Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
van 't Algemeen. This 'Society for the Common Good', which sought to
combine the diffusion of useful skills and sciences with the promotion of
piety and morals among the general population, played a major role in
the Netherlands in the diffusion of scientific knowledge throughout the
nineteenth century (Mijnhardt 1988, pp. 104-5, 259-94; Lenders 1988,
pp. 32-6).
4.
Half a Century Too Late?
Regarding the field of chemistry, the popularization effort was marked
by basically the same publication pattern: at first accessible works for an
unspecified readership, which were followed by topics that specifically
catered to women, children, and enterprising members of the general
public. But there was a striking delay of several decades. Why did the
popularization of natural philosophy and natural history take off about
half a century earlier than that of chemistry? Is it simply because
Lavoisier's 'Chemical Revolution' occurred nearly a century after New-
ton's 'Scientific Revolution'? This is not very plausible. It is true that the
latest discoveries by chemists such as Lavoisier and Davy were not ab-
sent in the first popular topics on chemistry, but they played no central
role. The basic tenet of the first chemistry works for a large audience was
that the field, including the chemistry before Lavoisier, was important
and useful anyhow; it would make an indispensable contribution to
issues of health and disease, the growth of factories and production, and
the advance of agriculture.
It seems more compelling, then, to assume that the popularization of
chemistry took off comparatively late because the physico-theological
genre and the nature of chemistry did not match very well. While the
mechanics of planetary movements and the wondrous diversity of the
three empires of nature could be linked up with God's creation in ways
that were readily observable to everybody, chemical processes occurred
in the laboratory's hidden world. This is why at that time chemistry was
rarely counted as one of the
natural
sciences, but mostly as one of the
arts
, or technologies (Meinel 1983; Homburg 1993a, pp. 64-8; Roberts
1993). The phenomena and results of eighteenth-century chemistry
('schei-kunst' in Dutch, or 'the art of separation') were not so much ex-
