The Changing role of the Historiography of Chemistry in Continental ...

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Nov 3, 2011 - Historiography of Chemistry in Continental Europe Since 1800. MARCO BERETTA. Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy. Throughout the nineteenth ...
ambix, Vol. 58 No. 3, November, 2011, 257–76

The Changing role of the Historiography of Chemistry in Continental Europe Since 1800 Marco Beretta Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy

Throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, many distinguished chemists attributed an important, at times crucial, role to the historical narrative. When the first professional histories were published during the nineteenth century, their role was intimately interwoven with the identity of chemistry, a science that in spite (or because) of its rapidly growing importance in the industrialisation of Europe, did not have the same reputation as either the exact sciences or the medical– biological disciplines. With the works by Berthelot, Lippmann, and Mieli, the history of chemistry focused on its rich and varied documentary sources. The histories of chemistry produced during this period set the ground for a variety of approaches that reflect, to a large degree, the main currents of old and recent history of science. Moreover, historians of chemistry, both continental and Anglo-American, had a prominent role in establishing the history of science as an independent discipline.

“Das Studium der Geschichte unser Autoritätsglaube vermindert.” Albert Ladenburg, Vorträge über die Entiwicklungsgeschichte der Chemie in den Letzen Hundert Jahren, 2nd ed. (1869) (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1887), 4.

A problematic legacy Up to the first half of the twentieth century, the most important works devoted to the history of chemistry were written by chemists, who considered the history of their science not just as an entertaining introduction for beginners, but as representing a distinctive feature of its identity. Such a belief, however, was far from being shared by all in the chemical community. The conflict between those in favour of and those against the usefulness of history is traceable back to Lavoisier’s belief that the purpose of an elementary treatise of chemistry could no longer be that of reconstructing the © Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2011

DOI 10.1179/174582311X13129418299027

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cumulative evolution of the science per se, but to present the subject in a systematic, if not geometric, way. One of the main purposes of the historiography of chemistry in the early Enlightenment was to underline both the progressive nature of chemical theories and their usefulness: an agenda that, by the end of the century, had been fulfilled, as chemistry gained rapid institutional, social and economic recognition.1 It is not surprising, then, that Lavoisier’s proposal to eliminate the often embarrassing history of chemistry from chemical literature met with rapid, although not universal, recognition. By the turn of the century, the focus was no longer on the progressive nature of chemistry, by now universally recognised, but on its extraordinarily enriched identity. Within this picture, history did not completely lose its appeal. On the contrary, throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, many distinguished chemists attributed an important, at times crucial, role to the historical narrative. However, before I briefly examine the most significant among them, I should note that Lavoisier’s mode of sidelining the history of chemistry has ultimately prevailed, and contemporary chemists seem no longer to be interested in the history of their science. Both disciplinary specialisation and the postmodernist belief in the relativity of historical evidence seem to have played a role in distracting chemists from the history of their topic. Although I am not sure that such a separation is a good thing, or an inevitable effect of specialisation, the history of chemistry is now an established and independent branch of the history of science, and thus separated from the discipline of chemistry. As often happens, such an emancipation has been reached at the expense of the historiography of the past, which has been either neglected or denigrated. With a few notable exceptions,2 recent historians have undermined the value of nineteenth-century historiography of chemistry. It is often taken for granted that, within this tradition, the reconstruction of past events in the light of recent achievements of science has led to the typical whiggish attitude of scientists, who, unlike professional historians, were unfamiliar with archival research and a critical survey of the primary sources. There are, no doubt, many examples that provide abundant evidence for such denigratory views, and Charles Adolphe Wurtz’s famous incipit to his work on the evolution of chemical concepts, that chemistry was a French science founded by Lavoisier,3 is often taken as a typical example of the mixture of positivistic and nationalistic values prevailing in that type of historiography. However, the flood of nineteenth-century works devoted to the history of chemistry deserves, in 1

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Marco Beretta, “The Historiography of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century: A Preliminary Survey and Bibliography,” Ambix 39 (1992): 1–10; Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter. The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1993), 13–25. For valuable reconstructions of the historiography of chemistry during the nineteenth century, see: Wilhelm Strube, Die Chemie und ihre Geschichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1974); and Jost Weyer, Chemiegeschichtsschreibung von Wiegleb (1790) bis Partington (1970): eine Untersuchung über ihre Methoden, Prinzipien und Ziele (Hildesheim: H. A. Gerstenberg, 1974). For critical insights, see: Colin A. Russell, “‘Rude and Disgraceful Beginnings’: A View of History of Chemistry from the Nineteenth Century,” British Journal for the History of Science 21 (1988): 273–94; Alan J. Rocke, “History and Science, History of Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Renovation of the Academic Professions in France,” Ambix 41 (1994): 20–32; and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Chemistry,” in From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences: Writing the History of Nineteenth-century Science, ed. David Cahan (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 2003), 196–220. “La chimie est une science française: elle fut constituée par Lavoisier, d’immortelle mémoire.” Charles Adolphe Wurtz, Histoire des doctrines chimiques depuis Lavoisier jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Hachette, 1869), 1.

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my opinion, a nuanced view, as it highlights a differentiation of attitudes and approaches that cannot be exclusively reduced to either positivism or nationalism.

The nineteenth-century revival: teleology, philology, and history When the first professional histories were published during the nineteenth century, their role was intimately interwoven with the identity of chemistry, a science that, in spite (or because) of its rapidly increasing importance in the industrialisation of Europe, did not have the same reputation as either the exact sciences or the medical–biological disciplines. A few decades after Lavoisier’s works, chemistry was still depicted as a craft, or at best as an applied science, and chemists still struggled to change this image. Significantly, the first and most important work devoted to the history of chemistry published during the first half of the nineteenth century was entitled Leçons sur la philosophie chimique. Although the title evoked Antoine François Fourcroy’s Philosophie chimique (1792), both the contents and the purpose of the Leçons were completely different.4 Published in 1837 by Jean Baptiste Dumas and based on the lectures that he gave at the Collège de France, this book illustrates a new approach to the philosophy of chemistry, reconstructing its historical genealogy. According to Dumas, the main purpose of the Philosophie chimique is to pinpoint the theoretical principles of the science and to reveal their historical development. With this aim in view, Dumas selected those authors, especially French, who distinguished themselves by establishing the basis of modern chemical principles. Although Dumas referred to ancient craftsmen and alchemists as legitimate forerunners in his story, he preferred to deal with early modern chemistry, and chiefly those authors who challenged the Aristotelian philosophy of matter on a theoretical basis. Thus, the heroes of his narrative are Lefèvre, Lemery, Homberg, Becher, Stahl, Lavoisier, Richter, Dalton, Berthollet, Davy, Berzelius, and Ampère, and only occasional hints are given regarding the experimental tradition and its main actors. Dumas’s history therefore presents more of a selective teleological evolution than a true reconstruction of the past of chemistry, but, despite this shortcoming, the works and authors selected are treated with discernment and with an attentive survey of the sources — so much so that Dumas is among the first to advocate the usefulness of publishing new editions of the classics in chemistry. It was, in fact, Dumas who launched the idea of publishing a national edition of Lavoisier’s collected works in the late 1840s,5 who managed to secure the first nucleus of Lavoisier’s instruments and manuscripts at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers and the Académie des sciences, respectively, in 1860,6 and who edited the first four volumes of the Oeuvres between 1864 and 1868.

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Fourcroy’s work was a compendium of Lavoisier’s chemistry presented in a sequence of extremely short articles. Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, “A propos d’une entreprise intellectuelle: la publication des Oeuvres et de la Correspondance de Lavoisier,” La Vie des Sciences, Comptes Rendus, Série Générale 11 (1994): 319–32. Marco Beretta, “Lavoisier’s Collection of Instruments: A Checkered History,” in Musa Musaei: Studies on Scientific Instruments and Collections in Honour of Mara Miniati, ed. Marco Beretta, Paolo Galluzzi and Carlo Triarico (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2003), 313–34.

