaks of the “toolbox” available to nineteenth-century chemists; I have adapted this concept in my discussion of Dalton's personal toolbox.

⁵Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools (note 4), 2.

⁷This is not to say that Berzelius designed his system of notation without any theory in mind, but only that other chemists found his notation convenient to use without having to adopt his theoretical commitments. I am grateful to Trevor Levere for suggesting this clarification.

¹²Dalton, ‘Proportion of the Several Gases’ (note 8), 345.

⁸John Dalton, ‘Experimental Enquiry into the Proportion of the Several Gases or Elastic Fluids, Constituting the Atmosphere’, Manchester Memoirs 6 (1805), 244–58.

⁹Arnold Thackray in Atoms and Powers (Cambridge, 1970), positions Dalton outside the Newtonian tradition because, unlike Davy and Newton, Dalton did not believe in the unity of matter, but instead posited multiple chemical elements. Certainly, Dalton and Davy had their differences—but Dalton's commitment to understand the atmosphere in terms of particles repelling and, to a lesser extent, attracting each other, must make him a Newtonian of some kind. See Alan J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century (Columbus, OH, 1984), 39.

¹⁰John Dalton, ‘Lecture 17—Chemical Elements’, given 27 January 1810 at Royal Institution, London. Reprinted in Henry E. Roscoe and Arthur Harden, A New View of the Origin of Dalton's Atomic Theory (London, 1896), 13.

¹¹John Dalton, ‘Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases’, Manchester Memoirs 5 (1802): 535–602.

¹³John Dalton to John Gough, reprinted in a letter from John Gough to Dr. Holme, read to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society 27 January 1804 and printed in Manchester Memoirs 6 (1805): pp. 405–24. A similar but less precise statement appears in Dalton's ‘Experimental Essays on the Constitution of Mixed Gases’ (note 11), 554.

¹⁴Dalton, ‘Lecture 17’ (note 10), 16. Italics in original.

¹⁵Dalton, New System (note 2), 191.

¹⁸Dalton, New System (note 2), 143–44.

¹⁶Dalton, New System (note 2), 141.

¹⁷Dalton, New System (note 2), 143. Italics in original.

¹⁹Dalton, New System (note 2), 145.

²⁰John Dalton, ‘On the Absorption of Gases by Water and Other Liquids’, Manchester Memoirs 6 (1805, read 21 October 1803), 271–87, 286.

²²Dalton, New System (note 2), 213.

²¹Dalton, New System (note 2), 213.

²³Dalton, New System (note 2), 215.

²⁴Rocke, ‘In Search of El Dorado’ (note 1), 131.

²⁵Melvyn C. Usselman, ‘Multiple Combining Proportions: The Experimental Evidence’, in Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry, edited by Frederic L. Holmes and Trevor H. Levere (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 243–72, 252.

²⁶See Theron Cole, Jr., ‘Dalton, Mixed Gases, and the Origin of the Chemical Atomic Theory’, Ambix 25 (1978), 117–30 and references therein; and Rocke, ‘In Search of El Dorado’ (note 1). On Dalton's experimentation, see Usselman, ‘Multiple Combining Proportions’.

²⁷‘Atmosphere’, Oxford English Dictionary (online version). Term in use since 1638.

²⁸Dalton, ‘Proportion of the Several Gases’ (note 8), 345.

²⁹OED definition 3. Term in use since 1668. Oxford has no examples after 1750, and the meaning is certainly obsolete today, but Dalton seems clearly to be using this definition, as is the French crystallographer René Just Haüy during this same period in his acid–base theory of spheres of affinity; see Seymour H. Mauskopf, ‘Haüy's Model of Chemical Equivalence: Daltonian Doubts Exhumed’, Ambix 17(1970), 182–91.

³⁰Dalton, ‘Proportion of the Several Gases’ (note 8), 345–46.

³¹Dalton, ‘Constitution of Mixed Gases’ (note 11).

³²Dalton, New System (note 2), plate 7.

