Spheres of Influence: Illustration,Notation, and John Dalton's Conceptual Toolbox, 1803–1835

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the English chemist John Dalton (1766–1844) developed his atomic theory, a set of theoretical commitments describing the nature of atoms and the rules guiding their interactions and combinations. In this paper, I examine a set of conceptual and illustrative tools used by Dalton in developing his theory as well as in presenting it to the public in printed form as well as in his many public lectures. These tools—the concept of ‘atmosphere’, the pile of shot analogy, and Dalton's system of chemical notation—served not just to guide Dalton's own thinking and to make his theories clear to his various audiences, but also to bind these theories together into a coherent system, presented in its definitive form in the three volumes of A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808, 1810, and 1827). Despite these links, Dalton's contemporaries tended to pick and choose which of his theories to accept; his system of notation failed to be adopted in part because it embodied the whole of his system indivisibly.     

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

The influential French chemist Marcelin Berthelot spoke against the use of Dalton's atomic theory and Avogadro's hypothesis in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that Berthelot conceded that atomism might be acceptable as a system of conventions, but he feared the power of such conventions in constructing a realistic picture of atoms which was not warranted empirically. Equally, Berthelot's anti-atomism was a last-ditch effort to assert the place of chemistry within the tradition of natural history and to deny the possible reduction of chemical science to the laws of nineteenth-century physics.     

Instruments of Music,Instruments of Science: Hermann von Helmholtz's Musical Practices,his Classicism,and his Beethoven Sonata

The young Hermann Helmholtz, in an 1838 letter home, declared that he always appreciated music much more when he played it for himself. Though a frequent concert-goer, and celebrated for his highly influential 1863 work on the physiological basis of music theory, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, it is likely that Helmholtz's enduring engagement with music began with his initial, personal experience of playing music for himself. I develop this idea, shifting the discussion of Helmholtz's work on sound sensation back to its origins, and examine the role of his material interaction with musical instruments and music itself. In his sound sensation studies, Helmholtz understood sound as an external, physical object. But Helmholtz also conceived of sound in musical terms. Further, Helmholtz's particular musical tastes as well as his deeply personal interaction with musical instruments allowed him to reconcile his conception of sound as physical object with his conception of sound as music. Helmholtz's physiological theory of sound sensation was both the product of and constitutive of how he heard and created sound. I argue that Helmholtz himself was the embodied reconciliation of his physiological theory of sound sensation and his belief that musical aesthetics were historically and culturally contingent.     

Huygens at work: Annotations in his rediscovered personal copy of Hooke's Micrographia

It is well known that Hooke's wave theory of light, set forth in his Micrographia of 1665, is viewed as a step towards Huygens's famous theory of light. This view depends mostly on some short remarks given by Huygens in his Traité de la Lumi`ere (1690) and the earlier Projet du Contenu de la Dioptrique (1673). Huygens's personal copy of Micrographia was believed to be lost until found at Braunschweig (Brunswick) University Library by the author three years ago. It is annotated at Observ. IX (pp. 47–67) only, where Hooke deals with his wave theory of light and colours. This article provides a short review of Hooke's theory, and an interpretation of Huygens's annotations, which show clearly the first steps towards the opinions he was to express in his Traité de la lumi`ere, particularly methodological ones. Furthermore, a short comparison is here drawn with Huygens's annotations in his copy of Ango's L'optique divisée en trois livres, which show similar patterns of reasoning.     

Science and the arts in William Henry's research into inflammable air during the Early Nineteenth Century

Historians have explored the continuities between science and the arts in the Industrial Revolution, with much recent historiography emphasizing the hybrid nature of the activities of men of science around 1800. Chemistry in particular displayed this sort of hybridity between the philosophical and practical because the materials under investigation were important across the research spectrum. Inflammable gases were an example of such hybrid objects: pneumatic chemists through the eighteenth century investigated them, and in the process created knowledge, processes and instruments essential for the creation of a new gaslight industry from 1800. Once this industry began to expand and mature, the interests and experiments of the gas industry stimulated new research work which in turn had relevance for theoretical debates.

This paper explores how the emergence of the gas industry from 1800 provided an impetus for new work in theoretical chemistry. Boulton & Watt, important pioneers of the gas industry, explored the compositions of inflammable gases for practical purposes: the composition of these gases had an important effect on the luminosity of gaslights, and hence the economics of the new technology compared to older forms of lighting. As they explored these questions in their engineering work, they stimulated their friend William Henry to explore the nature of these gases further, and he carried out a series of experiments to determine their composition more exactly than Boulton & Watt had done. Henry published a series of paper between 1805 and 1820 where he made arguments about the compositions of inflammable airs, and further related these to contemporary debates about the laws of multiple and definite proportions, as well as John Dalton's atomism. Henry's research was also a hybrid of the theoretical and practical in that he tried to develop results useful for the fledgling gas industry. Specifically, he suggested the best kind of coal to use, and showed how gas quality varied with distillation time and temperature.     