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Directly inspired by Dumas, but completely different in terms of content, was the Histoire de la chimie, published in 1842 by the German-French physician Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer. Hoefer’s background was, in fact, quite unique; apart from his humanistic and medical education, the original mixture of French and German traditions is clearly detectable in his works. Hoefer was a prolific and successful French author of histories of science that were explicitly intended for a wide audience, and his philological interest and his inexhaustible enthusiasm for archival research revealed a distinctively German character. Significantly, as an apprentice, he assisted the authoritative French philosopher Victor Cousin for several years, and he also translated Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason into French. During the early 1830s, Hoefer became acquainted with the historian François Guizot, who not only made a successful effort to renew French historiography, but, as early as 1832, became interested in Auguste Comte’s proposal to establish a chair of history of science at the Collège de France.7 It is not, therefore, surprising that the nature of Hoefer’s Histoire was completely different from that of Dumas’s history, both in its general historiographical approach and in the range of its survey. Unlike Dumas, who used fitting historical examples to support his atomistic views on contemporary chemistry, Hoefer explored the history of chemistry without any a priori philosophical or theoretical design. By vindicating the complexities of history, he aimed to unveil those details that the histories written by scientists tended, more or less deliberately, to omit. Interestingly, Hoefer argued, probably with Dumas’s work in mind, that truth and falsehood were only relative in science,8 and that all of those doctrines that were now regarded as superstitious in a historical perspective, such as alchemy and magic, were no less important than the more familiar theories guided by the experimental method. Embracing this standpoint, Hoefer devoted half of his Histoire to the examination of the works of ancient craftsmen and alchemists, using, for the first time, the alchemical manuscripts preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the examination of which inaugurated an inexhaustible tradition of study. Hoefer’s conception of chemistry thus included a far larger body of ideas than those of his predecessors, and he was among the first to explore in detail the central relevance of its practical and technical background. He studied the contributions of the ancients without the usual concern for finding analogies between the remote past and contemporary science. Antiquity had a dignity of its own that did not require justification based on positivistic categories. This focus meant that the history of chemistry could no longer be the description of a cumulative evolution of factual truths: “The history of science, as I understand it, cannot be an arid nomenclature of facts and names, even less an irritating quarrel on questions of priority. The history of science points to the tread of those great events which lead industry, arts and commerce onto a new path and which, for this reason, often change the face of society.”9 The connections between science and society underpinned Hoefer’s attempt to contextualise the contributions made by chemists of different epochs historically. Hoefer’s division of the history of chemistry

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Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte. An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), vol. 1, 445–46. Ferdinand Hoefer, Histoire de la chimie (Paris: Hachette, 1842), vol. 1, 3. Hoefer, Histoire de la chimie, vol. 1, ix.

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into three main epochs deviated from the traditional periodisation: the first epoch stretched from antiquity to the eighth century; the second epoch, dominated by alchemy, stretched from the ninth century to the sixteenth century; and the final epoch was subdivided into several sections, each devoted to either a thematic specialisation of early modern chemistry, or to a particularly distinctive figure. The tension between a biographical and a thematic approach to the history of chemistry is, in fact, characteristic of the whole work.10 Hoefer’s anti-teleological approach led to his Histoire being immediately criticised by one of the most distinguished French chemists. In a comprehensive survey beginning in 1843 and published in several issues of the Journal des Savants,11 Michèle Eugène Chevreul recognised Hoefer’s erudition but pointed out that his periodisation was confused and, more importantly, did not follow Auguste Comte’s law of three stages (theocratic, metaphysical, and positive), which, in Chevreul’s view, defined the evolution of all sciences. Taking this assumption as his point of departure, Chevreul argued that the history of chemistry should introduce the reader to a classification of its fundamental ideas, and that the historical narrative should illustrate their genealogy. Similarly to Dumas’s use of history but with a more systematic philosophical outlook, Chevreul rejected the idea of a history of science for its own sake, and criticised Hoefer’s lack of a clear map of the evolutionary nature of chemistry. Hoefer’s portrayal of ancient chemical arts as being closer to early modern chemistry than to medieval alchemy was simply not acceptable, because it undermined the idea of a linear progress of chemical notions. Despite Chevreul’s authoritative criticism, the Histoire was an immediate success, and Paul-Antoine Cap’s edition of the works of Bernard Palissy (1844), until then a neglected name in the history of chemistry, was the most visible effect of Hoefer’s invitation to explore Palissy’s contributions.12 A second revised and extended edition of the Histoire was published in 1866, and it is probably in response to Chevreul’s criticism, that in the preface to the second volume (published 1868), Hoefer justified his decision to end his narrative at the close of the eighteenth century by pointing to the partiality of those histories of chemistry written by chemists inspired by a seditious autolâtrie. According to Hoefer, a certain distance from one’s object was a necessary condition for impartiality when writing a history of chemistry: the historian must be mortus inter vivos, exactly the opposite state to that proclaimed in the numerous historical works published by chemists between 1842 and 1868.

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A typical example of the biographical approach is Ferdinand Hoefer, La chimie enseignée par la biographie de ses fondateurs. R. Boyle, Lavoisier, Priestley, Scheele, Davy, etc. (Paris: Hachette, 1865). M. C. Chevreul, “Histoire de la chimie, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à notre époque, par Ferd. Hoefer (1er article de M. Chevreul),” Journal des Savants (1843), 65–75. The historiographical principles inspiring this and the subsequent articles devoted to Hoefer’s work were eventually put together in Chevreul’s Histoire des connaissances chimiques (Paris: Guérin, 1866), of which only the first volume appeared. Chevreul’s historical reconstruction appeared only in 1878 in a rather superficial sketch entitled Résumé d’une histoire de la matière depuis les philosophes grecs jusqu’à Lavoisier inclusivement (Paris: Didot, 1878). On Chevreul’s criticism of Hoefer’s Histoire, see George Sarton, “Hoefer and Chevreul,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8 (1940): 419–45. Bernard Palissy, Oeuvres complètes. Edition conforme aux textes originaux imprimés du vivant de l’auteur avec des notes et une notice historique par Paul-Antoine Cap (Paris: Dubochet, 1844).

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Despite its influence, Hoefer’s Histoire remains an exception. I do not know of any other work written by a historian without a background in chemistry published during the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. This is perhaps the reason why chemist-historians have often made little use of its contents. The most influential chemist-historian of the first half of the nineteenth century was certainly Hermann Kopp, whose prolific work overshadowed Hoefer’s contributions. However, when he published the first volume of his Geschichte der Chemie in 1843,13 at the age of twenty-six years, Kopp was not influenced by Hoefer’s work, which he had only been able to read when his own book was already in galley proof.14 Kopp’s approach to the history of chemistry is, indeed, completely different from Hoefer’s, but at the same time it also deviated from traditional descriptive lists of bio-bibliographies, and from philosophical reconstructions of the genealogy of chemical doctrines. In his work, Kopp tried to combine the erudite approach of eighteenth-century historians with a critical survey of the main chemical theories of matter. However, he did not classify and evaluate theories of the past on the basis of their present fortune, preferring to present himself as an objective and distant observer. Kopp’s Geschichte, in fact, contains two histories of chemistry. One, published in the first volume, is narrated through the biographies of its main actors; in the other, which is far more comprehensive, Kopp reconstructs monographic themes, such as the history of metals, gases, organic substances, and affinities. The second approach inevitably classified chemical literature according to scientific categories that, in many cases, were contemporary to Kopp. While precise reconstruction of often little-known chemical and alchemical works highlighted the breadth of Kopp’s research, his attempt to force them into the categories of contemporary chemistry made it impossible to adequately evaluate their context.15 Moreover, repetition was inevitable, which made the reading of the work as a whole quite difficult. Take, for instance, Lavoisier: his biography appears in the first volume, whereas examination of his works is scattered, with much repetition, throughout the remaining three volumes.16 Kopp’s Geschichte was destined for beginners in chemistry courses,17 and was not, like Hoefer’s work, addressed to a wider audience. In this respect, I think it is significant that when Kopp was asked to collaborate on Leopold Ranke’s monumental

