Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

Daniel Rutherford Jacobus Henricus Walther Hermann Nernst Reinhold Benesch & Ruth Erica Benesch Find How group O is Transported in Human Body Frederick Soddy Artturi Ilmari Virtanen Louis Jacques Thenard disc e very(prenominal)places total rage peroxide Jbir ibn Hayyn Yaqub Al-Kindi Paul Karrer Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier Few functions argon as distinguished as water, which we k advanced away is do of atomic number 8 and hydrogen. Did you know that Antoine Lavoisier was the discoverer of both constituents? Contri scarcelyions to Science Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier is sensation of the most all-important(prenominal) scientists in the record of chemical substance experience.He discovered elements, operateulated a basic law of alchemy and helped create the metric system. During his quantify, batch believed that when an object burns, a mysterious substance c altogethered phlogiston was released. This was c everyed the phlogiston speculation. Lavoisiers essays presen t the remote, i. e. when approximatelywhatthing burned, it actu everyy wet-nur claverd whateverthing from the cinch, instead of releasing boththing. He later prep bed the something from the air as group O, when he prove that it combined with other chemicals to pattern pane of glass. (In Greek, oxy substance sharp, referring to the sharp taste of acerbs. Henry Cav mop upish had earlier stray hydrogen, that he c solelyed it inflammable air. Lavoisier showed that this inflammable air burned to form a colourless liquid, which turned surface to be water. The Greek sacred scripture for water is hydro, so the air that burned to form water was hydrogen Lavoisier was know for his pains winning attention to detail. Whenever he made a chemical reaction, he weighed all the substances cautiously before and by and by the reaction. He discovered that in a chemical reaction, though substances may convince their chemical record, their total mass remains the aforesaid(prenom inal).This is annunciateed the law of conservation of mass. His love for accuracy led to the conceptualisation of the metric system of weights and measures which is restrained in occasion today. Lavoisiers attention to detail and habit of put d own e actuallything is perhaps his most important contri simplyion for that is now the commission science is d unity. Biography Lavoiser was born on 26 August 1743 in a wealthy Parisian family. He studied at the College Mazarin from 1754 to 1761. His by-line in alchemy was developed as he read the leans of Etienne Condillac.In 1769, he set active devising a geo ordered map of France, which was important for that countrys industrial development. In 1769, he took a government position as a tax collector in the government of female monarch Louis 16. In 1771, he married Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze, who is imagineed as an eminent scientist in her own right. She translated the whole kit of umpteen scientists from incline and Germa n into cut, and later on, with her husband, published the Traite elementaire de chimie, very much considered the head start comprehensive book on the subject.In 1789, King Louis XVI was overthrown in the French Revolution. As Lavoisier had been a tax collector, he earned the wrath of the revolutionaries, who executed him on 8 May 1794. SOURCE http//humantouchof chemistry. com/antoinelaurent-de-lavoisier. htm Elements and Atoms Ch sharper 3 Lavoisiers Elements of Chemistry Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) has been called the raiseer of modern chemistry. ( positioning a portrait of Mme. & M. Lavoisier by Jacque-Louis David at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, crude York. Among his important contri scarceions were the application of the balance and the principle of conservation of mass to chemistry, the chronicle of combustion and airing in experimental conditioninuss of combination with atomic number 8 rather than loss of phlogiston (See chapter 5. ), and a clean up of ch emical speech. His Traite Elementaire de Chimie (1789), from which the present extract is taken in a contemporary translation, was a tremendously potent synthesis of his work. Lavoisier was a in the public eye(predicate) servant as s head up as a scientist.Under the French monarchy, he was a member of the tax-collecting agency, the Ferme Generale. His work for the government included advocating rational agricultural methods and improving the manufacture of gunpowder. His dish to France continued during the Revolution. He was an alternate deputy of the reconvened E kingdoms-General in 1789, and from 1790 served on a commission charged with making weights and measures uniform across France. A Parisian by birth, Lavoisier also died in Paris, guillotined with other former members of the Ferme Generale during the hold of Terror in May 1794.The preface to his Traite Elementaire de Chimie is a fitting selection to embrace Boyles The Sceptical Chymist because it includes the descr iption of element that was to dominate chemistry throughout the next century, and which is fluid familiar in our own day. In addition, Lavoisiers musings on the connection between science and the spoken communication which conveys its bases remain thought-provoking, curiously in light of the literary works of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alfred Ayer in the first half of the 20th century.Even his comments around the pedagogy of basic chemistry take sides in a debate that remains current. Antoine Lavoisier, Preface to Elements of Chemistry translation by Robert Kerr (Edinburgh, 1790), pp. xiii-xxxvii When I began the following Work, my yet object was to extend and explain much than(prenominal) complete the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Science in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry1. era booked in this employment, I perceived, let out than I had ever d cardinal befo re, the justice of the following maxims of the Abbe de Condillac2, in his establishment of Logic, and some other of his works. We think solo through the medium of words. Languages ar true analytical methods. Algebra, which is fitting to its purpose in every species of let oution, in the most sincere, most exact, and beat manner possible, is at the analogous time a oral communication and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nonhing more than a wrangle well arranged. Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature, and while I roposed to myself nonhing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to hinder it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry. The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of fleshly science must(prenominal) consist of leash things the series of facts which are the objects of the science, the stems which represent these facts, and the words by which these ideas are showed. Like three impressions of the self alike(p)(prenominal) seal, the word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact.And, as ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it inescapably follows that we can non improve the language of any science without at the same time improving the science itself neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science, without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it. However true the facts of any science may be, and, provided just the ideas we may keep formed of these facts, we can only communicate false impressions to others, while we want words by which these may be properly expressed. 