In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Technology and Culture 43.3 (2002) 600-602



[Access article in PDF]

Book Review

Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry


Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry. Edited by Frederic L. Holmes and Trevor H. Levere. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. Pp. xxi+415. $50.

The essays in this collection, the product of a conference at the Dibner Institute, explore the role of instruments and the place of experiment in the history of Western chemistry. Editors Frederic Holmes and Trevor Levere call the volume an opportunity to emphasize the unity and diversity found in a variety of approaches and specializations, all falling under that general heading. Accordingly, the book covers a broad time-frame and a wide range of subject matter and approaches. Because the essays are so diverse, the editors have worked hard to draw them together, providing not only a general introduction but also comments on themes and differences for the more or less chronological subgroups into which the book is divided. Their efforts are sometimes very successful, other times less so. [End Page 600]

The principal concern of the first set of essays, grouped under the rubric "The Practice of Alchemy," is what one author calls the material culture of early chemistry. Few clearly identifiable chemical instruments remain from before the eighteenth century, so printed images and contemporary descriptions of chemistry-based activities must play a different role than they do for more modern counterparts. The focus of the section is instruments, perhaps because "experiment" also meant something different—broader, or not strictly laboratory-oriented, or less tightly bound to clarification of clearly stated theories. Collectively, the essays further clarify the connections between what might be renamed very early chemistry and its later versions, an effort that has been ongoing for about twenty years but that seems to have achieved little external recognition. Each author reminds the reader that alchemy was more than foolish men chasing after an ideal they did not know they could never achieve, that it had recorded practices, specific instruments and, yes, theories of its own.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century studies of pneumatics often form a dividing line between premodern and modern chemistry. Acceptance of the concept of air as a substance that could be separated into regular and identifiable parts was critical in the transformation of chemistry from a qualitative to a quantitative discipline. Chronologically, the middle section of the book, "From Hales to the Chemical Revolution," covers the century or so from Stephen Hales's isolation of a gas through the identification of different gases and the reorganization of chemistry—aided by new instruments and experiments—into a recognized and recognizable scientific discipline. Essays describe the tools used to isolate, mediate, and prove theories about chemical substances. Experiment was one of those tools, and clearly the introduction of new instruments and new experimental methods became closely entwined at this time.

The final five essays offer insight into the use of instruments and developing experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Subject matter is more varied, perhaps reflecting the differences between organic and physical chemistry in the history of chemistry as well as in chemistry proper. Instruments and experimental practice continue to be enmeshed, but it is more difficult to find the cohesive element in the content of this last group and to relate approaches guided by these chemical subjects to that which came earlier.

A general focus of the volume is on the tools important to the creation and growth of a scientific discipline. This is an important project because the history of chemistry is known more for consideration of theories than the tools and techniques of their creation. The essays do show their value and emphasize that while study of scientific experiments and instruments may be separate, they are not always separable. Those who read all fourteen essays will find common questions about stability and change, innovation and diffusion, precision, the construction, transformation, and dissemination [End Page 601] of instruments, and the bridging of disciplines through instruments. Thus, these essays consider a number of standard questions within a newly broadened...

pdf

Share