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Edmund O. Lippmann, “Hermann Kopp als Historiker,” Archeion 14 (1932): 1–5; Max Speter, “Vater Kopp: bio, biblio und Psychographisches von und über Hermann Kopp (1817–1892),” Osiris 5 (1938): 392–460. Hermann Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg, 1843), vol. 1, viii. The subsequent three volumes were published in 1844, 1845, and 1847. These volumes were eventually complemented by the Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chemie, 3 vols. (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg, 1869–1875), which could be regarded as documentary appendixes to the history of chemistry. This kind of historical classification of chemical topics became quite successful among chemists. See, for instance, F. X. Zippe, Geschichte der Metalle (Wien: Wilhelm Barumuellet, 1857). The outline of Lavoisier’s biography is in vol. 1, 299–315; Lavoisier’s theory of the elements is in vol. 2, 281–82; Lavoisier’s theory of calcinations is in vol. 3, 144–48; Lavoisier’s experiments on water are in vol. 3, 265–72; Lavoisier’s quantitative approach to organic chemistry is in vol. 4, 248–57. These are, in fact, only the main chapters of Kopp’s examination of Lavoisier’s work. From the early beginning of his career in Giessen (1843) up to 1871, Kopp included the history of chemistry twice a week in his courses as an integral part of the curriculum. See Speter, “Vater Kopp,” 414–15.

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project of a history of German science in modern times,18 launched in 1858, his new history of chemistry, published in 1873, used the same outline and approach as the one that he had adopted thirty years earlier. Additionally, he resisted Ranke’s suggestion that he reconstruct the historical development of science within the national context, and polemically argued in the preface that chemical ideas and discoveries had no nationality.19 While such statements, opposing Wurtz’s famous vindication of the superiority of the French chemical tradition and, more generally, the devastating cultural effects of the Franco-Prussian war, seem inspired by a courageous defence of an independent historiography, they in fact reflect Kopp’s resistance to a cultural and geographical contextualisation of chemical ideas. It is therefore not surprising that Ranke’s ambitious project of making the history of chemistry an integral part of the history of German culture was unsuccessful, and that Kopp’s work, despite its comprehensive and accurate survey of modern science, remained confined within the chemical community.20 A third example of the historiography of chemistry that played an important role during the nineteenth century is that represented in the work of Stanislao Cannizzaro. In 1858, Cannizzaro published a letter containing a “Sketch of a Course in Chemical Philosophy given in the Royal University of Genoa” in the journal Il Nuovo Cimento. The first thing that catches the attention in the title of this brief memoir is its analogy with Dumas’s Leçons — probably a deliberate choice. If the history of chemistry served to reflect the attitudes of contemporary chemistry towards atomism in Dumas’s work, we find a similar use of history in Cannizzaro’s sketch, with his confident conviction that chemical atomism was now firmly established.21 Furthermore, for Cannizzaro, the history of chemistry not only served an ideological purpose but also constituted a method whereby an appropriate understanding of chemistry became possible. As the beginning of Cannizzaro’s memoir testified, chemical history played a crucial role, both as a theoretical weapon and a pedagogical instrument. This is how he begins:

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The project was launched in 1859 by the newly established Historical Commission of the Bayerliche Akademie des Wissenschaften, and between 1864 and 1932, thirty-two volumes of the Geschichte des Wissenschaften in Deutschland were published. On this project, see Christoph Meinel, “German History of Science Journals,” in Journals and History of Science, ed. Marco Beretta, Claudio Pogliano and Pietro Redondi (Firenze: Olschki, 1998), 80–81. Hermann Kopp, Die Entwickelung der Chemie in der neueren Zeit (Muenchen: Oeldenburg, 1873), viii. On this aspect of Kopp’s work, see Alan J. Rocke, “‘Between Two Stools’: Kopp, Kolbe, and the History of Chemistry,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 7 (1990): 19–24. Kopp’s later valuable work on the history of alchemy and its relationships with culture, religion and philosophy did not have any impact on chemists, and reflected his own keen interest in the subject rather than his ambition to establish a historical link between chemistry and alchemy. As far as I know, in fact, his chemistry courses only included a part devoted to the history of chemistry, and not one devoted to the history of alchemy. His main works on alchemy are: Die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit: ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte (Leipzig, Heidelberg: C. Winter, H. Tränker, 1886), 2 vols.; and the edition of the alchemical text Aura Catena Homeri (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1880), which Kopp attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger. For a detailed reconstruction of the theoretical debate on chemical atomism, see Alan J. Rocke, Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century. From Dalton to Cannizzaro (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1984).

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I believe that the progress of science made in these last years has confirmed the hypothesis of Avogadro, of Ampère, and of Dumas on the similar constitution of substances in the gaseous state; that is, that equal volumes of these substances, whether simple or compound, contain an equal number of molecules: not however an equal number of atoms, since the molecules of the different substances, or those of the same substance in its different states, may contain a different number of atoms, whether of the same or of diverse nature. In order to lead my students to the conviction which I have reached myself, I wish to place them on the same path as that by which I have arrived at it — the path, that is, of the historical examination of chemical theories.22

Cannizzaro’s vindication of Avogadro’s priority of the distinction between atoms and molecules favoured further historical research on a scientist who, at least within the chemical community, was unknown.23 Cannizzaro’s views on the importance of the historical method in chemistry were taken up again during the Faraday lecture, delivered in 1869, when he argued that: “the mind of a person who is learning a new science, has to pass through all the phases which the science itself has exhibited in its historical evolution.”24 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the historiography of chemistry tended to be polarised. At one extreme, we find those chemists, like Cannizzaro,25 who used history as a weapon to defend either a theory or a national tradition; at the other, we find chemists sympathetic towards Kopp’s historical approach and a systematic perusal of primary sources. Marcellin Berthelot was no doubt one of the most influential members among those who sympathised with Kopp’s approach. His historical works, however, followed a different scheme.26 He edited two important collections of texts that were destined to remain landmarks of the historiography of chemistry: the Collection des Alchimistes Grecs and the Chimie au Moyen Âge.27 The ambitious project of putting 22 23

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Cannizzaro, “Sunto di un corso di filosofia chimica,” Il Nuovo Cimento 2 (1858): 321. Such reassessment culminated in the celebratory events organised in Turin in 1911, when, among other things, the chemist-historian Icilio Guareschi published an edition of selected works [Opere scelte (Torino: UTET, 1911)]. Guareschi was very sympathetic towards Kopp’s approach to the history of chemistry, and he published a most valuable Storia della chimica, which appeared in issues 17–30 of Supplemento annuale all’Enciclopedia di chimica (Torino, 1900–1914). Cannizzaro, “Considerations on Some Points of the Theoretic Teaching of Chemistry,” in Lectures Delivered before the Chemical Society. Faraday Lectures 1869–1928 (London: The Chemical Society, 1928), 18–19. In the same year as Cannizzaro’s lecture, Albert Ladenburg published a book [Vorträge über die Entiwicklungsgeschichte der Chemie in den Letzen Hundert Jahren (1869)] in which he shared Cannizzaro’s view on the methodological importance of the history of chemistry. Judgements on Berthelot’s contribution to the history of chemistry varied profoundly. On the one hand, Edmund Lippmann [Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1919), 649–59] harshly criticised Berthelot’s method, his numerous errors, and what appeared to be a deliberate failure to give credit (in primis to Hoefer); on the other hand, despite the flaws, the comprehensiveness of Berthelot’s attempt was celebrated by prominent historians such as Eric Holmyard and Aldo Mieli as an extraordinary achievement that provided the starting point for more systematic interest in the topic. Marcellin Berthelot and Charles Emile Ruelle, ed., Collections des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1888), 3 vols.; Marcellin Berthelot, ed., La chimie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1893), 3 vols. Owing to Ruelle’s lack of understanding of the specific contents of the texts, his edition of the Greek alchemists is full of errors, whereas his editions of the Arabic (edited with the assistance of Octave Houdas), Syriac (edited with the assistance of Rubens Duval) and Latin medieval texts were definitely more accurate and reliable. On the edition, see Robert Halleux, “Marcelin Berthelot, interprète des pratiques alchimiques de l’antiquité,” in Marcelin Berthelot (1827–1907). Science et politique, ed. Jean Balcou (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 105–15.

