Amedeo Avogadro's Concept of the Atom: Some New Remarks

Notes and References

• A. Avogadro, "Idées sur l'acidité et l'alcalinité," Journal de Physique, 69, (1809), 142–8.
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• J. K. Bonner, Amedeo Avogadro: A Reassessment of his Research and its Place in the Early Nineteenth Century (The Johns Hopkins University, PhD thesis, Baltimore, MD, 1974). Bonner discussed the formation of the atomic hypothesis of 1811 moving on from Robert Fox's observation. In 1971, Fox, analyzing Avogadro's treatment of specific heats, affirmed that it owed much to the views on affinity developed in Berthollet's Essai. R. Fox, The Caloric Theory of Gases from Lavoisier to Regnault (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 197. Following Bonner's innovative interpretation, John Hedley Brooke and Nicholas Fisher published two fundamental articles, in which, as William H. Brock puts it, they resolved 'the pseudo-problem of why Avogadro's hypothesis was ignored for so long;' W. H. Brock, "History of Chemistry," in P. Corsi and P. Weindling (eds.), Information Sources in the History of Science and Medicine (London: Butterworth Scientific, 1983), pp. 317–46, on p. 326. Cf. 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. Fisher, "Avogadro, the Chemists and Historians of Chemistry," History of Science, 20 (1982), 77–102 and 212–34. Regarding the genesis of the hypothesis, both Brooke and Fisher remained convinced of the interpretation proposed by Bonner.
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• A. Avogadro, "Essai d'une manière de determiner les masses relatives des molecules elémentaires des corps, et les proportions scion lesquelles elks entrent dans ces combinai-sons,"Journal de Physique, 73 (1811), 58–76. See now also A. Avogadro, Saggi e memorie sulla teoria atomica (1811–1838), edited by M. Ciardi (Firenze: Giunti, 1995), pp. 39–65.
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• As is well known, Dalton's atomic theory was not immediately accepted on the Continent, but was tested against the principal methodological criteria characterizing French science. Chemical qualities were attributed to Dalton's atom, which consequently ended up coinciding with the so-called 'integrant molecules.' The integrant molecule represented the smallest particle into which a substance could be divided, through experimental analysis, without losing its specific qualities. In practice, it represented the equivalent of Lavoisier's element. A. W. Thackray, "The Origins of Dalton's Chemical Atomic Theory: Daltonian Doubts Resolved," Isis, 57 (1966), 35–54; D. S. L. Cardwell (ed.), John Dalton and the Progress of Science (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968); S. H. Mauskopf, "Hauy's Model of Chemical Equivalence: Daltonian Doubts Exhumed," Ambix, 17 (1970), 182–91.
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• For Avogadro's biography see M. Morselli, Amedeo Avogadro. A Scientific Biography (Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster: Reidel Publishing Company, 1984). Morselli had previously published the transcription of a first version of the manuscript of Avogadro's fundamental Essai: M. Morselli, "The Manuscript of Avogadro's Essai d'une maniere de determiner les masses relatives des molecules élementaires," Ambix, 27 (1980), 147–72.
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• For some considerations on this topic, see M. Ciardi, "Amedeo Avogadro: la biografia mancante," in A. La Vergata (ed.), "Le biografie scientifiche," Intersezioni, 15 (1995), 151–5.
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• A. Avogadro, Essai analytique sur l'électricité (Torino: Accademia delle Scienze, Archivio storico, ms. n. 70). Note the existence of two Avogadro manuscripts, delivered to the Turin Academy of Science, whose existence was unknown: 1) "Essai de calculus sur le pouvoir réfringent de quelques substances, compare a celui de leurs composans, avec des conjectures sur la cause des anomalies qui s'y présentent" (1808). 2) "De la distribution de l'electricité sur la surface des conducteurs" (1811). An analysis of the contents of both manuscripts can be found in M. Ciardi, L'atomo fantasma. Genesi storica dell'ipotesi di Avogadro (Firenze: Olschki, 1995).
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• See M. Ciardi, "Forces et molecules: Amedeo Avogadro, l'électricité et Phypothése de 1811," in L'électricité dans sea premières granckurs: Galvani, Volta, Coulomb (Colloque franco-italien — Istituto Italiano di Cultura/Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers - Paris, 13–14 Novembre 1998), Revue d'histoire des sciences, 54 (2001), 85–98.
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• A. Avogadro, Fisica de' corpi ponderabili ossia trattato della costituzione generale de'corpi, 4 voll. (Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1837–1841), vol. I, p. 10 (translation is mine).
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• S. C. Kapoor, "Berthollet, Proust and Proportions," Chymia, 9 (1965), pp. 53–110; K. Fujii, "The Berthollet-Proust Controversy and Dalton's Chemical Atomic Theory 1800–1820, The British Journal for the History of Science, 19 (1986), pp. 177–200.
