Lavoisier as a reader of chemical literature/Lavoisier lecteur de la littérature chimique - article ; n°1 ; vol.48, pg 71-94

Marco Beretta

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Revue d'histoire des sciences - Année 1995 - Volume 48 - Numéro 1 - Pages 71-94
RÉSUMÉ. — La connaissance et l'étude des sources et des livres étudiés par les savants est un instrument d'une importance fondamentale pour une compréhension historique correcte de leur contribution scientifique et de leur originalité. La bibliothèque de Lavoisier constitue un exemple significatif de cette importance. En analysant les livres de chimie et de physique lus par le jeune Lavoisier au début de sa carrière scientifique, cet article cherche à dégager leur influence sur l'élaboration de la nouvelle philosophie de la matière de Lavoisier.
SUMMARY. — In this paper I examine the most important works of chemistry read or owned by Lavoisier during the period 1764-1774. An analysis of Lavoisier's library, early works and correspondence has made it possible to identify the books which had a particular influence on his chemical system and the way in which he read and used them in the elaboration of his research.
24 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: REVUE_D-HISTOIRE_DES_SCIENCES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1995
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

M MARCO BERETTA
Lavoisier as a reader of chemical literature/Lavoisier lecteur de
la littérature chimique
In: Revue d'histoire des sciences. 1995, Tome 48 n°1-2. pp. 71-94.
Résumé
RÉSUMÉ. — La connaissance et l'étude des sources et des livres étudiés par les savants est un instrument d'une importance
fondamentale pour une compréhension historique correcte de leur contribution scientifique et de leur originalité. La bibliothèque
de Lavoisier constitue un exemple significatif de cette importance. En analysant les livres de chimie et de physique lus par le
jeune au début de sa carrière scientifique, cet article cherche à dégager leur influence sur l'élaboration de la nouvelle
philosophie de la matière de Lavoisier.
Abstract
SUMMARY. — In this paper I examine the most important works of chemistry read or owned by Lavoisier during the period 1764-
1774. An analysis of Lavoisier's library, early works and correspondence has made it possible to identify the books which had a
particular influence on his chemical system and the way in which he read and used them in the elaboration of his research.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
BERETTA MARCO. Lavoisier as a reader of chemical literature/Lavoisier lecteur de la littérature chimique. In: Revue d'histoire
des sciences. 1995, Tome 48 n°1-2. pp. 71-94.
doi : 10.3406/rhs.1995.1222
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhs_0151-4105_1995_num_48_1_1222Lavoisier as a reader
of chemical literature
Marco Beretta (*)
RÉSUMÉ. — La connaissance et l'étude des sources et des livres étudiés par
les savants est un instrument d'une importance fondamentale pour une compré
hension historique correcte de leur contribution scientifique et de leur originalité.
La bibliothèque de Lavoisier constitue un exemple significatif de cette import
ance. En analysant les livres de chimie et de physique lus par le jeune Lavoisier
au début de sa carrière scientifique, cet article cherche à dégager leur influence
sur l'élaboration de la nouvelle philosophie de la matière de Lavoisier.
MOTS-CLÉS. — Lavoisier; livres; bibliothèque; littérature scientifique.
SUMMARY. — In this paper I examine the most important works of che
mistry read or owned by Lavoisier during the period 1764-1774. An analysis
of Lavoisier's library, early works and correspondence has made it possible to
identify the books which had a particular influence on his chemical system and
the way in which he read and used them in the elaboration of his research.
KEYWORDS. — Lavoisier; books; library; scientific literature.
It has often been claimed that Lavoisier was distinctly ungene
rous when it came to acknowledging the sources which influenced
the development of his chemical system. When this allegation has
been made, the controversy on the priority of the discovery of
oxygen has usually been cited. Many historians, especially British
and Swedish ones, have declared Lavoisier's claim to have been
the first to isolate oxygen illegitimate and given the experimental
credit for the discovery to Scheele and Priestley (1). What has made
these historians particularly severe on the French chemist is the
(*) Marco Beretta, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Piazza dei Giudici 1, 50122
Firenze, Italie.
(1) On this see Aldo Mieli, Le questioni di priorita e dei precursori, Archives internatio
nales d'histoire des sciences (1947-1948), 9-17; Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier théoricien et
expérimentateur (Paris, pup, 1955), 67-90; J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, vol. 3
(London : MacMillan, 1962), 374-376; Uno Boklund, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, His Work
and Life. The Brown Book (Stockholm : Roos, 1968), 365-392.
Rev. Hist. Sci., 1995, XLVIII/1-2, 71-94 72 Marco Beretta
