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Berthelot's anti-atomism: A ‘matter of taste’?

Pages 585-590 | Received 20 Nov 1980, Published online: 22 Aug 2006

  • Quoted in Cathala (no first name given), unnumbered pages in Centenaire. Paul Sabatier. Prix Nobel. Membre de l'Institul. 1854–1954 Toulouse 1954 and Heinrich Reinboldt, ‘Fifty years of the Grignard reaction’, Journal of chemical education, 27 (1905), 476–488 (p. 477). Pierre Duhem, never a man to mince words, published a vicious attack on Berthelot in 1897, in which he twice referred to Berthelot as a mauvais genie, laying on Berthelot's shoulders blame for the alleged decline of French chemistry at the end of the century (see Duhem's ‘Thermochimie, à propos d'un livre récent de M. Marcelin Berthelot’, Revue des questions scientifiques, 42 (1897), 361–392 (pp. 390 and 392)). There is an extensive literature on the atomic debates of the nineteenth century. Recent articles on the subject include Alan J. Rocke's ‘Atoms and equivalents: the early development of the chemical atomic theory’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, 9 (1978), 225–263; Peter Clark, ‘Atomism vs. thermodynamics’, in Colin Howson (ed.), Method and appraisal in the physical sciences (1976, Cambridge, England), 41–105; Mary Jo Nye, ‘The nineteenth-century atomic debates and the dilemma of an “indifferent hypothesis”’, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, 7 (1976), 254–268; and P. Colmant, ‘Querelle à l'Institut entre équivalentistes et atomistes’, Revue des questions scientifiques, 143 (1972), 493–519. Two books have appeared explicitly detailing the atomic debates in England: W. H. Brock (ed.), The atomic debates. Brodie and the rejection of the atomic theory (1967, Leicester); and D. M. Knight, Atoms and elements. A study of theories of matter in England in the nineteenth century (1967, London). On Berthelot's general contributions to chemical science, see Maurice Crosland's biography in Dictionary of scientific biography, vol. 2 (1970, New York), 63–72.
  • Berthelot Marcelin On systems of chemical notation American journal of science 1878 15 184 187 (trans. P. Casamajor) (p. 185)
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1877 . Réponse à la Note de M. Wurtz … . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1189 – 1195 . (p. 1189)
  • Thus the symbol of oxygen would be θ in the modern formula H2O, where the atomic weight of oxygen is taken to be 16 rather than 8. See [Adolphe Wurtz], ‘Compte rendu des séances du Congrès international des chimistes réuni à Carlsruhe le 3, 4, et 5 septembre 1860’, Anlage VIII (pp. 671–688) in Anshütz Richard Auguste Kelkulé Berlin 1929 1 685 688 2 vols.
  • Duhem , Pierre . 1892 . Notation atomique et hypothèses atomiques . Revue des questions scientifiques , 31 : 391 – 454 . (p. 405)
  • For example, see Gerhardt Charles Traité de chimie organique Paris 1856 4 563 566 4 vols. On Laurent and Gerhardt, see Nicholas W. Fisher, ‘Organic classification before Kekulé, Parts I and II, Ambix, 20 (1973), 106–131 and 209–233.
  • Lavoisier A. Sur la nécessité de réformer et de perfectionner la nomenclature de la chimie, lu à l'assemblée publique de l'Académie Royale des Sciences du 18 avril 1787 Nomenclature chimique , 1st ed. et al. Paris 1787 in in Traité élémentaire de chimie (new ed., 3 vols., 1804, Avignon), vol. 3. 1–26 (pp. 6–7). Quoted and translated in Douglas McKic, Antoine Laroisier, Scientist. Economist, Social reformer (1962, New York), 189.
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1875 . La théorie atomique . Revue scientifique , 16 ( 2 ) : 442 – 447 . (p. 447). This article is an extract from Berthelot's textbook La synthèse chimique (1875, Paris).
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1902 . La revolution chimique, Lavoisier , 2nd ed. 157 – 157 . Paris
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1902 . La revolution chimique, Lavoisier , 2nd ed. 445 – 445 . Paris
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1877 . Atomes et équivalents . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1269 – 1276 . (pp. 1273–1274); ibid., 443.
  • Wurtz , Adolphe . 1877 . Recherches sur la loi d'Avogadro et d'Ampère . Comptes rendus de l'académie des Sciences , 84 : 977 – 983 . (p. 977)
  • Berthelot . 1877 . Réponse à la Note de M. Wurtz … . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1194 – 1194 .
  • Berthelot . 1877 . Réponse à la Note de M. Wurtz … . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1190 – 1190 .
  • Berthelot . 1877 . Atomes et équivalents . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1269 – 1269 .
  • Kundt , August and Warburg , Emil . 1875 . Ueber die specifische Wärme des Quecksilbergases . Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft , 8 : 945 – 948 .
  • Berthelot . 1877 . Réponse à la Note de M. Wurtz … . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 84 : 1192 – 1192 .
  • Berthelot . 1878 . On systems of chemical notation . American journal of science , 15 : 185 – 185 . (trans. P. Casamajor)
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1864 . Leçons sur les méthodes générales de synthèse en chimie organique 521 – 523 . Paris David M. Knight has stressed nineteenth-century influences on chemistry from the natural-history tradition in The transcendental part of chemistry (1978, Folkstone, Kent), 245–272.
  • Duhem . 1954 . Centenaire. Paul Sabatier. Prix Nobel. Membre de l'Institut. 1854–1954 373 – 373 . Toulouse
  • Marignac Charles Chemical equivalents and atomic weights considered as bases of a system of notation American journal of science 1878 15 89 98 (trans. P. Casamajor) (p. 97)
  • Berthelot . 1878 . On Systems of chemical notation . American Journal of science , 15 : 185 – 185 .
  • Comte , Auguste . 1970 . Introduction to positive philosophy Edited by: Ferré , Frederick . 31 – 31 . New York and 55. Comte took Newton's law of universal gravitation as a prototype of universal law, but he seems not to have thought it practicable to encompass all other scientific laws as subheadings under its umbrella.
  • Quoted from Query 31 in Newton Isaac Opticks , 4th ed. New York 1730 400 400 repr. 1952
  • Quoted from Lavoisier Antoine Laurent Elements of chemistry , 3rd ed. Edinburgh1789 xxiii xxiii (trans. Robert Kerr) 1796
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1885 . Les origines de l'alchimie 290 – 290 . Paris
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1873 . Sur la nature des éléments chimiques. Observations présentées par M. Berthelot, à propos de la Communication de M.N. Lockyer . Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences , 77 : 1353 – 1357 . (p. 1357)
  • Berthelot , Marcelin . 1885 . Les origines de l'alchimie 320 – 320 . Paris On the vortex atom, see William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), ‘On vortex atoms’, Philosophical magazine, (4) 34 (1867), 15–24.
  • See Berthelot Leçons sur les méthodes générales de synthèse en chimie organique Paris 1864 521 523 In his (footnote 5), 453–454, Duhem quotes a long passage from Henri Sainte-Claire Deville's ‘Leçons sur l'affinité’, given before the Société Chimique 28 February and 6 March 1867, published as Leçons de la Société Chimique de Paris (1869, Paris). Here Deville said: ‘Il ne faut pas l'oublier, la chimie est une science naturelle…. Etablissons les analogies, constatons les ressemblances et les différences de tout ordre, faisons peu à peu le travail d'une classification qui sera longtemps, qui sera peut-être toujours incomplète’ (p. 453).

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