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• A. J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century from Dalton to Cannizzaro (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), p. 99.
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• In his paper De la distribution de l'électricité sur la surface des corps conducteurs (1811), Avogadro even managed to hypothesize that this induction flowed, not in a straight line, but in a curve. Avogadro decided to publish this essay when Michael Faraday wrote his "Experimental Researches in Electricity. Eleventh and Twelfth Series. On induction," Philosophical Transac-tions, 128 (1838), 140 and 83–123. See A. Avogadro, "Saggio di una teoria matematica della distribuzione dell'elettricita sulla superficie dei corpi conduttori nell'ipotesi dell'azione induttiva esercitata dalla medesima sui corpi circostanti, per mezzo delle particelle dell'aria frapposta," in Memorie della Societa Italiana delle Scienze, 23 (1844), 156–184. On the relations between Avogadro and Faraday, see Ciardi, L'atomo fantasma, op. cit. (7), pp. 65–82.
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• See D. Knight and H. Kragh (eds.), The Making of the Chemist. The Social History of Chemistry in Europe, 1789–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
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• On the history of the chemical revolution see F. Abbri, Le terre, l'acqua, is arie. La rivoluzione chimica nel Settecento (Bologna:!! Mulino, 1984), and idem, "The Chemical Revolution: a Critical Assessment," Nuncius, 4, n. 2 (1989), 303–15; M. Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter. The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier (Canton MA: Science History Publications, 1993), and idem, A New course in Chemistry. Lavoisier's First Chemical Paper (Firenze, Olschki, 1994). For a different interpretation, see F. L. Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life. An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); and idem, Antoine Lavoisier — The Next Crucial Year or the Sources of His Quantitative Method in Chemistry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). On the European spread of Lavoisier's theory, see F. Abbri and B. Bensaude-Vincent (eds.), Lavoisier in European Context. Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry (Canton MA: Science History Publications, 1995).
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• C.-L. Berthollet, Essai de statique chimique, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1803), vol. 1, pp. 7–8.
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• For the relations between Condillac and Lavoisier see M. Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter, op. cit. (14), pp. 183–214; idem, "The Grammar of Matter. Chemical Nomenclature during the 18th Century," in R. Chartier and P. Corsi (eds.), Sciences et langues en Europe (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1996), 109–25.
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• It is important to note that in Piedmont, Lavoisier had found in Giovanni Antonio Giobert, member of the Academy of Sciences from 1789 and university professor from 1801, one of his major supporters. On the history of the chemical revolution in Piedmont, see F. Abbri, "De utilitate chemiae in oeconomia reipublicae". La rivoluzione chimica nel Piemonte dell'antico regime," Studi storici, 30 (1989), 410-33; L. Dolza, "Dyeing in Piedmont in the Late Eighteenth Century," Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 46 (1996), 75-83, and "How Did They Know ? The Art of Dyeing in Late-Eighteenth-Century Piedmont," in R. Fox and A. Nieto-Galan (eds.), Natural Dyestuffs and Industrial Culture in Europe, 1750-1880 (Canton MA: Science History Publications, 1999), 129–59.
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• Avogadro's first chemical essay, "Considerations sur la nature des substances connues sous le nom de sels métalliques et sur l'ordre de combinaisons auquel il parait le plus convenable de les rapporter" (1804) was devoted to the analysis of a number of issues, including the study of the properties of muriatic acid (which referred to Lavoisier's theory of acidity), putting aside the problem of affinity. See M. Ciardi, "Teorie senza esperimenti. Le ricerche di Amedeo Avogadro sulla natura dei sali," Nuncius, 7 (1992), 161–93.
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• See the definition of the sciences proposed by Avogadro in his Fisica de' corpi ponderabili, op. cit. (9), vol. I, pp. 1–10.
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• J.-L. Gay Lussac, "Sur la combinaison des substances gazeuses, les unes avec les autres," Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Societe d'Arcuei4 2 (1809), 207–34. See the English translation, "Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with each other," in Foundations of the Molecular Theory, Alembic Club Reprints, n. 4 (Edinburgh: William F. Clay, 1899), 8–24, on pp. 8–9.
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• See A. Avogadro, "Mémoire sur les masses relatives des molecules des corps simples, ou densités présumées des gas, et sur la constitution de quelques-uns de leurs composes, pour servir de suite a l'Essai sur le meme sujet," Journal de Physique, 78 (1814), 131–56.
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• See the English translation, "Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies, and the Proportions in which They Enter into these Compounds," in Foundations, op. cit. (20). Here I refer to the translation in M. Crosland (ed.), The Science of Matter (USA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1992), 225–8, on p. 225.
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• One should not overlook the fact that Avogadro became a lawyer of Canon law in 1796.
