John G. McEvoy

In Search of the Chemical Revolution: Interpretive Strategies in the History of Chemistry

In recent years the Chemical Revolution has become a renewed focus of interest among historians of science. This interest isshaped by interpretive strategies associated with the emergence anddevelopment of the discipline of the history of science. The disciplineoccupies a contested intellectual terrain formed in part by thedevelopment and cultural entanglements of science itself. Threestages in this development are analyzed in this paper. Theinterpretive strategies that characterized each stage are elucidatedand traced to the disciplinary interests that gave rise to them. Whilepositivists and whigs appropriated the history of science to thejustificatory and celebratory needs of science itself, postpositivistslinked it to philosophical models of rationality, and sociologists ofknowledge sought its sociological reconstruction. Since none of thesestrategies do justice to the complexity of historical events, a modelof the Chemical Revolution is outlined which upholds the autonomyand specificity of history and the methods used to study it.

Electricity, Knowledge, and the Nature of Progress in Priestley's Thought

The appearance of Priestleys electrical work as a brief and irrelevant prelude to his more substantial chemical enquiries may explain why it has been strangely overlooked by historians of science. It was only fairly recently that Sir Philip Hartog sought to rectify this situation with the affirmation that ‘Priestleys electrical work offers the key to Priestleys scientific mind’. Attacking traditional chemical historiography for tracing Priestleys opposition to Lavoisiers theory to a deficiency in his scientific sensibilities, Hartog insisted that Priestleys natural philosophy can properly be understood only in relation to his ‘profound convictions on scientific method’ as fully expressed in the History of electricity . Only thus would Priestleys scientific thought be related correctly to his ‘work as a whole’.

The Enlightenment and the Chemical Revolution

The Chemical Revolution is becoming a focus of renewed interest among historians and philosophers of science, some of whom wish to relate it to the wider sociocultural context of eighteenth-century life. This context included the cultural movement known as the Enlightenment, at the core of which was a set of metaphysical presuppositions concerning the nature of the knowing mind and its relation to the object of inquiry. The Enlightenment notion of the self-defining subject established a unitary framework of regulative principles, dealing with the relation between science and metaphysics, the method of analysis, and the relation between thought and language, which were variously interpreted in the opposing views that Lavoisier and Priestley developed about the ontology of chemistry, the nature of experimentation, the reform of the chemical nomenclature, and the institutional organization of science. The ensuing dialectic occurred within an historiographical framework in which both sides viewed the chemical upheavals of the eighteenth-century in terms of the Enlightenment notion of the dawning of a new age, radically different from anything that had gone before. The interpretation of the Chemical Revolution developed here calls for a more balanced view of the moments of continuity and discontinuity in scientific change; it also suggests that an adequate conception of scientific change can be formulated only within a framework provided by a robust contextual model of science, in which the distinction between the constitutive aspects of science and the contextual factors is rejected in favour of a relational view of each as constitutive of the other.

Gases, God and the balance of nature: a commentary on Priestley (1772) ‘Observations on different kinds of air’

Historians of chemistry usually associate the eighteenth century with the Chemical Revolution, but it could just as readily be called ‘the century of gases’ (or ‘airs’, as they were called in the eighteenth century). In the early part of the century, the British pneumatic chemists struggled to replace the traditional notion ‘Air’, understood as an inert chemical element, with the concept of ‘air’, regarded as the third state of matter, encompassing a wide variety of chemical species. These developments constituted a necessary condition for the Chemical Revolution, which occurred in the latter part of the century. In ‘Observations’, Priestley took pneumatic chemistry to a new level, with the discovery of eight simple inorganic gases. Motivated by his belief in a benevolent God and a pious utilitarianism, Priestly explored the role of the atmosphere in the balance of nature and the politics of the state, which he linked to the movement of Rational Dissent. He styled himself an ‘aerial philosopher’ to signal the interdisciplinary nature of his inquiries, which he regarded not as a branch of ordinary chemistry, but as a mode of thought that encompassed physics, chemistry and natural theology. Priestley saw it as a source of principles and secrets of nature more extensive than that of ‘gravity itself’. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.