3 To those who willing consider it with attention, the first social function of this treatise will afford frequent certaintys of the truth of the above observations. But as, in the conduct of my work, I experience been cause to observe an ordination of battle array essentially differing from what has been adopted in any other chemical work yet published, it is proper that I should explain the motives which earn led me to do so. It is a maxim universally admitted in geometry, and indeed in every branch of knowledge, that, in the progress of investigation, we should proceed from know facts to what is unknown.In other(a) infancy, our ideas spring from our wants the sensation of want excites the idea of the object by which it is to be gratified. In this manner, from a series of sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace backbone to a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human knowledge. When we begin the analyse of any science, we are in a situation, respecting that science, resembling to that of children and the course by which we create to advance is scarce the sa me which Nature follows in the formation of their ideas.In a child, the idea is merely an effect produced by a sensation and, in the same manner, in commencing the study of a physical science, we ought to form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and immediate effect, of an experiment or observation. 4 Besides, he that enters upon the career of science, is in a less advantageous situation than a child who is acquiring his first ideas. To the child, Nature exposes dissimilar means of rectifying any mistakes he may commit respecting the salutary or hurtful qualities of the objects which surround him.On every author his nouss are corrected by experience want and pain are the necessary consequences arising from false judgment gratification and pleasure are produced by judging aright. Under much(prenominal) masters, we can non fail to become well informed and we briefly learn to reason justly, when want and pain are the necessary consequences of a contrary conduct. 5 In th e study and practice of the sciences it is quite distinct the false judgments we form neither affect our innovation nor our welfare and we are non forced by any physical necessity to correct them.Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately derived from facts so that we become in some measure interested in deceiving ourselves. Hence it is by no means to be wondered, that, in the science of physics in general, men have often made suppositions, instead of forming conclusions.These suppositions, handed down from one age to another, acquire additional weight from the authorities by which they are supported, till at final stage they are received, even by men of thaumaturge, as fundamental truths. The only method of preventing such errors from taking place, and of correcting them when formed, is to restrain and simplify ou r reasoning as much as possible. This depends entirely upon ourselves, and the neglect of it is the only semen of our mistakes. We must trust to nothing but facts These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive.We ought, in every instance, to learn our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation. Thus mathematicians obtain the solution of a problem by the mere brass of data, and by trim down their reasoning to such simple steps, to conclusions so very obvious, as never to lose sight of the read which guides them. 6 Thoroughly convinced of these truths, I have imposed upon myself, as a law, never to advance but from what is known to what is unknown never to form any conclusion which is not an immediate consequence necessarily lowing from observation and experiment and always to arrange the fact, and the conclusions which are drawn from them, in such an order as shall allow for it most easy for beginners in the study of chemistry thoroughly to to a lower placestand them. Hence I have been obliged to de disunite from the usual order of courses of lectures and of treatises upon chemistry, which always assume the first principles of the science, as known, when the educatee or the reader should never be suppositious to know them till they have been explained in subsequent lessons.In almost every instance, these begin by treating of the elements of matter, and by explaining the table of affinities7, without considering, that, in so doing, they must engender the principal phenomena of chemistry into view at the very outset They make use of foothold which have not been defined, and suppose the science to be on a lower floorstood by the very persons they are only etymon to teach. 8 It ought handlewise to be considered, that very little of chemistry can be learned in a first course, which is hardly fitting to make the language of the science familiar to the ears, or the a pparatus familiar to the eyes. It is almost impossible to become a chemist in less than three or quaternary years of constant application. These inconveniencies are occasioned not so much by the constitution of the subject, as by the method of teaching it and, to avoid them, I was chiefly induced to adopt a saucy arrangement of chemistry, which appeared to me more consonant to the order of Nature.I acknowledge, however, that in thus endeavouring to avoid problematicalies of one attractive, I have piece myself use upd in others of a contrary species, some of which I have not been able to wrap up but I am persuaded, that such as remain do not arise from the nature of the order I have adopted, but are rather consequences of the imperfection under which chemistry still labours.This science still has many chasms, which interrupt the series of facts, and often render it extremely difficult to root them with each other It has not, like the elements of geometry, the advantage of b eing a complete science, the parts of which are all closely connected together Its actual progress, however, is so rapid, and the facts, under the modern doctrine, have assumed so happy an arrangement, that we have ground to hope, even in our own times, to see it approach near to the highest state of perfection of which it is susceptible. 