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together a complete body of ancient and medieval alchemical and chemical knowledge was brought to a successful end thanks to Berthelot’s collaboration with both philologists and archaeologists, who could assist him in restoring the sense and the chronology of texts that only Hoefer had treated extensively, some fifty years before. Such an interdisciplinary collaboration showed that the history of chemistry belonged to the history of science and civilisation more generally, and called for the attention of a wider audience than the chemical community alone. It is no coincidence that, following Berthelot’s publications, a Swedish philologist such as Otto Lagercrantz would publish an edition of the technical Papyrus Holmiensis,28 and that the most distinguished German philologist, Hermann Diels, took a sudden interest in the history of ancient chemical technology.29 Equally significant was the publication of a comprehensive catalogue of the Greek alchemical and chemical manuscripts preserved in the most important European libraries.30 In addition to the edition of classical and medieval texts, Berthelot published several works devoted to the history of ancient alchemy and chemistry,31 and, for the first time, emphasised the peculiar relationship between the chemical arts and religious, mystical and metaphysical beliefs. Despite his firm positivistic standpoint, Berthelot took ancient alchemy seriously, and, in his most original contribution to the field, he advocated the need to study alchemical practices and, whenever possible, to reproduce them in the laboratory. Another trajectory of Berthelot’s approach to history appears from his numerous publications devoted to Lavoisier. Unlike the hagiographical biography published by Edouard Grimaux in 1888,32 Berthelot’s La révolution chimique: Lavoisier focuses on Lavoisier’s chemical work and on the detailed examination of the thirteen Registres de laboratoire, again emphasising the probatory evidence of archival and manuscript documents.33 Berthelot’s documentary approach to modern chemistry was extremely influential, with a durable effect on later historiography. There are several examples of this new trend. Take, for instance, the 1892 edition of Carl Wilhelm Scheele’s notes and letters,34 prepared by the famous Swedish geologist and arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, who, in his own country, was as 28

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Otto Lagercrantz, Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis (Upsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1913). On Lagercrantz, see Joseph Bidez, “Otto Lagercrantz et l’histoire de l’alchimie,” Archeion 21 (1938): 379–85. Hermann Diels, Antike Technik: sieben Vorträge, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1924). On Diels and the history of science and technology, see William Calder III, ed., Hermann Diels (1848–1922) et la science de l’antiquité (Genève: Fondation Hardt, 1999). Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs. Publié sous la direction de Joseph. Bidez, Franz Cumont, Günther Goldschmid, J. L. Heiberg, Otto Lagercrantz, Julius Ruska, Dorothea Waley Singer, Carlo O. Zuretti et al. (Bruxelles: Union Académique Internationale, 1928–1932), 8 vols. Marcellin Berthelot, Les origines de l’alchimie (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1885); Marcellin Berthelot, Introduction à l’étude de la chimie des anciens et du Moyen Age (Paris: Georges Steinheil, 1889); Marcellin Berthelot, Archéologie et histoire des sciences; avec la publication nouvelle du papyrus grec chimique de Leyde et impression original du Liber du Septaugenta de Geber (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1906). Edouard Grimaux, Lavoisier (1743–1794) d’après sa correspondance, ses manuscrits, ses papiers de famille et d’autres documents inédits (Paris: Alcan, 1888). Grimaux’s approach was partly dictated by Lavoisier’s heirs, who consented to give access to the documents in their possession only on condition that they could check Grimaux’s narrative. Marcellin Berthelot, La révolution chimique, Lavoisier. Ouvrage suivi de notices et extraits des registres inédits de laboratoire de Lavoisier (Paris: Alcan, 1890). Adolf Eric Nordenskiöld, ed., Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Nachgelassene Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Stockholm: PA Norsted & Söner, 1892).

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influential as Berthelot in France. It was probably in response to the French revival of Lavoisier’s studies that Nordenskiöld, for the first time, gave great prominence to the famous letter by Scheele to Lavoisier on the experimental procedures for obtaining oxygen. In its turn, Nordenskiöld’s edition attracted the interest of other historians, who, like Icilio Guareschi, took a keen interest in eighteenth-century chemistry and who expanded the examination of the Chemical Revolution by taking into account, in addition to Lavoisier and Scheele, the works of many Italian chemists.35 Riding the crest of this new wave of interest in the documentary history of chemistry, in 1897 the German chemist Georg Kahlbaum launched a successful series entitled Monographien aus der Geschichte der Chemie, in which both classical chemical texts and historical contributions were published.36 One of Kahlbaum’s collaborators on the series, the Swedish chemist Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum, subsequently edited Berzelius’s autobiography, travel diaries, and correspondence,37 which together provided the most comprehensive edition of the writings of a modern chemist since Lavoisier’s Oeuvres.

Raising the standards: the belle époque of chemical historiography Berthelot’s focus on the documentary history of chemistry raised the question of philological accuracy in the editing of texts, an issue that attracted several distinguished scholars in Germany, among whom the most significant were Edmund O. 35

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Icilio Guareschi, “Lavoisier: sua vita e sue opere,” Supplemento Annuale alla Enciclopedia di Chimica 19 (1902–1903): 305–460; Icilio Guareschi, “La chimica in Italia dal 1750 al 1800: pt. 1: J.B. Beccari, Vincenzo Menghini, G.B. Beccaria, Felice Fontana, Giovanni Fabbroni, Angelo Saluzzo,” Supplemento Annuale alla Enciclopedia di Chimica 25 (1908–1909): 323–474; Icilio Guareschi, “La chimica in Italia dal 1750 al 1800: pt. 2: Claudio Luigi Berthollet e sue Ricerche sulle leggi dell’affinità, Lazzaro Spallanzani, G.A. Giobert, G.A. Scopoli, C.B. Bonvicino,” Supplemento Annuale alla Enciclopedia di Chimica 26 (1909–1910): 321–453; Icilio Guareschi, “La chimica in Italia dal 1750 al 1800: pt. 3: Alessandro Volta, Luigi Valentino Brugnatelli, Francesco Hoefer e sua memoria Sopra il sale sedativo naturale della Toscana, Paolo Mascagni, Giovacchino Corradori, Giov. Francesco Cigna, Anton-Mario Lorgna,” Supplemento Annuale alla Enciclopedia di Chimica 28 (1911–1912): 393–470; Icilio Guareschi, Biografia di Carlo Guglielmo Scheele (Torino: UTET, 1912); Icilio Guareschi, “Legge della dilatazione dei gas di A. Volta: seconda edizione corretta ed aumentata, con la ristampa della memoria originale di Volta Della uniforme dilatazione dell’aria, ecc., 1793,” Supplemento Annuale alla Enciclopedia di Chimica 30 (1913–1914): 353–94. Between 1897 and 1904, the series published in Leipzig by Johann Ambrosius Barth included the following eight volumes: G. Kahlbaum and Aug. Hoffmann, Ueber die Einführung der Lavoisier’schen Theorie im Besonderen in Deutschland. Über den Anteil Lavoisier’s an der Feststellung der das Wasser zusammensetzenden Gase; Henry Roscoe and Arthur Harden, Die Entstehung der Dalton’schen Atomtheorie in neuer Beleuchtung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Chemie. Ins deutsche übertragen; H. G. Söderbaum, Berzelius’ Werden und Wachsen 1779–1821; G. Kahlbaum and E. Schaer, Christian Friedrich Schönbein 1799–1868, 2 vols.; G. Kahlbaum and Eduard Thon, Justus von Liebig und Christian Friedrich Schönbein, Briefwechsel 1853–1868; H. G. Söderbaum, ed., Jakob Berzelius selbstbiographische Aufzeichnungen (this also included Iciclio’s Guareschi biography of Avogadro); and G. Kahlbaum, Otto Merckens and W. I. Baragiola, ed., Justus von Liebig und Friedrich Mohr in ihren Briefen von 1834–1870. The series was probably created as a response to the series of Alembic Club reprints, the first volume of which was published in 1893 (Joseph Black, Experiments on Magnesia Alba). On the Alembic Club and reprints, see Leonard Dobbing, “The Alembic Club and the History of Chemistry,” Journal of Chemical Education 6 (1929): 1225–29. Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum, ed., Jacob Berzelius. Själfbiografiska anteckningar (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1901); Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum, ed., Jacob Berzelius. Reseanteckningar (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1903); Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum, ed., Jacob Berzelius. Bref (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1912–1918).

