Some Early References to Revolutions in Chemistry

REFERENCES

• "The Chemical Revolution: A Word from Monsieur Fourcroy", A mbix, 23 (1976), 1–4. Guerlac showed that Fourcroy first referred to Lavoisier's "revolution in chemistry" in his Leyons aementaires d'histoire naturelle et de chimie, 2 vols., Paris, 2782, i, 22. The phrase "the Chemical Revolution," used commonly by nearly all historians of chemistry, was apparently invented by Marcelin Berthelot (1827–1907), in the title of his book, La Révolution chimique—Lavoisier, Paris, 189o. Curiously, I can find no use of the phrase in the text of the book itself, although there are numerous references to the revolutionary consequences of Lavoisier's work. The phrase "Chemical Revolution" seems to have become common only in recent years. According to Maurice Crosland, Berthelot invented the expression in the context of the celebra-tion of the centenary of the French Revolution. "Chemistry and the Chemical Revolution", in G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds., The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science, Cambridge, 1980, 403.
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• MintOire sur /a manUre dont les anima= sont affectés par diffirens fluides aériformes méphitiques, Paris, 1778. This work contains (most notably in its title) what may be the first printed use of the word "aeriform". Lavoisier invented the word two years earlier in a memoir dated 28 February 1776, and entitled, "Mémoire sur quelques substances qui sont constamment dans l'état de fluides aériformes au degre de chaleur et de pression habituel de l'atmosphère". (See Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier, theoricien et experimentateur, Paris, 1955, 36–7.) The memoir was not deposited in the Academy until 5 September, 1777 and was not published until many years later.
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• Bucquet, Mémoire, 2. "Cette verite [that it is sometimes necessary to renounce old ideas when presented with new discoveries] peut a juste titre s'appliquer a la doctrine des Gas: il en est peu qui ait opéré une revolution plus grande dans la chimie, & qui ait plus contribué aux progres de cefte belle science".
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• Paris, 1773.
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• Between February and August, 1773, Rozier's journal, Observations sur let physique, etc., published a large number of papers concerning the chemico-pneumatic experiments of various scientists, most importantly those of Joseph Black and Joseph Priestley.
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• Baume, Chimie, iii, 693. "Quelques Physiciens croient trouver a l'air fixe des proprietés qui doivent faire rejetter le phlogistique pour lui substituer l'air fixe. L'air fixe doit, suivant ces mémes Physiciens, occasionner dans la Chymie une revolution totale, & changer l'ordre des connoissances acquises." This passage was quoted by Lavoisier in the historical introduction to his Opuscules physiques et chimiques (x774). (See Lavoisier, Oeuvres, i, Paris, 1864, 55E)
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• ". . . occasioner une revolution en physique at en chimie." From a memorandum of zo February 1773. See Berthelot, La revolution chimique, 48. This memorandum was mistakenly dated 1772; see Henry Guerlac, "Joseph Priestley's First Papers on Gases and Their Reception in France", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 12 (1957), 1–12.
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• It is extremely doubtful that Baume was ever very friendly with Lavoisier. Information con-cerning the direction of Lavoisier's work may possibly have come to Baurne through a third person.
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• "Precis de la doctrine de M. de Morveau, sur le phlogistique, & observations sur cette doctrine", Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts", 2 (1773), 281–91.
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• "II ne seroit pent-are pas impossible de demontrer que tout ce que les Chymistes ont avance au sujet de ce nouveau principe est entièrement denue de fondement". ibid., 290.
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• Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Bibliography of the Works of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, 1743–1794, London, 1954, 28.
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• The author of the anonymous article attributed the formation of vapours and the volatilization of solid substances to the force of a "feu libre ez en action" as opposed to phlogiston, which he described as "un être passif" and as "feu eteint". Lavoisier, on the other hand, attributed the formation of vapours not to free fire, but to fixed fire, and in fact, he identified this fixed fire, responsible for the expansible properties of gases and vapours, with phlogiston. See, for example, his "Essay sur la nature de l'air", of April 1773 (in René Fric, Contribution a l'étude de l'évolution des idées de Lavoisier sur la nature de l'air et sur la calcination des métaux", Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, 12 (1959), 147–51, where Lavoisier consistently refers to the fire united to vapours and gases as "pholgiston". The author of the anonymous article seems to have the idea that substances are volatalized through the purely mechanical action of the rapidly moving particles of heat. For Lavoisier, on the other hand, vaporization was caused by the chemical union of the evaporable fluid and an innately expansible matter of fire. For the author of the anonymous article, a volatilized fluid was in continuous violent activity. For Lavoisier, a vapour was a stagnant fluid which main-tamed its fluidity not through ceaseless mechanical activity, but through the reciprocal repulsion of its particles.
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• See his "Expansibilité", Encyclopedie, vi, Paris, 1756, 274–85. Turgot clearly considered the cause of expansibility (as in vapours) to be a mechanical action (rather than an abstract force), and furthermore, he thought of fire or heat as the cause of all expansibility. As I have shown elsewhere ("The Origins of Lavoisier's Theory of the Gaseous State", in Harry Woolf, ed., The Analytic Spirit: Essays in the History of Science in Honor of Henry Guerlac, Ithaca, 1981, 15–39), Lavoisier took Turgot's theory of expansibility and modified it to account for the phenomenon of cooling by evaporation. In doing so, he changed the role of heat in the production of vapours from a mechanical to a chemical action.
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• This incident is covered in Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier—The Crucial Year, Ithaca: 1961, 146–55. Turgot developed his theory in a series of letters to his good friend and biographer, M.-J.-A. de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). Condorcet should also be considered as a prime candidate for authorship of the anonymous article.
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• Turgot wrote five anonymous articles for the Encyclopedie. (See Gough, "Origins", 22.)
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• Paris, 1753, 408–47.
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• "Il est clair que la revolution qui placeroit la Chimie dans le rang qu'elle mérite qui la mettroit a moms a cote de la Physique calculée; que cette revolution, dis-je, ne peut are opérée que par un chimiste habile, enthousiaste, & hardi, qui se trouvant dans une position favorable, & profitant habilement de quelques circonstances heureuses, sauroit reveiller l'attention des savans, d'abord par une ostentation bruyante, par un ton decide ec affirmatif, & ensuite par des raisons, si ses premieres armes avoient entame le prejuge". Ibid., 409–10. Venel's anticipation of a revolution in chemistry has been pointed out by Maurice Crosland, "The Development of Chemistry". Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 24 (1963), 372; and W. A. Smeaton, "Vend", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XIII, New York, 1976, 603.
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• I. Bernard Cohen, "The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution", Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 283. Professor Cohen writes that his research has uncovered no truly self-conscious revolution earlier than the chemical revolution, but even before Lavoisier the British physicist Robert Symmer had written (in a private letter) that his new ideas in electricity were revolutionary.
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