9 The pissed law from which I have never deviated, of forming no conclusions which are not fully warranted by experiment, and of never supplying the absence of facts, has prevented me from comprehending in this work the branch of chemistry which treats of affinities, although it is perhaps the best calculated of any part of chemistry for being reduced into a completely systematic physical structure.Messrs Geoffroy, Gellert, Bergman, Scheele, De Morveau, Kirwan,10 and many others, have collected a calculate of particular facts upon this subject, which only wait for a proper arrangement but the principal data are still wanting, or, at least, those we have are either not sufficiently defined, or not sufficiently proved, to become the foundation upon which to build so very important a branch of chemistry.This science of affinities, or elective attractions, holds the same place with cipher to the other branches of chemistry, as the higher or transcendental geometry does with respect to the simpler and elementary part and I thought it improper to involve those simple and plain elements, which I flatter myself the greatest part of my readers will good understand, in the obscurities and difficulties which still attend that other very useful and necessary branch of chemical science. Perhaps a supposition of self-love may, without my perceiving it, have effrontery additional force to these reflections.Mr de Morveau is at present engaged in issue the article Affinity in the Methodical Encyclopedia and I had more reasons than one to decline entering upon a work in which he is employed. It will, no doubt, be a matter of surprise, that in a treatise upon the elements of chemistry, there should be no chapter on the constituent and elementary parts of matter but I shall take occasion, in this place, to remark, that the fondness for reducing all the bodies in nature to three or quad elements, proceeds from a prejudice which has descended to us from the Greek Philosophers.The notion of four elements, which, by the variety of their proportions, represent all the known substances in nature, is a mere hypothesis, assumed long before the first principles of observational philosophy or of chemistry had any existence. In those days, without possessing facts, they framed systems while we, who have collected facts, attend heady to reject them, when they do not agree with our prejudices.The authority of these fathers of human philosophy still take in great weight, and there is reason to fear that it will even bear hard upon generations yet to come. 11 It is very remarkable, that, notwithstanding of the spell of ph ilosophical chemists who have supported the doctrine of the four elements, there is not one who has not been led by the evidence of facts to admit a greater number of elements into their supposition.The first chemists that wrote after the revival of letters, considered sulphur and common coarseness as elementary substances entering into the composition of a great number of substances hence, instead of four, they admitted the existence of six elements. Beccher assumes the existence of three kinds of earth, from the combination of which, in different proportions, he supposed all the varieties of aluminiferous substances to be produced. Stahl gave a new modification to this system and succeeding chemists have taken the liberty to make or to imagine changes and additions of a similar nature.All these chemists were carried along by the influence of the genius of the age in which they lived, which contented itself with assertions without proofs or, at least, often admitted as proofs the slightest degrees of probability, unsupported by that strictly rigorous analysis required by modern philosophy. 12 All that can be said upon the number and nature of elements is, in my opinion, confined to discussions entirely of a metaphysical nature. The subject only furnishes us with indefinite problems, which may be solved in a thousand different ways, not one of which, in all probability, is consistent with nature.I shall therefore only add upon this subject, that if, by the term elements, we mean to express those simple and indivisible elements of which matter is composed, it is extremely probable we know nothing at all about them but, if we apply the term elements, or principles of bodies, to express our idea of the die hard point which analysis is capable of reaching, we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, to reduce bodies by decomposition. 13 Not that we are entitled to affirm, that these substances we consider as simpl e may not be involved of two, or even of a greater number of principles but, since these principles cannot be separated, or rather since we have not hitherto discovered the means of separating them, they act with regard to us as simple substances, and we ought never to suppose them compounded until experiment and observation has proved them to be so. 14 The foregoing reflections upon the progress of chemical ideas naturally apply to the words by which these ideas are to be expressed. steer by the work which, in the year 1787, Messrs de Morveau, Berthollet, de Fourcroy, and I composed upon the Nomenclature of Chemistry, I have endeavoured, as much as possible, to denominate simple bodies by simple price, and I was naturally led to expose these first. 15 It will be recollected, that we were obliged to retain that cognomen of any substance by which it had been long known in the world, and that in two cases only we took the liberty of making alterations first, in the case of those which were but pertly discovered, and had not yet obtained frames, or at least which had been known but for a short time, and the hits of which had not yet received the sanction of the public and, secondly, when the draws which had been adopted, whether by the ancients or the moderns, appeared to us to express evidently false ideas, when they confounded the substances, to which they were applied, with others possessed of different, or perhaps opposite qualities. We made no scruple, in this case, of substituting other happen upons in their room, and the greatest number of these were borrowed from the Greek language. We endeavoured to frame them in such a manner as to express the most general and the most characteristic whole step of the substances and this was tended to(p) with the additional advantage both of assisting the memory of beginners, who find it difficult to remember a new word which has no meaning, and of accustoming them early to admit no word without connecting with it some determinate idea. 16 To those bodies which are formed by the union of several simple substances we gave new label, compounded in such a manner as the nature of the substances directed but, as the number of double combinations is already very considerable, the only method by which we could avoid confusion, was to divide them into classes. In the natural order of ideas, the name of the class or genus is that which expresses a quality common to a great number of individuals The name of the species, on the contrary, expresses a quality peculiar to certain individuals only. 17 These distinctions are not, as some may imagine, merely metaphysical, but are established by Nature. A child, says the Abbe de Condillac, is taught to smash the name tree to the first one which is pointed out to him. The next one he sees presents the same idea, and he gives it the same name. This he does likewise to a third and a fourth, till at last the word tree, which he first applied to an indi vidual, comes to be employed by him as the name of a class or a genus, an abstract idea, which comprehends all trees in general. But, when he learns that all trees serve not the same purpose, that they do not all produce the same kind of fruit, he will soon learn to distinguish them by specific and