Laws and Order in Eighteenth-century Chemistry

The eighteenth century was the formative period in which chemistry established itself as an autonomous discipline with its own concepts and modes of explanation, independent of mathematical physics. Yet much previous writing in this area has concentrated on theories derived from more traditionally respectable branches of knowledge such as physics. This book traces the transition from the chemists' point of view, through the evolution of notions of chemical affinity and attraction, the physicists' attempts to explain chemical combination and chemists' development of their own models. It describes the growth of affinity tables, which chemists hoped would lead to the induction of predictive laws, and which represented their unofficial list of elements which eventually through the work of Lavoisier replaced the traditional Aristotelian list. The book also discusses chemists' efforts to account for double decomposition, to measure affinity or attraction quantitativley, to classify types of affinity and to state laws of chemistry. This book is intended for philosophers and historians of science, chemists interested in the origins of the subject.Table of Content1: The background of eighteenth century chemistry. 2: Chemical affinity and attraction in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 3: Physical theories and their reception by chemists. 4: Tables of affinity and of elective attractions. 5: Classificaiton, quantification, and explanation. Index