³³Dalton, New System (note 2), 548.

³⁴Dalton, New System (note 2), plate 8. See Appendix A for key.

³⁵W. Haldane Gee, Hubert Frank Coward and Arthur Harden, ‘John Dalton's Lectures and Lecture Illustrations’, Manchester Memoirs 59 (1915): 1–66, plate VIII, sheets 41 and 43.

³⁶Dalton notebooks 17 June 1806, pp. 218–19. Reproduced in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), plates 5 and 6 and pp. 73–73. Roscoe and Harden refer rather stylishly to “Dalton's paper atmosphere” (p. 19) to describe how useful the concept was in his own thinking on mixed gases.

³⁷John Dalton, ‘On heat’, partially transcribed in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), 71–72.

³⁸Dalton's model of heat affinity has much in common with Haüy's 1806 acid–alkaline affinity model, which is also presented in terms of weaker or stronger affinites of acids to attract alkalis, which come to surround them in a sphere. Mauskopf (note 29) writes:

an acid–alkali molecular system was conceived by Haüy as containing a central molecule (acid or alkali) surrounded by an effective sphere of affinity of a given radius. Saturation would obtain when the central molecule had captured enough of the other reactant to fill up this effective sphere of affinity. (p. 185)

Dalton was aware of Haüy's work on crystallography, at least, as Mauskopf demonstrates.

³⁹Dalton, ‘Absorption of Gases’ (note 20), 284.

⁴⁰Dalton, ‘Absorption of Gases’ (note 20), 282.

⁴¹Dalton, ‘Absorption of Gases’ (note 20), 283.

⁴³Dalton, ‘Absorption of Gases’ (note 20), 284. Illustration plate 1, 284.

⁴²Roscoe and Harden (note 10), 59. Dalton's paper was read in 1802, but published in 1805. As the Secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society at this time, he could easily have silently added them in for publication. It is therefore difficult to say whether the diagrams in his notebooks come before or after his published diagrams (I suspect but cannot prove that they come before.)

⁴⁴Dalton, New System (note 2), 189–90.

⁴⁵Dalton, New System (note 2), 136–38, and plate 3.

⁴⁷John Dalton, ‘Observations on Dr. Bostock's review of the atomic principles of chemistry’, Nicholson's Journal 29 (1811): 143–51; quoted in Rouvray (note 46), 56.

⁴⁸John Dalton, On the Phosphates and Arseniates . . . and a New and Easy Method of Analysing Sugar (Manchester: Harrison, 1842); quoted in Rouvray (note 46), 55. Dalton describes several of these models in a longer passage, and it is interesting that not all of them are, like the six-hole version, equidistant: holes are at either the poles or the equator, and Dalton makes note of which balls do and do not have equidistant holes. These wooden ball models are held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, and in the Science Museum, London.

⁴⁶W.V. Farrar, ‘Dalton and Structural Chemistry’, in John Dalton and the Progress of Science, edited by D.S.L. Cardwell (New York, 1968), 290–99; Dennis H. Rouvray, ‘John Dalton: The World's First Stereochemist’, Endeavour 19 (1995): 52–57.

⁴⁹Dalton, ‘Absorption of Gases’ (note 20), 286.

⁵⁰Dalton, Notebooks, reproduced in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), plate 3.

⁵¹Dalton, Notebooks, reproduced in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), plate 4.

⁵²Transcribed in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), 64 (sulphur) and 75 (azote)

⁵³Transcribed in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), 63. They note that ‘this is one of the very few symbolic equations to be found in the notes’.

⁵⁴Dalton, New System (note 2), plate 4. See Appendix A for key to symbols.

⁵⁵Dalton, New System (note 2), 220.

⁵⁶Dalton, New System (note 2), plates 5 and 6. See Appendix A for key to symbols.

⁵⁷Rocke, Chemical Atomism (note 9), 36. Dalton gave this rationale in 1811 in response to Bostock's criticism of his theory. See Dalton, ‘Observations on Dr. Bostock's Review’ (note 47).