fact that Scheele communicated to Lavoisier the experimental
method of obtaining oxygen and that this contribution was never
acknowledged by Lavoisier. Today, however, historians agree that
even if Lavoisier was not the first to isolate oxygen, he was cer
tainly the only chemist of the eighteenth century to have correctly
understood the implications of such a discovery for the science
of chemistry. Moreover, Lavoisier was the first to name oxygen
and to define its chemical function in general.
Notwithstanding this general agreement, however, there is still
a widespread belief that Lavoisier was a scientist who was slow
to acknowledge the merits and contributions of others and that
he had a tendency « to omit researches which anticipated his
own (2) ». In reality the situation seems more complex than this,
and from an analytical and unprejudiced reading of Lavoisier's
works, it is difficult to find any conclusive evidence to substant
iate such a historiographie assertion. In his memoirs and his longer
works alike, Lavoisier provided his readers with ample, and some
times extremely detailed, references to his sources. By often quoting
not only the author but also the title of the work concerned, he
was certainly more accurate and scrupulous than many of his col
leagues, both French and foreign.
A proper examination of Lavoisier in relation to the chemical
literature of his time requires a different perspective. Instead of
asking whether Lavoisier gave enough credit to his predecessors
and contemporaries, I have tried to establish provisionally the che
mical and scientific sources with which he was acquainted during
the early years of his scientific career and the ones among them
which exerted a significant and lasting influence. In this context,
a study of his library (3) and an examination of the references
given in Lavoisier's early work have been necessary.
Lavoisier's approach to chemical literature seems to have been
guided by selective criteria from the very beginning of his career
in science. In his first known paper dealing with chemical matters,
which dates from around 1764 and was written after he completed
Rouelle' s chemistry courses (4), Lavoisier was inclined to use and
(2) Partington, op. cit. in n. 2, vol. 3, 376.
(3) A survey of Lavoisier's library can be found in my : Bibliotheca Lavoisieriana :
The Catalogue of the Library of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (Florence : Leo S. Olschki, 1995).
(4) The paper is a 19-leaf manuscript containing a draft of a course in chemistry. The Lavoisier as a reader 73
to quote the works of physicists and natural philosophers rather
than the chemical literature available at the time. In addition
to the expected references to Rouelle' s lectures, Lavoisier ment
ioned Musschenbroek's Latin account of the collection of expe
riments conducted in the Accademia del Cimento and also referred
to Nollet's Leçons (5). These two works were quoted by Lavois
ier in connection with his attempt to perfect a pyrometer capable
of measuring the expansion of metals with extreme accuracy.
More interesting and revealing of Lavoisier's attitude is his inves
tigation of the nature of light. In this early paper he criticized
Newton's theory of light and colour, which he believed did not
explain the chemical phenomena as well as the physical ones (6).
As an alternative to Newton's theory, Lavoisier suggested that
a luminous body transmitted an oscillation to the igneous fluid
and that this movement was perceived by the eye as light. The
undulation of light was by analogy similar to that of sound.
The oscillation of a sonorous body was transmitted through the
air and reached the ear, where it produced the sensation of sound.
Lavoisier believed that the similarity between light and sound
was confirmed by a similarity between tones and colours. Sound
was nothing more than a vibration transmitted through the air
from a resonant body to the sense of hearing. Rapid vibrations
produced high tones, slow vibrations low tones. Lavoisier applied
the same principle to light and asserted that the seven colours
were due to the difference in the frequency of the vibrations
which were transmitted to our sight. How such a theory would
provide a better explanation of chemical phenomena than Newton's
is, unfortunately, not stated. However, it is interesting that unlike
Stahl and Rouelle who saw phlogiston as the cause of colours,
manuscript is kept in the Archives de l'Académie des sciences in Paris with the shelfmark
« dossier Lavoisier 380 ». A critical edition of the manuscript is published in my A New
Course in Chemistry : Lavoisier's First Chemical Paper (Firenze : Leo S. Olschki, 1994)
from which I have taken extracts.
(5) Petrus Van Musschenbroek, Tentamina Experimentorum Naturalium captorum in
Academia del Cimento (Lugduni Batavorum, 1731). Although the work is not mentioned
explicitly, the text of the manuscript leaves little doubt that Lavoisier used this specific
work by Musschenbroek. The work by Nollet is Leçons de physique expérimentale, 6 vols.
(Paris, 1754). Unless stated otherwise all the works quoted in the notes are listed in the
catalogue of Lavoisier's library.
(