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

In response to the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755, and the subsequent seismic activity in Europe, Kant wrote several articles on earthquakes and volcanic phenomena. Full translations of the most important parts of these articles are presented, and summaries for the remainder. Kant developed a carefully worked out theory to account for seismic activity, based on his reading of the scientific literature, the reports received in Königsberg of the Lisbon earthquake and associated events, and his general theory of the origin of the Earth's crust, as presented in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte of 1755. Following Lémery, Kant supposed that volcanic action was due to the subterranean combination of sulphur and iron, and he rejected the suggestion that earthquakes might be due to the gravitational pull of heavenly bodies. Kant's theory was naturalistic, but his account was not wholly divorced from physicotheological considerations.     

Hypothesis and experiment in the early development of Kekulé's Benzene theory

This article attempts a contextual study of the origin and early development of August Kekulé's theory of aromatic compounds. The terminus a quo is essentially August Hofmann's coining of the modern chemical denotation of ‘aromatic’ in 1855; the terminus ad quem is the first full codification of Kekulé's theory in the sixth fascicle of his Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie, published in the summer of 1866. Kekulé's theory is viewed in context with the earlier and concurrent experimental work of such chemists as Hermann Kolbe, Friedrich Beilstein, Rudolph Fittig, and Hugo Müller. The reception of the theory is briefly examined. Attention is paid to the role of Kekulé's molecular models and of his celebrated dream anecdote of the snake that seizes its own tail. The episode is used as a case study for the continuity of scientific progress, and to illustrate the close reciprocal interactions of hypothesis and experiment in the evolution of a scientific theory.     

Two kinds of modification theory of light: Some new observations on the Newton-Hooke controversy of 1672 concerning the nature of light

It has not been sufficiently emphasized that there existed two kinds of modification theory of colours, Aristotle's modification theory and Descartes-Hook's modification theory. This seems to have caused some confusion in the interpretation of the optical controversy between Newton and Hooke in 1672. The aim of the present paper is to prove that these two kinds of modification theory really coexisted, and on that basis to present a new interpretation of the optical controversy of 1672. The characteristics and the historical role of each of these theories will be described. Newton's colour theory was formed under the influence of Aristotle's modification theory, which had been disseminated through the work of an English Gassendist, Walter Charleton. Newton's optical theories were created not only under the influence of Descartes, as we have been often told, but also under the conspicuous influence of corpuscular philosophers.     

Pauling's Defence of Bent-Equivalent Bonds: A View of Evolving Explanatory Demands in Modern Chemistry

Linus Pauling played a key role in creating valence-bond theory, one of two competing theories of the chemical bond that appeared in the first half of the 20th century. While the chemical community preferred his theory over molecular-orbital theory for a number of years, valence-bond theory began to fall into disuse during the 1950s. This shift in the chemical community's perception of Pauling's theory motivated Pauling to defend the theory, and he did so in a peculiar way. Rather than publishing a defence of the full theory in leading journals of the day, Pauling published a defence of a particular model of the double bond predicted by the theory in a revised edition of his famous textbook, The Nature of the Chemical Bond. This paper explores that peculiar choice by considering both the circumstances that brought about the defence and the mathematical apparatus Pauling employed, using new discoveries from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers archive.     

The metaphor of epigenesis: Kant,Blumenbach and Herder

Over the last few decades, the meaning of the scientific theory of epigenesis and its significance for Kant's critical philosophy have become increasingly central questions. Most recently, scholars have argued that epigenesis is a key factor in the development of Kant's understanding of reason as self-grounding and self-generating. Building on this work, our claim is that Kant appealed to not just any epigenetic theory, but specifically Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's account of generation, and that this appeal must be understood not only in terms of self-organization, but also in terms of the demarcation of a specific domain of inquiry: for Blumenbach, the study of life; for Kant, the study of reason. We argue that Kant adopted this specific epigenetic model as a result of his dispute with Herder regarding the independence of reason from nature. Blumenbach's conception of epigenesis and his separation of a domain of the living from the non-living lent Kant the tools to demarcate metaphysics, and to guard reason against Herder's attempts to naturalize it.     

