Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
improve a field if natural laws were respected. That should be possible
by using a simple language and images comprehensible to everyone and
without any chemical formulas and tables. Moreover, He aimed to show
that between modern agriculture based on chemistry and the most tradi-
tional ones, like little farms or Chinese and Japanese agriculture, there
was no hiatus. This tendency would intensify through the successive
editions of the
Agricultural Chemistry
. There would be no matter of mis-
trust or fear about chemistry, as phenomena were neither mysterious nor
irrational.
In fact, Liebig wanted everybody to believe that chemistry com-
manded every phenomenon in living nature: “Alles ist Chemie.” ('Every-
thing is chemistry.') Knowing the laws of chemistry, everyone would be
able to understand and improve. The first task was to prioritize the teach-
ing of chemistry, particularly pure chemistry that he considered as the
trunk of a tree. A prospectus that advertised the
Handwörterbuch
sum-
marized Liebig's points: “Nobody is able to do completely without
chemistry, nobody has been studying chemistry without any profit at all:
chemistry is closely related with trade and industry, with medicine and
the natural sciences, with everything connected with life”.
21
Liebig's original
Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture
did not promote agricultural chemistry as the title suggests; only the sev-
enth edition of 1862 became the birth of the myth of Liebig, the founder
of modern agriculture (Blondel-Mégrelis & Robin 2001). Instead, the
book developed a new image of chemistry (Jas 2001).
5.
The Instruments of Popularization
Teaching was, of course, a major instrument to diffuse chemistry.
Already in 1838, Liebig had severely criticized the Austrian professors
of chemistry. Even in Prussia, H. Rose was in Liebig's view “the only
man who gives practical scientific lectures” and enjoyed to educate
chemists. Now Liebig sought for a larger and more general audience that
would be attracted by his growing international fame. Half a century
21
Vieweg, F. und Sohn: 'Prospectus: Handwörterbuch der reinen und angewandten
Chemie', 1842.
