Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
ting with each other because they have had different and specialized
educations (Knight 2004b).
When two or three historians of chemistry are collected together, the
conversation tends to turn to 'profession' and what it means in different
times and places. For us it is enough that it involves education, jargon,
self-regulation, and recognized status and expertise. That seems to have
happened to chemists in the later nineteenth century. Professions thus
serve the public, but they can also be conspiracies against the public; as
the longstanding jokes about, and doubtful popularity of, lawyers, clergy,
and doctors indicate. A naval historian (Rodger 2004, p. 201) remarks of
officers in Britain's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688/9 that most “seem to
have taken a professional attitude to the revolution, in the sense that they
thought first of their careers”. We live in a culture of suspicion, where
experts are seen as self-interested and pompous and are distrusted. 'Al-
ternative' therapies, religions, and beliefs about 'chemicals' continue to
abound; confusion about the 'organic' is as bad as it ever was in previous
centuries.
Suspicion is not new. A journal
5
aimed at artisans,
The Chemist,
was
rude about Davy, for whom chemistry had been a vehicle for social mo-
bility, propelling him from provincial poverty into the Presidency of the
Royal Society and a baronetcy:
he professes a sort of royal science […] he has no appearance of labour-
ing for the people. He brings not the science which he pursues down to
their level; he stands aloof amidst dignitaries, nobles and philosophers;
and apparently takes no concern in the improvement of those classes for
whom our labours are intended, and to whom we look for support.
Amidst all the great efforts which have been lately made to promote sci-
entific instruction among the working classes, and amidst all the patron-
age which these efforts have found among opulent and clever men, it has
been with regret that we have sought in vain to trace one exertion or
smile of encouragement bestowed on such efforts by the President of the
Royal Society. [
The Chemist,
1 (1824), pp. vi-vii]
Davy was indeed snobbish and alarmed at the 'March of Mind', but dis-
taste for pundits on the one hand, and for plebeians and their popularizers
5
The editor's name was Montgradieu (possibly Montgradien); Martyn Berry, personal
communication, 19/8/05.