particular names. This is the logic of all the sciences, and is naturally applied of chemistry.The stiflings, for example, are compounded of two substances, of the order of those which we consider as simple the one constitutes acidity, and is common to all acids, and, from this substance, the name of the class or the genus ought to be taken the other is peculiar to each acid, and distinguishes it from the rest, and from this substance is to be taken the name of the species. But, in the greatest number of acids, the two constituent elements, the acidifying principle, and that which it acidifies, may exist in different proportions, constituting all the possible points of equilibrium or of vividness. This is the case in the sulphuric and the sulphurous acids and these two states of the same acid we have marked by varying the closing of the specific name. Metallic substances which have been subject to the joint action of the air and of fire, lose their metallic elementlic lustre, increase in weight, and assume an primitive appearance.In this state, like the acids, they are compounded of a principle which is common to all, and one which is peculiar to each. In the same way, therefore, we have thought proper to class them under a generic name, derived from the common principle for which purpose, we adopted the term oxyd and we distinguish them from each other by the particular name of the metal to which each belongs. 18 Combustible substances, which in acids and metallic oxyds are a specific and particular principle, are capable of becoming, in their turn, common principles of a great number of substances. The sulphurous combinations have been long the only known o nes in this kind.Now, however, we know, from the experiments of Messrs Vandermonde, Monge, and Berthollet, that charcoal may be combined with iron, and perhaps with several other metals and that, from this combination, according to the proportions, may be produced steel, plumbago, &c. 19 We know likewise, from the experiments of M. Pelletier, that the Tempter may be combined with a great number of metallic substances. These different combinations we have classed under generic names taken from the common substance, with a termination which marks this analogy, specifying them by another name taken from that substance which is proper to each. The nomenclature of bodies compounded of three simple substances was attended with still greater difficulty, not only on account of their number, but, specially, because we cannot express the nature of their constituent principles without employing more compound names.In the bodies which form this class, such as the neutral salts, for instance, we had to consider, 1st, The acidifying principle, which is common to them all 2d, The acidifiable principle which constitutes their peculiar acid 3d, The saline, earthy, or metallic basis, which determines the particular species of salt. Here we derived the name of each class of salts from the name of the acidifiable principle common to all the individuals of that class and distinguished each species by the name of the saline, earthy, or metallic basis, which is peculiar to it. 20 A salt, though compounded of the same three principles, may, nevertheless, by the mere difference of their proportion, be in three different states.The nomenclature we have adopted would have been defective, had it not expressed these different states and this we attained chiefly by changes of termination uniformly applied to the same state of the different salts. In short, we have advanced so far, that from the name alone may be instantly found what the ignescent substance is which enters into any combi nation whether that combustible substance be combined with the acidifying principle, and in what proportion what is the state of the acid with what basis it is united whether the saturation be exact, or whether the acid or the basis be in excess. It may be easily supposed that it was not possible to attain all these different objects without departing, in some instances, from established custom, and adopting terms which at first sight will appear uncouth and barbarous.But we considered that the ear is soon habituated to new words, particularly when they are connected with a general and rational system. The names, besides, which were formerly employed, such as powder of algaroth, salt of alembroth, pompholix, phagadenic water, turbith mineral, colcothar, and many others, were neither less barbarous nor less uncommon. 21 It required a great deal of practice, and no small degree of memory, to recollect the substances to which they were applied, much more to recollect the genus of com bination to which they belonged. The names of oil of infinitesimal calculus per deliquium, oil of vitriol, butter of arsenic and of antimony, flowers of zinc, &c. ere still more improper, because they suggested false ideas For, in the whole mineral kingdom, and particularly in the metallic class, there exists no such thing as butters, oils, or flowers and, in short, the substances to which they give these fallacious names, are nothing less than rank poisons. 22 When we published our essay on the nomenclature of chemistry, we were reproached for having changed the language which was spoken by our masters, which they distinguished by their authority, and handed down to us. But those who reproach us on this account, have forgotten that it was Bergman and Macquer themselves who urged us to make this reformation. In a letter which the learned Professor of Upsal, M. Bergman, wrote, a short time before he died, to M. de Morveau, he bids him spare no improper names those who are learned, w ill always be learned, and those who are ignorant will thus learn sooner. 23 There is an remonstration to the work which I am going to present to the public, which is perhaps better founded, that I have disposed no account of the opinion of those who have gone before me that I have stated only my own opinion, without examining that of others. By this I have been prevented from doing that justice to my beaus, and more especially to foreign chemists, which I lacked to render them. But I beseech the reader to consider, that, if I had filled an elementary work with a tidy sum of quotations if I had allowed myself to enter into long dissertations on the history of the science, and the works of those who have studied it, I must have lost sight of the true object I had in view, and produced a work, the reading of which must have been extremely tiresome to beginners.It is not to the history of the science, or of the human mind, that we are to attend in an elementary treatise24 Our only aim ought to be ease and perspicuity, and with the utmost care to keep every thing out of view which might draw aside the attention of the student it is a road which we should be continually rendering more smooth, and from which we should endeavour to remove every obstacle which can occasion delay. The sciences, from their own nature, present a sufficient number of difficulties, though we add not those which are foreign to them. But, besides this, chemists will easily perceive, that, in the fist part of my work, I make very little use of any experiments but those which were made by myself If at any time I have adopted, without acknowledgment, the experiments or the opinions of M. Berthollet, M. Fourcroy, M. de la Place, M.Monge, or, in general, of any of those whose principles are the same with my own, it is owing to the circumstance, that frequent intercourse, and the habit of communicating our ideas, our observations, and our way of thinking to each other, has established between us a sort of community of opinions, in which it is often difficult for every one to know his own. 25 The remarks I have made on the order which I thought myself obliged to follow in the arrangement of proofs and ideas, are to be applied only to the first part of this work. It is the only one which conducts the general sum of the doctrine I have adopted, and to which I wished to give a form completely elementary. 