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Lippmann, Julius Ruska, and Ernst Darmstädter. Lippmann was a chemist, entrepreneur, and, from a very early stage, a historian of chemistry and alchemy.38 Ruska was a distinguished scholar of the Arabic and Semitic languages.39 Darmstädter was a chemist who, early in his career, converted to philology and the history of chemistry.40 All three raised Berthelot’s philological approach to a higher level of accuracy, and it is not by chance that they often criticised the flaws in his editions. Interestingly, whereas Berthelot had to rely on the assistance of philologists, Lippmann, Ruska and Darmstädter confidently mastered the topics that they dealt with. A characteristic that they shared was that they all contributed numerous items to Isis, Osiris, and Aldo Mieli’s Arichivio di storia della scienza, which I interpret as the first move towards making the history of chemistry an integral part of Sarton’s and Mieli’s programme for the professionalisation of the history of science. Lippmann’s interest in the historical background of his science was vast: his books included a history of sugar,41 a history of bismuth,42 a history of ancient alchemy,43 and a history of organic chemistry.44 In addition to these works, he published several memoirs and contributions to the history of science and technology, and was extremely active in supporting the institutionalisation of the discipline in Germany until 1935, when the Nazi regime became suspicious of his Jewish origins and barred him from all academic activities. Although Ruska’s scientific contributions focused more on the history of Arabic alchemy than on the history of the chemical arts, they were extremely important in the emancipation of the history of chemistry from the control of pure chemists. In 1924, thanks to a private donation, he was appointed director of the newly founded Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft in Heidelberg, and in 1929 he was appointed director of the Forschungsinstitut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften in Berlin. In this capacity, he played a major role in forming a new generation of historians of alchemy and chemistry.45 Until the advent of Nazism, which ultimately led him to commit suicide in 1938,46 Darmstädter was a prolific author with a wide range of interests, stretching from medieval alchemy (he edited the Latin works of pseudo-Geber)47 to Paracelsus48 and 38 39 40

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J. R. Partington, “Edmund O. Von Lippmann,” Osiris 3 (1937): 4–21. Paul Kraus, “Julius Ruska,” Osiris 5 (1938): 4–40. George Sarton, “Ernst Darmstädter,” Isis 30 (1939): 511–14, which contains his bibliography. The best biographical portrait is that by Aldo Mieli, “Un viaggio in Germania: impressioni ed appunti di uno storico della scienza,” Archivio di Storia della Scienza 7 (1927): 350–54. Edmund O. Lippmann, Geschichte des Zuckers, seiner Darstellung und Verwendung, seit den ältesten Zeiten bis zum Beginne der Rübenzuckerfabrikation. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte (Leipzig: Hesse, 1890; 2nd ed., Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929). This work was followed by Edmund O. Lippmann, Die Entwicklung der deutschen Zuckerindustrie von 1850 bis 1900 (Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1900). Edmund O. Lippmann, Die Geschichte des Wismuts zwischen 1400 und 1800. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Technologie und Kultur (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1930). Edmund O. Lippmann, Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie. Mit einem Anhange: Zur älteren Geschichte der Metalle. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1919). Edmund O. Lippmann, Zeittafeln zur Geschichte der organischen Chemie. Ein Versuch (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1921). Among them, Paul Kraus became his closest collaborator. In 1930, he sold his precious library to Henry Wellcome. Ernst Darmstädter, Die Alchemie Des Geber Ubersetzt und Erklart (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922). He was editor of Acta Paracelsica (1930–), the journal of the society Paracelsus-Gesellschaft founded by Karl Sudhoff.

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the metallurgical arts of the Renaissance. In 1926, Darmstädter founded the series of books entitled Münchener Beiträge zur Geschichte und Literatur der Naturwissenschaften und Medizin,49 also aimed at broadening the scope of the history of chemistry. Although Lippmann, Ruska and Darmstädter understood the history of chemistry to be part of the history of science and civilisation, their efforts to professionalise the discipline were still far from being realised. Histories of chemistry written by chemists and exclusively addressed to chemists continued to be extremely successful. Take, for instance, Die Geschichte der Chemie by Ernst von Meyer.50 Published in 1889, this relatively short history of chemistry aimed to provide an introduction to the study of the science, and enjoyed an immediate success (as shown by the second edition of the English translation, published as early as 1898). Four editions appeared, the last of which was published in 1914 and translated into English, Italian (with an introduction by Icilio Guareschi), and Russian. The work paid little attention to the history of ancient chemistry and alchemy, Meyer preferring to focus on more contemporary topics. After Wurtz’s nationalistic vindication and the approaching celebration of Lavoisier’s centennial, Meyer devoted much of his attention to reassessing the image of the French chemist. By far the largest section of his work, however, was devoted to the historical reconstruction of theories set forth by the last two generations of chemists, and, to further clarify his views, he divided this part into sections devoted to analytical, organic, pure, physical, mineralogical, agricultural, physiological and technological chemistry. Most of these subdisciplines were, in fact, the product of Meyer’s generation, and their history was reconstructed in the light of contemporary chemistry. Despite the success of Meyer’s positivistic historiography, Lippmann and Ruska also influenced those chemist-historians who continued to work primarily within the chemical community. The systematic and accurate exploration of primary sources is demonstrated, for instance, in the work of Max Speter51 and Wilhelm Ganzemüller,52 two chemists who addressed their works to their peers. Speter’s contributions were devoted to the survey of seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century technical chemistry, and were published between 1910 and the late 1930s in chemical and industrial journals.53 His doctoral dissertation, defended under the supervision of Walther Nernst in 1910 Berlin,54 dealt with Lavoisier and his predecessors.55 In a 49

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Like Kahlbaum, the series included both monographic studies and editions of texts and letters. Darmstädter contributed in 1926 with a biography of Agricola entitled Georg Agricola, 1494–1555; Leben und Werk (Munich: Verlag der Münchner drucke, 1926). Ernst von Meyer, Geschichte der Chemie von die ältesten Zeiten bis zu Gegenwart-Zugleich Einführung in das Studium der Chemie (Leipzig: von Veit, 1889). Mary Elvira Weeks, “Max Speter (1883–1942),” Isis 34 (1943): 340–43. Walter Pagel in Isis 49 (1958): 84–86. Among the most important journals in which Speter published his historical literature are Angewandte Chemie, Chemiker-Zeitung, Centralblatt für die Zuckerindustrie, Deutsche Ziindwaren-Zeitung, Die deutsche Zuckerindustrie, Draeger-Hefte, Journal für praktische Chemie, Pharmaceutica Acta Helvetiae, Sammlung chemischer und chemisch- technischer Vorträige, Superphosphate, and Zeitschrift für das gesamte Schiess- und Sprengstoffwesen. Speter also published a few contributions in Isis, Osiris, and the Archivio di Storia della Scienza. Interestingly, James R. Partington also studied for a short period under Nernst’s supervision. Max Speter, Lavoisier und seine Vorläufer: eine historisch-kritische Studie (Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1910). Speter’s dissertation appeared as vol. 15 of the Sammlung chemischer und chemisch-technischer Vorträge, which was a series containing several historical contributions.

