Methods and Methodology in the Development of Organic Chemistry

References

• A. J. Rocke, “Methodology and its Rhetoric in Nineteenth-Century Chemistry: Induction versus Hypothesis”, in E. Garber (ed.), A Festschrift for Robert Schofield, forthcoming.
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• For an introduction to the literature, see J. A. Schuster and R. R. Yeo (eds.), The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method (Dordrecht, 1986).
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• P. B. Wood, “Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society”, British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980), 1–26.
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• Ibid., p. 11.
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• J. G. McEvoy, “Electricity, Knowledge, and the Nature of Progress in Priestley’s Thought”, British Journal for the History of Science, 12 (1979), 1–30, p. 14.
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• Punch, 69 (1871), 8 April, p. 145; A. Ellegard, Darwin and the General Reader (Göteborg, 1958), p. 190.
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• Charles Darwin to J. Scott, 6 June 1863, in F. Darwin and A. C. Seward (eds.), More Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols., vol. 2 (London, 1903), p. 323. This example is also given in Rocke (note 1).
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• Liebig to Gerhardt, 1 March 1849: “Rappelez-vous ce que je vous dis: vous brisez votre avenir et vous irritez tout le monde, comme Laurent et Persoz, si vous continuez à faire des théories”. See J. H. Brooke, “Laurent, Gerhardt, and the Philosophy of Chemistry”, in R. McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 6 (1975), 405–29, p. 421.
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• R. R. Yeo, “Scientific Method and the Rhetoric of Science in Britain, 1830-1917”, in Schuster and Yeo (note 2), 259–97, pp. 270–1; idem., “Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Science in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain”, Annals of Science, 36 (1979), 493–516.
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• P. B. Medawar, “Is the Scientific Paper Fraudulent?”, Saturday Review of Literature ( 1 Aug. 1964), 42–3; on the relevance of method-discourse to the micro-politics of science, see D. P. Miller, “Method and the ‘Micropolitics’ of Science: the early years of the Geological and Astronomical Societies of London”, in Schuster and Yeo (note 2), 227–57.
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• Instructive examples of the divergence between what a scientist may affirm about his method and what the historian needs to say will be found in F. L. Holmes, Claude Bernard and Animal Chemistry (Cambridge Mass., 1974). Though Bernard cultivated the image of a scientist so detached from his own ideas that he could drop them when experiment so decreed, he had himself been more tenacious.
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• Liebig to Wöhler, 9 April and 6 June 1863, in A. W. Hofmann (ed.), Aus Justus Liebig’s und Friedrich Wohler’s Briefwechsel, 2 vols., Brunswick 1888, vol. 2 pp. 133 and 138.
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• Rocke (note 1).
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• Liebig wrote, “The entire theory of Dr. Laurent is an arbitrary play with ideas and formulas to which he attributes a significance they do not have; it has arisen out of a complete ignorance of the principles of true scientific research”. See J. P. Phillips, “Liebig and Kolbe, Critical Editors”, Chymia, 11 (1966), 89–97, p. 91.
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• S. F. Mason, “The foundations of classical stereochemistry”, Topics in Stereochemistry, 9 (1976), 1–34.
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• Rocke (note 1).
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• A. Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, transl, by R. Kerr, Edinburgh, 1790, Dover Reprint, New York, 1965, p. 180. See also M. Crosland, “Lavoisier’s Theory of Acidity”, Isis, 64 (1973), 306–25.
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• Journal de Pharmacie, 19 (1833), p. 618. See also C. A. Russell, “Berzelius and the Development of the Atomic Theory”, in D. S. L. Cardwell (ed.), John Dalton and the Progress of Science, Manchester, 1968, 259–73; A. J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro, Colombus, 1984, ch. 6.
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• J. B. Dumas and J. Liebig, “Note sue l’État actuel de la Chimie Organique”, Comptes Rendus Académie des Sciences, 5 (1837), 567–72, p. 569.
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• On the role of type theory in organic classification see the three studies by N. W. Fisher, “Organic Classification before Kekulé”, Part 1, Ambix, 20 (1973), 106–31; Part II, ibid., 209–33; “Kekulé and organic classification”, ibid., 21 (1974), 29–52. For the contest between radical and type theories, C. A. Russell, The History of Valency, Leicester, 1971, chs. 1–3; and Rocke (note 18), chs. 7–9.