26 The second part is composed chiefly of tables of the nomenclature of the neutral salts. To these I have only added general explanations, the object of which was to point out the most simple processes for obtaining the different kinds of known acids. This part contains nothing which I can call my own, and presents only a very short contraction of the results of these processes, extracted from the works of different authors. In the third part, I have given a description, in detail, of all the operations connected with modern chemistry. I have long thought that a work of this kind was much wanted, and I am convinced it will not be without use.The method of performing experiments, and particularly those of modern chemistry, is not so generally known as it ought to be and had I, in the different memoirs which I have presented to the Academy, been more particular in the detail of the manipulations of my experiments, it is probable I should have made myself better understood, and the science might have made a more rapid progress. The order of the different matters contained in this third part appeared to me to be almost arbitrary and the only one I have ascertained was to class together, in each of the chapters of which it is composed, those operations which are most connected with one another. I pack hardly mention that this part could not be borrowed from any other work, and that, in the principal articles it contains, I could not derive assistance from any thing but the experiments which I have made myself.I shall leave off this preface by transcri bing, literally, some observations of the Abbe de Condillac, which I think describe, with a good deal of truth, the state of chemistry at a period not far distant from our own. These observations were made on a different subject but they will not, on this account, have less force, if the application of them be thought just. 27 preferably of applying observation to the things we wished to know, we have chosen rather to imagine them. Advancing from one ill founded supposition to another, we have at last contracted ourselves amidst a multitude of errors. These errors becoming prejudices, are, of course, adopted as principles, and we thus bewilder ourselves more and more. The method, too, by which we conduct our reasonings is as absurd we abuse words which we do not understand, and call this the art of reasoning.When matters have been brought this length, when errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one remedy by which order can be restored to the faculty of thinking this is, to forget all that we have learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to follow the train in which they rise, and, as my Lord Bacon says, to frame the human understanding anew. This remedy becomes the more difficult in proportion as we think ourselves more learned. Might it not be thought that works which treated of the sciences with the utmost perspicuity, with great precision and order, must be understood by every body? The fact is, those who have never studied any thing will understand them better than those who have studied a great deal, and especially those who have written a great deal. At the end of the fifth chapter, the Abbe de Condillac adds But, after all, the sciences have made progress, because philosophers have applied themselves with more attention to observe, and have communicated to their language that precision and accuracy which they have employed in their observations In correcting their language they reason better. Antoine Lavoisier, Table of simpleton S ubstances in Elements of Chemistry translation by Robert Kerr (Edinburgh, 1790), pp. 175-6 Simple substances belonging to all the kingdoms of nature, which may be considered as the elements of bodies. New Names. Correspondent old Names. Light28 Light. Caloric Heat. Principle or element of heat. Fire. Igneous fluid. Matter of fire and of heat. Oxygen29 Depholgisticated air. Empyreal air. Vital air, or Base of vital air. Azote30 Phlogisticated air or burn out. Mephitis, or its base. Hydrogen31 Inflammable air or gas, or the base of inflammable air. Oxydable32 and Acidifiable simple Substances not Metallic. New Names. Correspondent old names. treat The same names. Phosphorus Charcoal Muriatic radical33 Still unknown. Fluoric radical Boracic radical Oxydable and Acidifiable simple Metallic Bodies. New Names. Correspondent Old Names. Antimony Regulus34 of Antimony. Arsenic Arsenic Bismuth Bismuth Cobalt Cobalt hair Copper Gold Gold Iro n Iron Lead Lead Manganese Manganese mercury Mercury Molybdena35 Molybdena Nickel Nickel Platina Platina Silver Silver Tin Tin Tungstein36 Tungstein Zinc Zinc Salifiable simple Earthy Substances37 New Names. Correspondent Old Names. Lime Chalk, calcareous earth. Quicklime. Magnesia Magnesia, base of Epsom salt. Calcined or sulfurous magnesia. Barytes Barytes, or heavy earth. Argill Clay, earth of alum. Silex Siliceous or vitrifiable earth. Notes 1Lavoisier read Methode de Nomenclature Chimique before the French Academy on 18 April 1787. This outline for a reformulation of chemical nomenclature was prepared by Lavoisier and three of his early converts to the oxygen theory of combustion, Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine Francois de Fourcroy. De Morveau had already argued for a reformed nomenclature, and he developed the April 1787 outline in a memoir read to the Academy on 2 May 1787. Leicester & Klickste in 1952 2Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780) was a French philosopher and associate of Rousseau, Diderot, and the Encyclopedists.His La Logique (1780) stressed the importance of language as a tool in scientific and logical reasoning. 3Lavoisier makes an excellent point, but he overstates it. Clearly ones ideas are not strictly limited or determined by ones language. New ideas must exist before new terms can be coined to express those ideas thus new ideas can be formed and even to some extent described under the sway of older language. Also, new terms can only be defined by theatrical role to pre-existing terms. Sometimes new terms are not necessary, as old terms absorb new meanings. For example, I hope that the selections in this book show to some extent how the terms atom and element have changed in meaning over time.Having made these points, I do not wish to minimize the ability of new terminology to help the mind to run along the path of new insights, or to prevent it from f alling into old misconceptions. 