James geikie,james croll,and the eventful ice age

James Geikie's Great Ice Age (1874) first presented to the geological public the Pleistocene. modern interpretation of alternating mild and cold periods during the Though it was supported by geological evidence, Geikie's view of the Ice Age was based on a theoretical framework supplied by the climatic physics of James Croll. Mid-nineteenth-century British geologists had encountered great difficulty in making sense out of the varied and complicated glacial deposits, or ‘drift’, and had formulated the ‘iceberg’ theory to account for the apparent chaos of the drift, an explanation which discouraged its stratigraphic study. The reaffirmation of faith in continental glaciation by several Scottish geologists in the 1850s brought with it a belief in an eventful Pleistocene, but it remained difficult to discover the events of Ice Age history from study of the glacial deposits. In 1864 Croll presented a detailed climatic history of the Ice Age deduced from astronomy and physical geography. By 1871 James Geikie was using Croll's scheme of Ice Age history as the basis for his impressive synthesis of Pleistocene data from throughout the world.     

Nagel's analysis of reduction: Comments in defense as well as critique

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel's classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel's claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A further corollary to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel's conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry.     

Putting a spin on circulating reference,or how to rediscover the scientific subject

Bruno Latour claims to have shown that a Kantian model of knowledge, which he describes as seeking to unite a disembodied transcendental subject with an inaccessible thing-in-itself, is dramatically falsified by empirical studies of science in action. Instead, Latour puts central emphasis on scientific practice, and replaces this Kantian model with a model of “circulating reference.” Unfortunately, Latour's alternative schematic leaves out the scientific subject. I repair this oversight through a simple mechanical procedure. By putting a slight spin on Latour's diagrammatic representation of his theory, I discover a new space for a post-Kantian scientific subject, a subject brilliantly described by Ludwik Fleck. The neglected subjectivities and ceaseless practices of science are thus re-united.     

The Lunar Theories of Tycho Brahe and Christian Longomontanus in the Progymnasmata and Astronomia Danica

Tycho Brahe's lunar theory, mostly the work of his assistant Christian Longomontanus, published in the Progymnasmata (1602), was the most advanced and accurate lunar theory yet developed. Its principal innovations are: the introduction of equant motion for the first inequality in order to separate the determination of direction and distance; a more accurate limit for the second inequality although requiring a more complex calculation; additional inequalities of the variation and, in place of the annual inequality in Tycho's earlier theory, a reduction in the equation of time; in the latitude theory a variation of the inclination of the orbital plane and an inequality of the motion of the nodes; a reduction in the range of variation of distance, parallax, and apparent diameter. Some of these were already present in Tycho's earlier lunar theory (1599), but all were changed in notable ways. Twenty years later Longomontanus published a modified version of the lunar theory in Astronomia Danica (1622), for the purpose of facilitating the calculation through new correction tables, and also explained his reasons for parts of the theory in the Progymnasmata. This paper is a technical study of both lunar theories.     

William Stukeley and the early history of the Orrery

Relations between J. A. C. Chaptal, pioneer of heavy chemical industry in France, and A. L. Lavoisier, reformer of chemical theory, are examined in the light of unpublished correspondence they exchanged in the period 1784–1790. The letters, together with Chaptal's early publications, allow a reconstruction of his conversion to Lavoisier's antiphlogistic chemistry. They also reveal a series of petitions that Chaptal made to Lavoisier, in the latter's official capacity as a director of the Régie des poudres et salpêtres, for relief from the controlled price of saltpetre for his acid works in Languedoc. Finally, the relationship is explored as a window on the interplay between chemical theory and industrial practice during the period of the Industrial Revolution.     

Natural diversity: A neo-essentialist misconstrual of homeostatic property cluster theory in natural kind debates

In natural kind debates, Boyd's famous Homeostatic Property Cluster theory (HPC) is often misconstrued in two ways: Not only is it thought to make for a normative standard for natural kinds, but also to require the homeostatic mechanisms underlying nomological property clusters to be uniform. My argument for the illegitimacy of both overgeneralizations, both on systematic as well as exegetical grounds, is based on the misconstrued view's failure to account for functional kinds in science. I illustrate the combination of these two misconstruals with recent entries into the natural kind debate about emotions. Finally, I examine and reject Stich's “Kornblith-Devitt method” as a potential justification of these misconstruals.     

Lavoisier and his Last Printed Work: The Mémoires de physique et de chimie (1805)

On the basis of a significant number of unpublished documents, here published for the first time, the article reconstructs the historical and scientific origins of Lavoisier's Mémoires de physique et de chimie. Because of the paucity of primary sources available so far, this work has previously received little attention and its 'publication' is commonly attributed to Madame Lavoisier's effort to revive the memory of her husband. In contrast with this image, this article suggests that Madame Lavoisier had only a subsidiary role and that Armand Séguin's contribution to both the editing and the scientific organization of the Mémoires needs a historical reassessment. Lavoisier's collaboration with Séguin, dating from 1792, resulted in a work the aim of which was far more ambitious than that of collecting already published memoirs. Furthermore, it is argued that the contents of the first volume of the Mémoires indicate an important evolution in Lavoisier's chemical theory.