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• Comptes Rendus des Travaux de Chimie, 6 (1850), 440. This claim was made before Gerhardt had fully developed his type theory, but it reflected his conviction that all reactions, both organic and inorganic, could be regarded as substitutions—as double decompositions rather than the result of simple addition of an electropositive to an electronegative part.
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• C. A. Wurtz, “Oxide of ethylene considered as a link between organic and mineral chemistry”, Journal of the Chemical Society, 15 (1862), 406. For a more detailed analysis of Wurtz’ argument see J. H. Brooke, “Organic synthesis and the Unification of Chemistry—a re-valuation”, British Journal for the History of Science, 5 (1971), 363–92.
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• J. H. Brooke, “Wohler’s Urea and its Vital Force”—a Verdict from the Chemists”, Ambix, 15 (1968), 84—114.
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• N. V. Sidgwick, “Coordination Compounds and the Bohr Atom”, Journal of the Chemical Society, 123 (1923), 725–30. G. B.Kauffman, Classics in Coordination Chemistry, Part 3, New York, 1978, 127–42.
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• I have developed this line of argument at greater length in J. H. Brooke, “The Chemistry of the Organic and the Inorganic: a study in the dynamic interaction of concepts”, Kagakushi (Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry), 7 (1980), 37–60.
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• L. E. Grimaux and C. Gerhardt, Charles Gerhardt: Sa Vie, Son Oeuvre, Sa Correspondance, Paris, 1900, 204—6.
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• Berzelius to Laurent, June 1844, in H. G. Söderbaum (ed.), Berzelius Bref Uppsala, 1920, section 7 (miscellaneous correspondence), 208.
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• C. A. Russell, “The Structure of Chemistry”, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1976, Unit 1 p. 38 and Unit 3 p. 43. See also C. A. Russell, N. G. Coley and G. K. Roberts, Chemists By Profession: the Origins and Rise of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1977, p. 70.
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• That there were acids devoid of oxygen, such as prussic, was soon to be a criticism levelled against Lavoisier by Berthollet who declined, however, to make the criticism stick. See H. E. Le Grand, “Berthollet’s Essai de Statique Chimique and Acidity”, Isis, 67 (1976), 229–238.
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• Revue Scientifique et Industrielle, 14 (1843), 103—4.
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• F. L. Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life, Madison, 1985, p. 387.
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• Evidence for this alternative reading will be found in J. H. Brooke, “Chlorine Substitution and the Future of Organic Chemistry: methodological issues in the Laurent-Berzelius Correspondence”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 4 (1973–4), 47–94.
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• This crisis in theory construction is explored in Brooke (note 8).
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• Thus benzaldehyde would be written in the form C?H50, H to indicate its susceptibility to chlorination, but in the form when the reaction was with ammonia.
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• C. Gerhardt, “Sur la Classification Chimique”, Revue Scientifique et Industrielle, 14 (1843), 580–609, p. 588; idem., “Sur le Point d’Ebullition des Hydrogènes Carbonés”, Annales de Chimie, 14 (1845), 107–114; idem., “Recherches de Chimie Organique”, Comptes Rendus des Travaux de Chimie, 1 (1845), 65–96.
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• T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension, Chicago, 1977, ch. 6.
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• Revue Scientifique et Industrielle, 1 (1840), 340.
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• See Russell (note 20), pp. 57–61; idem, (note 28), unit 2 p. 31.
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• Russell (note 20), pp. 75–6.
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• Sidgwick (note 24).
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• Two recent discussions of Avogadro’s hypothesis in its nineteenth-century context are J. H. Brooke, “Avogadro’s Hypothesis and its Fate: a case-study in the failure of case-studies”, History of Science, 19 (1981), 235–73; N. W. Fisher, “Avogadro, the Chemists, and Historians of Chemistry”, Part 1, History of Science, 20 (1982), 77–102; Part 2, idem., 212–31.
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• S. Cannizzaro, “Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy”, translated from II Nuovo Cimento, 7 (1858), 321–66. Alembic Club Reprint, no. 18, pp. 5–6.
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• P. Feyerabend, Against Method, London, 1975, p. 302.
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