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small booklet, which was to deeply influence Henry Guerlac,56 Speter challenged Wurtz’s views on Lavoisier as the founding father of chemistry through a meticulous and perceptive survey of primary sources. Through his extraordinarily rich literary production, Speter contributed to raising the standards of the historiography published in chemical journals, which, for many years, was in fact monopolised by his articles. Ganzenmüller’s works focused on the relationships between medieval alchemy, technology, and religion, and in 1938 he published an important study in which he defended the scientific legitimacy of medieval alchemical experimental practice, defined as the “chemistry of the Middle-Ages.”57 This general vision, combining technologies with metaphysical and religious beliefs, was developed in subsequent years in a series of articles devoted to alchemy and early glass-making techniques.58 An interesting meeting point for the various trends of German historiography of the first decades of the twentieth century is represented by Das Buch Der Grossen Chemiker, edited in two volumes by Gunther Bugge in 1929.59 The biographies, from Zosimos to Arrhenius, were authored by, among others, Ruska, Darmstädter, Söderbaum, Speter, and Paul Walden. While Meyer heralded a more traditional historiography and Lippman a philological approach, Wilhelm Ostwald explored the history of chemistry with an original philosophical ambition, very much in tune with Dumas’s idea of using history for theoretical purposes.60 In his Leitlinien der Chemie: sieben gemeinverständliche Vorträge aus der Geschichte der Chemie,61 Ostwald “shaped a critical history of chemistry that outlined its triumph as the science of molecular structure.”62 Furthermore, Ostwald looked on chemistry and its history as the embodiment of a process of emancipation from its empirical background. Physical chemistry marked the apex of this theoretical evolution. Ostwald’s idea of a philosophical history of physical chemistry was shared by his protégé Svante Arrhenius in his equally successful Theorien der chemie (1906). Apart from its philosophical programme, Ostwald’s

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Speter was, in fact, the first historian to call attention to Lavoisier’s 1772 note on the combustion of phosphorus: Max Speter, “Die entdeckte Lavoisier-Note vom 20 Oktober 1772,” Angewandte Chemie 45 (1932): 104–17. Thanks to his linguistic skills, Speter was a protagonist in the discovery of Lomonosov’s important contribution to physical chemistry with the following edition of his writings: Chemische abhandlungen M. W. Lomonossows, 1741–1752. Aus dem lateinischen und russischen mit anmerkungen hrsg. von B. N. Menschutkin und Max Speter (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1910). W. Ganzenmüller, Die Alchemie im Mittelalter (Paderborn: Verlag der Bonifacius-durckerei, 1938). This work was translated into French in 1940, but did not have the impact that it deserved. The German edition was printed by a minor publisher, because Ganzenmüller explicitly expressed anti-Nazi beliefs and, as early as 1933, he resigned (at the age of fifty-one years) from his position as a headmaster of a large secondary school. The articles were collected after the death of their authors in Wilhelm Ganzenmüller, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technologie und der Alchemie (Weinheim: Verlag Chemie, 1956). Gunther Bugge, ed., Das Buch Der Grossen Chemiker, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1929–1930). Anne Claire Déré, “Is Chemistry a French or a German Science? History of Science as a Media Object,” in Wilhelm Ostwald at the Crossroads between Chemistry, Philosophy and Media Culture, ed. Britta Görs, Nikos Psarros and Paul Ziche (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), 87–99. Wilhelm Ostwald, Leitlinien der Chemie: sieben gemeinverständliche Vorträge aus der Geschichte der Chemie (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1906). A second edition of this work appeared with the more attractive title of Der Werdegang einer Wissenschaft (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1908). Bernadette Bensaude Vincent and Isabelle Stengers, A History of Chemistry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 211.

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historical reconstruction is teleological and exceedingly selective in its scope. However, Ostwald’s interest in the history of science was neither ephemeral nor exclusively philosophical, and from the year 1889 he promoted the publication of an extremely successful series, the Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften, devoted to classical scientific texts in German translation. Within a few years, more than forty volumes were published, among which chemical literature had a prominent role. Ostwald’s philosophical outlook on the history of chemistry attracted the attention of French antipositivistic philosophers and scientists63 such as Emile Meyerson,64 Pierre Duhem, and Gaston Bachelard.65 Within this context, Duhem is a characteristic figure. Unlike Meyerson and Bachelard, who are primarily distinguished by their philosophical outlook, Duhem became one of the most important historians of science of the period. Interestingly, his works devoted to the history of chemistry66 are completely different from those he wrote on the histories of cosmology67 and mechanics.68 In his chemical histories, the philosophical standpoint tended to prevail over the examination of the historical sources, and his works on the history of mechanics and cosmology explored a remarkable number of manuscript and primary sources, overshadowing his teleological aims. The different approaches applied to chemistry and mechanics are quite interesting, as they reveal, on the one hand, the philosophical richness of chemical concepts, and on the other hand, Duhem’s inability to produce a consistent history of chemistry.

History of chemistry and history of science Two figures of paramount importance in the development of the historiography of chemistry during the first half of the twentieth century are Aldo Mieli69 and Hélène Metzger.70 Mieli, who studied chemistry under the supervision of Cannizzaro and Emanuele Paternò, became interested in the history of chemistry after a visit to Germany in 1904 and after reading Ostwald’s work. Unlike that of Ostwald,

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Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, “Chemistry in the French Tradition of Philosophy of Science: Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 36 (2005): 627–48. Myerson, who studied with Hermann Kopp at Heidelberg, took the history of chemistry as a source with which to challenge the positivistic tradition. The works that contain several references to the history of chemistry are: De l’explication dans les sciences (Paris: Payot, 1921); Identité et réalité, 3rd ed. (Paris: Alcan, 1926); and Du cheminement de la pensée. Bibliotheque de philosophie contemporaine (Paris: Alcan, 1931), 3 vols. Gaston Bachelard, Le Pluralisme cohérent de la chimie moderne (Paris: Vrin, 1932); Gaston Bachelard, Les Intuitions atomistiques (Essai de classification) (Paris: Boivin, 1933); Gaston Bachelard, La Psychanalyse du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). Pierre Duhem, Le Mixte et la combinaison chimique, essai sur l’évolution d’une idée (Paris: Naud, 1902); Pierre Duhem, La chimie est-elle une science française? (Paris: Hermann, 1916). Pierre Duhem, Le système du monde: histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic (Paris: Hermann, 1913–1959), 10 vols. Pierre Duhem, Les origines de la statique (Paris: Hermann, 1905–1906), 2 vols; Pierre Duhem, Études sur Léonard de Vinci (Paris: Hermann, 1906–1913), 3 vols. Antonio Di Meo, “Aldo Mieli e la storia della chimica in Italia,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 36 (1986): 337–61; Ferdinando Abbri, “Aldo Mieli: la storia della scienza tra sviluppo del pensiero e pratica scientifica,” in Scienze e Storia nell’Italia del Novecento, ed. Claudio Pogliano (Pisa: Ed. Plus, 2007), 49–66. Gad Freudenthal, ed., Études sur Hélène Metzger/Studies on Hélène Metzger (Leiden: Brill, 1989).

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however, Mieli’s interest in the history of chemistry was not philosophical and was more in tune with the work of Lippmann and Ruska. Mieli did not have a theoretical programme, and was attracted to the history of science primarily by curiosity. Significantly, his work initially focused on ancient and Renaissance chemical arts. Mieli’s work on the history of chemistry71 is certainly less accurate than the contributions of his German mentors, but it contributed to raising the controversial question of whether chemical history evolved through revolutions or through a continuous accumulation of ideas. Mieli’s importance is chiefly related to his active institutional role as a Privatdozent (libero docente) of the history of chemistry from 1908 onwards at the University of Rome. Interestingly, in one of the last outlines of his courses, published in 1914, he pointed out that, in order to properly understand the history of chemistry, it was necessary to integrate it within the wider framework of the general history of science.72 However, Mieli’s efforts to provide the history of chemistry with an institutional character were subordinated to his main concern of obtaining a chair in the general history of science. This strategy explains the creation of the Archivio di storia della scienza, founded in 1919, which in 1929 became the official organ of the newly founded Académie Internationale d’histoire des sciences (both the journal and the academy are still in existence). It is easy to see that Mieli’s programme was nearly identical to that launched in the same period by George Sarton, with whom he had been in contact for nearly two decades. The forbidding atmosphere created by the Fascist regime forced Mieli to move to France, where in 1928 he was recruited to Henri Berr’s Centre de Synthèse, where he soon became the most authoritative voice in the history of science. Mezger, Mieli’s assistant, directed the history of chemistry down a new path. Her famous thesis on the history of crystallography73 was the result of her scientific research in the chemical laboratory of Frédéric Wallerant at the Sorbonne. She soon realised, however, that the background to historiographical treatment of chemical concepts needed to be completely rehabilitated, and that the positivist categories of scientific progress privileged by her fellow scientists were largely unsatisfactory. Thus, as early as 1922, she argued that “if one wants to study the history of science seriously and find a public of readers, one should look for them among philosophers, 71