⁵⁸See Appendix B for a summary of where Dalton lectured each year. Dalton was also a teacher, and doubtless communicated his own ideas to many of his pupils as well. Alan Rocke has written recently of Dalton's lecturing activity, arguing that ‘Dalton had a strong interest in promoting his theory from the beginning’ (Rocke, ‘In Search of El Dorado’ (note 1), 148).

⁵⁹Reprinted in Roscoe and Harden (note 10), 17, for instance. See also Arnold Thackray, John Dalton: Critical Assessments of his Life and Science (Cambridge, 1972).

⁶⁰Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), 41.

⁶¹quoted in Rocke, Chemical Atomism (note 9), 49. Rocke notes that ‘published extracts from [Thomson's] diary certify its general accuracy’.

⁶²John Dalton to Thomas Thomson, 6 March 1807. Letter transcribed in Thackray, John Dalton (note 59), 151–52.

⁶³Dalton, New System (note 2) dedication page.

⁶⁴Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), plate III, sheet 1.

⁶⁵Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), plate VI, sheet 3. The scale is one-fifth.

⁶⁶Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), plate VII, sheet 34.

⁶⁷Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), plate V, sheet 5.

⁶⁸Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), 6.

⁶⁹John Dalton to Johnathan Dalton, transcribed in Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), 11.

⁷⁰Dalton, quoted in Gee, Coward, and Harden (note 35), 9. The source of the passage is unclear.

⁷¹Kiyohisa Fujii, ‘The Berthollet–Proust Controversy and Dalton's Chemical Atomic Theory 1800–1820’, British Journal for the History of Science 19 (1986), 177–200, 190.

⁷²Rocke, Chemical Atomism (note 9), 83.

⁷³Humphry Davy, ‘The Bakerian Lecture: On Some of the Combinations of Oxymuriatic Gas and Oxygene, and on the Chemical Relations of These Principles, to Inflammable Bodies’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 101(1811), 1–35.

⁷⁵Humphry Davy, ‘Presidential Address on the Occasion of the Presentation of the First Royal Medal of the Royal Society to John Dalton’, Collected Works 7 (1939): 92–99; cited in Elizabeth Patterson, John Dalton and the Atomic Theory (New York, 1970), 218–19.

⁷⁴Thackray, Atoms and Powers (note 9).

⁷⁶William Thomas Brande, A Manual of Chemistry (London, 1830), Volume 1, cli.

⁷⁷Brande, a friend of and successor to Davy, might well have shared Davy's low opinion of Dalton and omitted him for personal reasons, even though it seems likely that both Wollaston and Davy used procedures much like Dalton's in arriving at their own determinations of atomic weights. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

⁸⁰Donovan (note 78), 399–400.

⁷⁸Michael Donovan, A Treatise on Chemistry (London, 1832), 364.

⁷⁹Donovan (note 78), 397.

⁸³‘Report of the Committee on Chemical Notation’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 4 (1836), 207.

⁸¹William H. Brock, ‘The British Association Committee on Chemical Symbols 1834: Edward Turner's Letter to British Chemists and a Reply by William Prout’, Ambix 33 (1986): 33–42; Timothy L. Alborn, ‘Negotiating Notation: Chemical Symbols and British Society, 1831–1835’, Annals of Science 46 (1989): 437–60.

⁸²For an illuminating discussion of the rejection of Dalton's notation in the period leading up to the 1835 British Association meeting, see Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools (note 4), 35–40.

⁸⁴Quoted in Thackray, John Dalton (note 59), 118.

⁸⁵Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools (note 4), 20.

⁸⁶The handbill distributed at the British Association meeting is reproduced in Thackray, John Dalton (note 59), 119. The handbill distributed at the Manchester Mechanics’ Institution lectures is reproduced in A.L. Smyth, John Dalton 1766–1844: A Bibliography of Works by and About Him with an Annotated List of His Surviving Apparatus and Personal Effects (Aldershot, UK, 1977), 59.