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• On research traditions in the Kingdom of Sardinia during the 1700s, see M. Ciardi, "Medicina, tecnologia civile e militare, filosofia naturale: l'insegnamento della fisica nel Regno di Sardegna," Studi settecenteschi, 19, 1998, 217-47. For a history of Piedmontese physics in the first half of the eighteenth century, see M. Ciardi, La fine dei privilegi. Scienze fisiche, tecnologia e istituzioni scientific/se sabaude net Risorgimento (Firenze: Olschki, 1999), in which I also analyze Avogadro's little-known technological activity, through his reports for the Class of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Turin Academy (of which he was a member only from 1819) concerning numerous questions ranging from steam engines to gas lighting. See also M. Ciardi, "Theory and Technology: The Avogadro manuscripts at the Turin Academy of Sciences," Nuncius, 13 (1998), 625–56.
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• Amedeo Avogadro was long regarded by historians of science as having been the first to arrive at the modern distinction between atoms and molecules, reconciling Dalton with Gay-Lussac. As Nicholas Fisher observed, 'since virtually every historian who has discussed the chemistry of the nineteenth century during the last hundred years has mentioned Avogadro's hypothesis and its fate, a complete bibliography would be a complete bibliography of the history of nineteenth-century chemistry.' N. Fisher, op. cit., (2), p. 92. Towards the end of the 1960s, however, there began a healthy revisionary process concerning the characteristics of the Daltonian philosophy of chemistry and its impact on the Continent in the early nineteenth century. As a result, many widely-accepted views were called into question.
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• Avogadro, "Essay," op. cit. (22), p. 227.
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• Ibid., p. 228.
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• B. W. Mundy, "Avogadro on the Degree of Submolecularity," Chymia, 12 (1967), 151–5.
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• Bonner, op. cit. (2), p. 207.
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• Ibid., p. 193.
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• Ibid., p. 195.
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• Ibid., p. 197.
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• Ibid., p. 205.
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• A. Avogadro, Manoscritti scientifici, mss. 461–536, 75 vols. (Torino, Biblioteca Civica), vol. 462, p. 43.
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• A.-F. Fourcroy, Philosophie chimique (Paris, 1806), p. 42.
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• See Morselli, "The Manuscript," op. cit. (5).
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• Luigi Cerruti has already pointed out the necessity for this linguistic specification. In fact, 'Avogadro needed a term that avoided the linguistic "degeneration" concerning un-decomposed bodies recognized by Fourcroy,' since 'the chemical analysis of Fourcroy was not able to distinguish between the intigrantes and the constituantes in a simple body;' L. Cerruti, "II luogo del Sunto.," in S. Cannizzaro, Sunto di un corso di filosofia chimica (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991) 73–282, on p.128.
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• Fourcroy, op. cit. (35), pp. 29–30 (translation is mine).
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• Rocke, op. cit. (11), p. 103.
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• For Avogadro (who certainly believed in the existence of a last level of matter), atoms were numbers. From this point of view, Avogadro's image of matter was very close to the tradition in which atoms were conceived as mathematical points. This tradition influenced many natural philosophers in the 1700s, including Boscovich, whose theories were well known in the Italian States. Fresh light is cast on this tradition in P. Rossi, "I pund di Zenone: una preistoria vichiana," Nuncius, 13 (1998), 377–425. For Boscovich's major work, Philosophiae naturalis theoria redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium (1758), see the English translation A Theory of Natural Philosophy, byi H. Child (Cambridge, Mass., 1966). On the relation between Avogadro and Boscovich, see Ciardi, L'atomo fantasma, op. cit., (7), pp. 163–6.
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• A. Avogadro, Essai analytique sur l'electricité, op. cit., (7); idem, "Considerations sur l'etat dans lequel doit se trouver une couche d'un corps non-conducteur de l'électricité, lorsqu'elle est interposée entre deux surfaces douees d'electricites de differente espece," Journal de Physique, 63 (1806), 450–62; idem, "Second memoire sur Felectricite, ou suite des considerations sur l'etat oil se trouve une couche de corps isolateurs interposee entre deux surfaces douées d'électricités d'espece contraire," Journal de Physique, 65 (1807), 13045.
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• See L. Fregonese, "Two Different Scientific Programmes: Volta's Electrology and Coulomb's Electrostatic," in C. Blondel and M. Worries (eds.), Restaging Coulomb. Usages, controverses et replications autour de la balance de torsion (Firenze: Olschld, 1994), 85–98.
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• A. Avogadro, Fisica de' carpi ponderabili, op. cit. (9), p. 12.
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• For a recent study on this theme, see, for example, M. Scheidecker-Chevallier, "L'hypothese d'Avogadro (1811) at d'Ampere (1814): la distinction atome/molecule at la théorie de la combinaison chimique," Revue d'histoire des sciences, 50 (1997), 159–94.
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