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In addition to numerous articles published in the Archivio and other journals devoted to the history of science, his principal monographs are: Aldo Mieli, Pagine di storia della chimica: periodi della storia della chimica, le teorie delle sostanze nell’antichità, origine e sviluppo dell’alchimia, la scoperta dell’alcool e degli acidi minerali, il Rinascimento e l’alchimia (Roma: Leonardo da Vinci, 1922); Aldo Mieli, Lavoisier, 2nd ed. (Roma: Formaggini, 1926); Aldo Mieli, La teoría atómica química moderna: desde sus orígines con J.B. Richter, John Dalton y Gay-Lussac, hasta su definitivo desarrollo con Stanislao Cannizzaro, el sistema periódico de los elementos y el número atómico (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1947). He also edited Vanoccio Biringuccio, De la pirotechnia (1540); edizione critica condotta sulla prima edizione, corredata di note, prefazioni, appendici ed indici, ed ornata dalle riproduzioni del frontespizio e delle 82 figure originali a cura di Aldo Mieli (Bari: Società tip. editrice barese, 1914); Alessandro Volta, Scritti sull’aria infiammabile, sull’eudiometro e sopra i fuochi di Pietramala e Velleia; con introduzione e note di Aldo Mieli (Roma: Leonardo da Vinci, 1928). “Metterò in parallelo la storia della chimica e la storia della fisica e cercherò di farne risultare i numerosi contatti e le frequenti interdipendenze, facendo notare ancora come, in generale, la storia di ogni singola disciplina, per essere compresa, deve essere integrata con la storia complessiva della scienza.” Aldo Mieli, Programma del corso di storia della chimica tenuto nell’Università di Roma (Istituto di chimica generale) durante l’anno scolastico 1913–1914 (Chiusi: Cerere, 1914), 25. Hélène Mezger, La genèse de la science des cristaux (Paris: Alcan, 1918).

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historians and even professors of literature,”74 and abandon the illusion of converting scientists to the history of science.75 Her harsh words76 regarding Maurice Delacre’s recently published Histoire de la chimie77 reveal the degree of her confidence in an imminent new phase of chemical historiography. Thanks to Metzger’s work, the history of chemistry became an integral part of the history of science and ideas, and also began to be cultivated by nonprofessional chemists, albeit at the expense of traditional historiography. Unlike Ostwald, who used philosophy to enlighten both the past and present state of chemistry, Metzger thought that the history of science was intimately connected with the history of philosophy, and that the emergence of scientific problems and theories was a result of philosophical ideas and doctrines.78 Her focus on the philosophical background of chemical thought makes Metzger an idealist, but her credo — that historians should become contemporaries of the actors of the past — offered revolutionary relief from the pervasive hegemony of Whig historiography. During the 1930s, Mieli’s and Metzger’s growing influence was tragically brought to a halt. In the moment of the greatest expansion and diversification of the historiography of continental chemistry, the advent of fascism in Italy (1922) and of Nazism in Germany (1933) arrested its development and, with the start of the war, progressively destroyed the possibility of its survival. With the aim of vindicating the priority of Italian chemists, the fascist regime promoted in 1938 the foundation of the National Institute for the History of Chemistry, which produced few and poor results.79 In Germany, too, the situation rapidly declined. The generation after Lippmann and Ruska found a hostile environment for their perceptive approach to the history of science. Nationalism of the worst kind triumphed. As pointed out by Walter Pagel, after the pioneering works on Paracelsian chemistry by Darmstädter and Karl Sudhoff, “misled by Paracelsus’ aggressive language and his innumerable invective against the privileged and against the ruling opinions of his age, modern anti-Christian worshippers of brute force and murders such as the Nazi have acclaimed him as a congenial hero.”80

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“Si l’on voulait faire sérieusement de l’histoire des sciences, et trouver un public de lecteurs, il fallait le chercher chez les philosophes, historiens et même professeurs de littérature,” cited in Gad Freudenthal, “Hélène Metzger: Extraits de lettres à George Sarton,” Corpus 8–9 (1988): 250. In many respects, Metzger resumed Hoefer’s plea for a professionalised historiography of chemistry and science. Hélène Metzger, “Tribunal de l’histoire et théorie de la connaissance scientifique,” (1935), in Hélène Metzger, La méthode philosophiqie en histoire des sciences. Textes 1914–1939 (Paris: Fayard, 1987), 31–32. Maurice Delacre, Histoire de la chimie (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1920). Her main works were: Les Doctrines Chimiques en France du début du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (1923, reprinted Paris: Blanchard, 1969); Les concepts scientifiques (Paris: Alcan, 1926); Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (1930, reprinted Paris: Blanchard, 1974); La philosophie de la matière chez Lavoisier (Paris: Hermann, 1935); and Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton (Paris: Hermann, 1938). Istituto Italiano di storia della chimica (Roma: Società Poligrafica, 1938): Gino Testi, Storia della chimica con particolare riguardo all’opera degli italiani (Roma: Editrice Mediterranea, 1940). Walter Pagel, Paracelsus. An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (London: Karger Publishers, 192), 40.

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It was, then, a tragic paradox that one of the finest scholars of Paracelsus, Darmstädter, committed suicide in 1938 in order to escape the increasing atmosphere of intolerance and persecution. Apart from Speter, Eduard Färber,81 and Ganzenmüller, whose outstanding and original works were deliberately marginalised, Paul Walden represented the official historiography of chemistry. A distinguished organic chemist and author of several publications in which he vindicated the prominent role of Goethe,82 and that of German chemists more generally, in 1941 Walden published an outstanding work on the history of organic chemistry starting from 1880, which has remained the standard reference until recent times.83 Thanks to his outstanding record and his sympathy for the Nazi regime, he was appointed visiting professor of history of chemistry at the University of Tübingen in 1942. The German historiography of chemistry, however, did not benefit from this unique institutional recognition, which coincided with Speter’s tragic death. After the war, Walden published extensively on the history of chemistry, but his readers were mostly chemists, and it is significant that, probably because of his Nazi leanings, the main journals of the history of science did not honour him with an obituary as they did Ruska, Lippmann, Darmstädter, Speter, Farber, and Ganzenmüller. During the 1940s, the only sign of life in chemical history in France was the organisation of a grandiose exhibition celebrating Lavoisier’s bicentenary in 1943. The exhibition, organised by the Académie des sciences, was held at the Palais de la découverte in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France. Despite the severe and difficult circumstances,84 the untiring efforts of the organisers resulted in an impressive exhibition where a substantial number of instruments (over 150), minerals, books, manuscripts, memorabilia and various other items illustrating the life and scientific work of Lavoisier were put on show to the public for the first time.85 In addition to its unsurpassed richness, the most interesting and innovative aspect of this exhibition was the repetition of many of Lavoisier’s experiments using the original instruments, for instance those on the combustion of phosphorus and the combustion of oil.86

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Färber emigrated to the USA in 1938, and contributed to the development of the American historiography of chemistry. Once in the USA, he changed his family name to Farber. He published his works, especially during his stay in Germany, mainly in chemical journals. His main books are: Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der chemie (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1921); and Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry 1901–1961 (New York: Abelard Schuman, 1961). On Farber, see Robert P. Multhauf, “Eduard Farber, 1892–1969,” Isis 62 (1971): 220–24. Paul Walden, Goethe als Chemiker und Techniker (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1932). Paul Walden, Geschichte der organischen Chemie seit 1880 (Berlin: Springer, 1880). Ch. Maurain, vice-president of the Académie des sciences, remarked: “C’était une entreprise difficile, surtout dans les circonstances actuelles, que de présenter un tableau convenable d’une œuvre aussi vaste et aussi variée.” Université de Paris. Le Palais de la Découverte présente une exposition a l’occasion du deuxième centenaire de Lavoisier (Paris, 1943), 16–17. This was, in fact, the first time that Lavoisier’s collection had been brought together since his wife’s death in 1836. In a flyleaf printed for the occasion and entitled Quelques grandes expériences de Lavoisier, we read: “Nous avons répété de préférence, avec toute la fidélité possible, celles qui peuvent être réalisées rapidement en public.” This document is preserved at the Archives de l’Académie des Sciences (Paris), Dossier Biographique de Lavoisier. I have examined the background of the exhibition in “Il laboratorio di Lavoisier,” Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, ser. V, 23, no. 2 (1999), 99–113.