4Note that Lavoisier does not say merely that we ought not believe any idea but what follows immediately and necessarily from experiment, we ought not even form the idea. This statement shows a solicitude of hypotheses common to many early scientists and natural philosophers. Compare Newtons, I frame no hypotheses for hypotheses have no place in experimental philosophy. in Bartlett 1980 Hypotheses had no part in the empirical methodology of Francis Bacon (1561-1626 see portrait at National Portrait Gallery, London), which emphasized collection and classification of facts. This aversion to hypotheses is too not urprising if one considers that empiricists were attempting to distance themselves from rationalism. Later formulations of the scientific method, however, acknowledge the utility of hypotheses, always treated as provisional, in both suggesting experiments and interpreting them. 5Lavoisier was not the last to observe that children are born sc ientists who learn by experience. 6Lavoisiers prime(a) of mathematics as an example may strike a modern reader as odd. While mathematics has long served as an example of the kind of certainty to which scientists aspire (mathematical certainty), it is now seen as based on axioms, not through empirical observation based.Such mathematical systems as non-Euclidean geometry, which seemed to disagree with observed reality, had not yet been constructed at the time of Lavoisiers writing, though. 7A table of affinities was a summary of a great deal of data on chemical reactions. It lists what substances react chemically with a given substance, often in order of the nada or extent of the reaction. (If substance A reacted more strongly than substance B with a given material, then substance A was said to have a greater affinity than B for that material. ) View a table of affinities by Etienne-Francois Geoffroy (1672-1731). 8In Lavoisiers mind, it makes no sense to jump to this summary table without first describing the various substances and their characteristic reactions.The proper role of descriptive chemistry in the chemical curriculum continues to be a topic of debate in chemical education. Apparently Lavoisier would be quite sympathetic to the charge that introductory courses emphasize unifying principles at the expense of descriptive chemistry. 9This is certainly an optimistic statement Two one hundred years later chemistry has developed to an extent Lavoisier could not have imagined, yet it is a exalted and foolish chemist who expects the science to exhaust its possibilities for discovery within a lifetime. 10Bergman, Scheele, De Morveau, and Kirwan were all contemporaries of Lavoisier. The Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele had a hand in the discovery of oxygen, chlorine, and manganese.The Swedish chemist and mineralogist Torbern Bergman made contributions to analytical chemistry and the classification of minerals. Richard Kirwan was an Irish chemist and a defender of the phlogiston theory. 11The influence of the ancients was on the decline when Lavoisier wrote these words, but he does not exaggerate the importance of their thought. Remember that he is still concerned about their influence more than a century after The Sceptical Chymist and more than two millennia after the death of Aristotle. (See chapters 1 and 2. ) The relaxation of ancient ideas of matter would continue to have an influence on chemists well after Lavoisiers time, particularly as the number of chemical elements grew. (See chapter 10. 12Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) and Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) were the two men most closely associated with the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier was largely responsible for dislodging and discrediting the notion that combustion and respiration involved a loss of a subtle material called phlogiston. (See chapter 5. ) Lavoisier makes light of their ideas here, but the theory, though incorrect, was not as nonsensical as it may now ap pear. 13Notice the pragmatism of Lavoisiers approach he suggests, in essence, forgetting about the ultimate building blocks of matter. This was a prudent recommendation, for he had no way of addressing that subject empirically (which is why he dismisses it as metaphysical).He continues by suggesting that chemists turn their attention to what they can observe empirically, the ultimate products of chemical analysis. The definition of an element as a body which cannot be broken down further by chemical analysis is an operational one as the techniques of chemical analysis improved, then substances scientists had any right to regard as elements could change. At first, this definition of element appears to be similar to that of Boyle. (See chapter 2, note 9. ) However, Boyle seemed not to consider elementary substances which were not components of all compound matter. 14Lavoisiers table of simple bodies, reproduced below the preface, follows this prescription approximately, but not exactl y. See note 33 below. ) 15See note 34 below on names of metals. 16Thus, where possible the name of a chemical substance should not simply be an arbitrary word, but should give some reading about the substance. This principle is particularly evident in the modern systematic nomenclature of original compounds the name enables one who knows the rules of nomenclature and some organic chemistry to draw the structural formula of a compound from its name. (See IUPAC 1979, 1993. ) The principle is also evident in the nomenclature of inorganic compounds IUPAC 1971, the class of compounds Lavoisiers nomenclature in the beginning addresses. It is least vident in modern names of the elements, many of which are named after important scientists (e. g. curium, mendelevium, rutherfordium) or places important to the discoverers (e. g. polonium). (See Ringnes 1989 for etymology of elements names. ) Ironically, Lavoisier coined the name for an element central to his contributions to chemistry, a na me of Greek origin chosen to convey information about the element which turned out to be incorrect. The name oxygen means acid former, for Lavoisier believed that oxygen was a component of all acids. 17Already we see the close connection Lavoisier envisioned between the language of chemistry and the content of the science.The system of naming compounds depends on classifying those compounds. Compounds belonging to the same class would have similar names. The name would also reflect the chemical composition of the substance. 18So the classes of compounds included acids, oxides, sulfides, and the like. To specify which acid, a particular name was added, e. g. nitrous acid. Different suffixes distinguished between similar particular names (such as sulfuric and sulfurousthe -ic suffix applying to the more highly oxidized form). 