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Interestingly, the young Maurice Daumas, who had just published a biography of the French chemist,87 was so impressed by these experiments and by the complexity of Lavoisier’s instruments that he embarked on a new career. After the war, he became curator of the collection of instruments of the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, and in 1953 he published his pioneering work on instrument-making during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.88 Two years later, he published his PhD thesis on Lavoisier’s experimental practice.89 Although he was not, strictly speaking, a historian of chemistry, Daumas’s comprehensive work on Lavoisier and on chemical apparatus helped to reveal the material sources of the history of chemistry, which, in recent times, have come to the forefront of historical investigations. The end of the war left the continental history of chemistry in an exceedingly poor state. The renaissance of history of science studies in Italy, France and Germany only marginally affected the history of chemistry,90 which, by contrast, expanded rapidly in both England and the USA. Sweden, profiting from its neutrality and its German educational system, was the only country to see a revival in the history of chemistry, with the works on Carl Wilhelm Scheele91 and Tobern Bergman92 by Johan Nordström, professor of history of science in Uppsala from 1933. Other relevant contributions were Sten Lindroth’s works on the history of Paracelsianism in Sweden and the history of Swedish copper-mining,93 the edition of Scheele’s unpublished manuscripts by Oseen94 and of his laboratory notebooks by Uno Boklund,95 and Olsson’s history of Swedish chemistry up to the end of the eighteenth century.96 Even though these works often provided fine and original reconstructions of the cultural context of Scandinavian chemistry and alchemy, their impact was limited to Sweden, owing to the language.

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Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier (Paris: Gallimard, 1941). On Daumas and his background, see Charles C. Gillispie, “Maurice Daumas, 1910–1914,” Isis 76 (1985): 72–74. Maurice Daumas, Les instruments scientifiques aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Puf, 1953). Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier, théoricien et expérimentateur (Paris: Puf, 1955). A revealing example of this decadence was the assignment of the edition of Lavoisier’s correspondence to the French engineer René Fric, who did a poor job in comparison with what, nearly a century before, the editors of Lavoisier’s Oeuvres, Jean Baptiste Dumas and Edouard Grimaux, had done. Johan Nordström, “Några brotglömda brev och tidskrifts-bidrag av Carl Wilhelm Scheele,” Lychnos (1942): 177–233. Torbern Bergman’s foreign correspondence. Vol. 1., Letters from foreigners to Torbern Bergman prepared by Göte Carlid; rev. and publ. by Johan Nordström (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965). Sten Lindroth, Paracelsismen i sverige till 1600-talets mitt (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1943); Sten Lindroth, Gruvbrytning och kopparhantering vid Stora Kopparberget: intill 1800-talets början (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryck, 1955), 2 vols. C. W. Oseen, ed., Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Manuskript 1756–1777 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1942). Distinguished theoretical physicist and chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Oseen became an enthusiastic supporter of the history of science studies. His work on Scheele, however, was heavily criticised by Johan Nordström in the long essay review “En edition av Scheele’s efterlämnade manuscript,” Lychnos (1942): 254–77. Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Bruna boken. Utg. i faksimil med dechiffrering och innehållsanalys jämte inledning och kommentar av Uno Boklund (Stockholm, 1961). Boklund’s edition of Scheele’s laboratory notebooks also appeared in an English edition. Hugo Olsson, Kemiens historia i Sverige intill år 1800 (Uppsala: Almqvist &Wiksell, 1971).

THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CHEMISTRY

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Signs of an awakening in continental historiography were few and sporadic during the 1950s and 1960s, when the history of chemistry was not a popular subject per se, and its role within the history of science remained relatively marginal.97 This negative trend, which during the early 1970s was also reflected in English and American historiography,98 was interrupted some thirty years ago, when an increasing awareness of the role of applied sciences brought the history of chemistry back into the spotlight and paved the way for the present revival. During the last few decades, historians of chemistry, both continental and Anglo-American, played a prominent role in establishing the history of science as an independent discipline, and also as successful editors of journals and series.99 The reason for this rather unique role lies, in my view, in the richness of chemistry itself and the structural impossibility of categorising it within either the exact or the biological sciences, not to mention its longstanding and problematic relationship with technological and industrial practices. It is not surprising, then, that the ambiguous nature of chemistry resulted in the coexistence of an extraordinarily rich range of historical studies. At the same time, it was natural for historians of chemistry to make comparisons with other sciences and technologies and to expand their domains well beyond their original field of specialisation. In this respect, the historiography of chemistry differs from the historiographies of mathematics, astronomy, physics, and medicine, which have always tended to preserve a strong disciplinary identity. Chemistry, by contrast, offered an agglomerate of disciplines that were not reducible to an exclusive historical canon, and which, as I have tried to show in the present paper, had already given rise to a host of historical narratives by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thus, Mieli’s, Ruska’s and Metzger’s programme of integrating the history of chemistry into the history of science was the expression of a recurrent idea that had been latent since the publication of Hoefer’s Histoire de la chimie. The rigid hierarchy of natural sciences of the 1920s made their project utopian; yet now, with the collapse of the mechanistic paradigm, the lessons we can draw from the historiography of chemistry seem to offer a more flexible model for interpreting the complex dynamics of science.

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Numerous studies devoted to the Scientific Revolution unanimously marginalised the historical role played by chemistry and alchemy. This is clear from the fate of the journal Chymia: Annual Studies in the History of Chemistry (1948–1967), which was transformed by Russell McCormmach into Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences in 1968, and thereafter left the history of chemistry at the margins. On this, see Marco Beretta, “Between Chemical Histories and History of Science: Journals and the History of Chemistry,” in Journals and History of Science, ed. Marco Beretta, Claudio Pogliano and Pietro Redondi (Florence: Olschki, 1998), 57–75. In addition to Ruska and Mieli, it is worth noting that Douglas McKie was the founding editor of Annals of Science (a journal edited since 1999 by Trevor Levere); James R. Partington was a founding member of the British Society for the History of Science, and served as its president during 1949–1951, while the British Journal of History of Science was subsequently edited by Maurice Crosland (1965–1971), David Knight (1981–1988), and John H. Brooke (1989–1993); Robert Multhauf edited Isis for an unusually long period (1964–1978), and was succeeded by Arnolf Thackray (1979–1985), who also took an active role in resuming the publication of a new series of Osiris; the Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences are still edited by Robert Halleux; and Nuncius has been edited since 2004 by the present author.

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Acknowledgements When I was asked to present a paper on the historiography of chemistry in continental Europe for the celebration of SHAC’s seventy-fifth birthday, I had a flashback to my beginnings in this profession. In 1990, I submitted an essay devoted to the historiography of chemistry during the eighteenth century to Ambix (see note 1), and its earliest version was patiently copy-edited by Bill Smeaton. From then on, Bill constantly and generously encouraged me in my early research. The present paper is dedicated to his memory.

Notes on Contributor Marco Beretta is Professor of History of Science at the University of Bologna and Vice-Director of the Museo Galileo in Florence. Since 2004 he has been the editor of Nuncius. He works particularly on the history of early modern chemistry and on Lavoisier. He has recently published The Alchemy of Glass. Counterfeit, Imitation and Transmutation in Ancient Glassmaking (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications/USA, 2009). Address: Museo Galileo, Piazza dei Giudici 1, 50122 Florence, Italy. Email: [email protected].