19What Lavoisier has in mind is a class of materials now called carbides, inorganic compounds of a metal and carbon (charcoal). But the examples he gives are n ot carbides.Steel is an alloy (a mixture or solution of metals, and therefore not a chemical compound of definite proportions) in particular, steel is in general iron with some carbon and sometimes other metals (such as chromium or manganese). Although plumbago has been utilize to refer to a variety of lead-containing substances (as might be guessed from the root plumb-), it also (as here) refers to the substance now called graphite, the form of carbon commonly utilize for pencil leads. 20Again in the case of salts we see the nomenclature embodying the principles of the chemical theory of the day. A salt was seen as a compound of an acid and a base, and an acid itself a compound of an acidifiable part and an acidifying part.The acidifying part, whatever its nature, was believed to be common to all acids since it would not distinguish one salt from another, it does not appear in the name of the salt. The salts, then, carry the name of the acidifiable piece and the base with which it combines. 21Pompholix was a crude (i. e. , not very pure) zinc oxide (ZnO), sometimes known by the more pleasant but hardly more informative name flowers of zinc. Phagadenic water was a corrosive liquid used to cleanse ulcers phagadenic refers to a dispersal or eating ulcer. Colcothar is a brownish-red mixture containing primarily ferric oxide (Fe2O3) with some calcium convert (CaSO4). Oxford 1971 22Oil of vitriol is sulfuric acid, a viscous liquid.Butter of arsenic (arsenic trichloride) is an oily liquid and butter of antimony (antimony trichloride) is a colorless deliquescent solid. In one sense, these names are informative, for they suggest the physical appearance of the substances they name they are, however, also misleading in the sense Lavoisier points out. 23Lavoisier recognizes that even the most rationally designed nomenclature would be useless if chemists chose not to use it. A language is one of the most visible signs of a people and culture naturally, efforts to ta mper with it can meet with disapproval. Thus Lavoisier pays at least nominal attention to aesthetic and cultural considerations, noting just above that the new terms sound no more barbarous than some technical terms then in existence.In a similar vein, he makes a concession to lingual conservatism still further above, where he indicates that he does not propose to displace familiar names, at least for elements. And here he concedes that one ought not lightly to tamper with language, but that in doing so he is responding to a need and a demand. 24Chemistry curricula in general devote little time to the history of the science, and that little usually consists of anecdotes scattered among other material. Discoverers of laws and elements may be mentioned the pathways of discovery, however, let alone false steps on those pathways, almost never are. (See, however, Giunta 2001. In my opinion, the teaching of scientific process (as opposed to content) suffers as a result. The emphasis on current content to the exclusion of historical material, however, itself has a long history and such distinguished advocates as Lavoisier. 25The standards for crediting others for their ideas, particularly when they are similar to ones own, were not as stringent in Lavoisiers time as in our own. And yet Lavoisier was criticized even by contemporaries for failing to give what they believed to be sufficient credit. For instance, Joseph Priestley did not believe Lavoisier gave him sufficient credit for the discovery of dephlogisticated air (oxygen) when he described his own similar experiments Conant 1957.And Lavoisiers failure to credit James Watt and Henry Cavendish for their insights into the compound nature of water were a part of the sometimes rancorous water controversy Ihde 1964. See chapters 4 and 6 for articles on these subjects. 26The first part of the treatise deals with gases, caloric, and the combustion of elements, so it truly contains the work most closely associated wit h Lavoisier. 27Indeed, these words, which advocate empirical observation over rationalism as the source of reliable knowledge, apply to any science. 28Light and caloric are not found on modern tables of elements because they are even matter, let alone elements of material bodies.Although a wave theory of light had been proposed by this time (by Christiaan Huygens), Newtons corpuscular (particle) theory was widely accepted until the 19th century. Similarly, until the 19th century, heat was widely believed to be a material, a fluid which flowed out of hot bodies and into cold ones (even though automatonlike theories of heat with a Newtonian pedigree also existed at this time). See chapter 5, note 17 for a description of Lavoisiers thinking about heat and fire. ) 29As mentioned above, the name oxygen means acid former, for Lavoisier believed (incorrectly) that oxygen was a component of all acids. Oxygen was a relatively recently discovered substance, and it did not have a standard nam e.The various names used for it are descriptive, but clumsy. Dephlogisticated air is particularly objectionable, for it described oxygen in terms of the phlogistion theory, which Lavoisier was in the process discrediting. 30The name azote and the current name nitrogen were both used in English from the time of Lavoisier into the 19th century. Azote means lifeless, for breathing nitrogen does not sustain life. 31Hydrogen means water former, for water results from the burning of hydrogen. (See chapter 6. ) Hydrogen was one of several gases discovered in the 18th century. The names then in use for it were informative, denoting its flammability. 32I. e. substances which can be oxidized (combined with oxygen). 33These three radicals or roots had not yet been isolated or properly characterized. The fluoric radical, now called fluorine, is the root of fluorspar and other fluorine-containing minerals. Fluorine is very difficult to separate from its compounds, and is a very reactive and dan gerous gas in its elemental form. This gas was not isolated until 1886. The boracic radical, now called boron, is the root of the mineral borax (Na2B4O7) boron was not isolated until 1808. Weeks & Leicester, 1968 Muriatic acid was the name then in use for what we call hydrochloric acid or hydrogen chloride, HCl.Chlorine, the element which distinguishes this acid from others, was discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele however, he named it oxymuriatic acid, believing it to be a compound containing oxygen. Muriatic radical, then, was the name for the hypothetical element believed to be combined with oxygen in oxymuriatic acid. Muriatic, by the way, means pertaining to brine or salt Oxford 1971 the salt of muriatic acid is common table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl). Lavoisier had good reason to expect that these radicals would be isolated, for their compounds had been known for a long time however, the fluoric and boracic radicals were, strictly speaking, hypothetical substances at this tim e, and the basis of muriatic acid had already been isolated but he did not recognize it as elementary.Had he kept strictly to the principle of considering a substance an element if it could not be further decomposed, then Lavoisier should also have included oxymuriatic acid (undoubtedly by a different name) among the elements as it was, chlorine was named and recognized to be elementary only in 1810 Davy 1810, 1811. Although we can see, with hindsight, that Lavoisier was incorrect, it was by no means obvious at the time. Chlorine had been prepared from reactions with substances that do contain oxygen, for example from pyrolusite (MnO2) in Scheeles original isolation and from aqueous muriatic acid (HCl). 34Until the phlogiston theory was discarded, metals were commonly regarded as compounds of their minerals (earths) and phlogiston. This idea was incorrect, but it seemed to make sense, for the earths or ores seemed to be more fundamental than the metals.After all, the earths were fou nd readily in nature, but to obtain the metals one had to heat the earths strongly in the presence of charcoal. In any event, the metal came to be known as the regulus of the mineral for example, the name antimony was originally applied to an antimony sulfide, Sb2S3, and the metal was called regulus of antimony. Lavoisier drops the term regulus, giving the simple body (the metal) the simple, unmodified term. 35The element is now known as molybdenum. Similarly Lavoisiers platina is now called platinum. The ending is important the -um ending now denotes a metal, while the -a ending denotes an oxide of that metal. 36Now tungsten. 37All of these earthy substances proved to be compounds.Their elements were first isolated in the early 19th century. Of course, Lavoisier was justified in including them among his elements, for no(prenominal) of them had yet been broken down into anything simpler. Two interesting omissions from this table are soda and potash, comounds of sodium and special K known since antiquity but whose elementary metals had not yet been extracted. One might have anticipate Lavoisier to list such substances either here or with the hypothesized radicals (note 33). Chalk frequently refered to calcium carbonate (CaCO3), but apparently it was also used for calcium oxide Oxford 1971. Magnesia is magnesium oxide, MgO. (See note 35. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, MgSO4, so named for the location (an English town) of a mineral spring from which the salt was obtained. Barytes is barium oxide, BaO. Argill or argil is an aluminum-containing potters clay. grad is a transparent aluminum-containing mineral, AlK(SO4)2. 12H2O. Humphry Davy was the first to isolate calcium, magnesium, barium, Davy 1808b sodium, and potassium Davy 1808a he was also a co-discoverer of boron Davy 1809 and he recognized chlorine to be an element (note 34). Vitrifiable means able to be made into glass indeed, common glass is mainly silicon dioxide. Weeks & Leicester 1968 Source http //web. lemoyne. edu/giunta/ea/lavprefann. html Antoine-Laurent LavoisierAntoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Line engraving by Louis Jean entrust Delaistre, after a design by Julien Leopold Boilly. Courtesy Blocker History of Medicine Collections, Moody medical exam Library, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas. The son of a wealthy Parisian lawyer, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (17431794) completed a law degree in accordance with family wishes. His real interest, however, was in science, which he pursued with passion while leading a full public life. On the basis of his earliest scientific work, mostly in geology, he was elected in 1768at the early age of 25to the Academy of Sciences, Frances most elite scientific society.In the same year he bought into the Ferme Generale, the private corporation that collected taxes for the Crown on a profit-and-loss basis. A a few(prenominal) years later he married the daughter of another tax farmer, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, who was not quite 14 at the time. Madame Lavoisier prepared herself to be her husbands scientific collaborator by learning English to translate the work of British chemists like Joseph Priestley and by studying art and engraving to illustrate Antoine-Laurents scientific experiments. In 1775 Lavoisier was appointed a commissioner of the Royal Gunpowder and Saltpeter Administration and took up ingleside in the Paris Arsenal.There he equipped a fine laboratory, which attracted young chemists from all over europium to learn about the Chemical Revolution then in progress. He meanwhile succeeded in producing more and better gunpowder by increasing the supply and ensuring the purity of the constituentssaltpeter (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoalas well as by improving the methods of granulating the powder. Characteristic of Lavoisiers chemistry was his systematic determination of the weights of reagents and products involved in chemical reactions, including the gaseous components, and his und erlying belief that matteridentified by weightwould be conserve through any reaction (the law of conservation of mass).Among his contributions to chemistry associated with this method were the understanding of combustion and respiration as caused by chemical reactions with the part of the air (as discovered by Priestley) that he named oxygen, and his definitive proof by composition and decomposition that water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen. His giving new names to substancesmost of which are still used todaywas an important means of forwarding the Chemical Revolution, because these terms expressed the theory behind them. In the case of oxygen, from the Greek meaning acid-former, Lavoisier expressed his theory that oxygen was the acidifying principle. He considered 33 substances as elementsby his definition, substances that chemical analyses had failed to break down into simpler entities.Ironically, considering his opposition to phlogiston (see Priestley), among these substances was caloric, the unweighable substance of heat, and possibly light, that caused other substances to expand when it was added to them. To propagate his ideas, in 1789 he published a textbook, Traite Elementaire de chimie, and began a journal, Annales de Chimie, which carried research reports about the new chemistry almost exclusively. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier conducts an experiment on human respiration in this drawing made by his wife, who depicted herself at the table on the far right. Courtesy Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, surgical incision of Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Library.A political and social liberal, Lavoisier took an active part in the events leading to the French Revolution, and in its early years he drew up plans and reports advocating many reforms, including the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures. disdain his eminence and his services to science and France, he came under attack as a former farmer-general of taxes and was guillotined in 1794. A noted mathematician, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, remarked of this event, It took them only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it. Source http//www. chemheritage. org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/early-chemistry-and-gases/lavoisier. aspx Others http//preparatorychemistry. com/Bishop_nomenclature_help. htm