Abstract
The chapter examines Herman Boerhaave’s (1668–1738) influential account of fire and heat, expounded in his 1732 Elementa chemiae, in light of the changing relations between chemistry and natural philosophy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Going back to the 1660s and to Robert Boyle’s critique of chemical analysis and the nature of elements, the chapter explores the tensions and challenges inherent in Boerhaave’s view of elements and instruments—fire was both—as well as his ideas about menstruums and solution chemistry. Particular attention is paid to his consideration of fire as an imponderable agent of material change against the backdrop of mechanistic and materialistic trends in matter theory. The contributions of two chemists and members of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, Samuel Duclos (1598–1685) and Wilhelm Homberg (1652–1715), who developed theoretical and experimental programs employing burning lenses and mirrors, are evaluated as part of the story. These contextual reconstructionsillustrate the dynamics of change among diverging notions of elements, instruments, analysis, composition, and material change more generally, as these entities and categories straddled the shifting perimeters of the physical–chemical divide around the turn of the eighteenth century.
Fire is a Body, and a Body in motion. Its Motion is argued from its expanding the Air; which is not effected without communicating Motion thereto: And its Corporeity is proven by Experiment. For pure Mercury being enclosed in a Phial with a long Neck, and kept in a gentle Heat for the space of a Year, is reduced into a Solid; and its Weight considerably increased; which Increase can arise from nothing but the accession of Fire … The Nature of Fire is so wonderful, and abstruse, that the Ancients generally revered it as a God: Among the moderns, we can scarce name one Point in all Philosophy of more importance, or less understood. (“Fire,” Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia, 1728)
Hence, in all physics, it is found exceedingly difficult perfectly to distinguish the very action of fire from that of other concurring causes; while yet the nature of fire is so very different from theirs, that to confound them together will introduce the utmost uncertainty and disorder. (Herman Boerhaave, A New Method of Chemistry, 1741)
An earlier version of this essay was presented at a workshop held at McGill University in 2010: “The Maker’s Universe: Science, Art, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe.” Trevor Levere acted as commentator and I thank him for his insightful questions and remarks.
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- 1.
Antoine-François Fourcroy, Elements of Chemistry, and Natural History. To which is Prefixed the Philosophy of Chemistry, 4th ed. trans. R. Heron (London: J. Murray et al., 1796), vol. 1, 31–2. This is the fourth edition. The first three editions appeared, with slightly different titles in 1782, 1788, and 1790.
- 2.
All the references and quotations in this essay are from the 1741 edition: A New Method of Chemistry, Including the History, Theory, and Practice of the Art. For details on Boerhaave’s work and life see Arie G. Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave: The Man and His Work (London: Methuen, 1968); Arie G. Lindeboom, ed., Boerhaave and his Time: Papers Read at the International Symposium in Commemoration of the Tercentenary of Boerhaave’s Birth (Leiden: Brill, 1970). An insightful study of Boerhaave’s chemistry in the context of his pedagogy and practice is John C. Powers, Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts (Chicago, 2012). See also Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738): Calvinist Chemist and Physician (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002); Mi Gyung Kim, Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 177–88. For a more narrowly focused study see Ursula Klein, “Experimental History and Herman Boerhaave’s Chemistry of Plants,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34 (2003), 533–67.
- 3.
Fourcroy, Elements, 30.
- 4.
Gabriel François Venel, “Chymie ou Chimie,” in Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., vol. 3, 414. Retrieved from <University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Spring 2011 Edition), Robert Morrissey,ed., http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.
- 5.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, In a New Systematic Order; Containing all the Modern Discoveries, trans. J. Kerr (Edinburgh, 1790 [1789]), 1.
- 6.
Robert Fox, The Caloric Theory of Gases from Lavoisier to Regnault (Oxford, 1971), 12.
- 7.
Venel, “Chymie ou Chimie,” 408.
- 8.
Venel contributed more than 200 entries on various topics in chemistry (out of more than 800 dedicated to the subject), including entries on calcination, precipitation, mixts, elements, combustion, decomposition, fermentation, solvents, distillation, and niter. For the best study on chemistry in the Encyclopédie, including a detailed analysis of the “chemical corpus” see Jean-Claude Guedon, “The Still Life of a Transition: Chemistry in the Encyclopédie” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1974); see also Rémi Franckowiak, “La chimie dans l’Encyclopédie: une branche tour à tour dépréciée, réévaluée et autonome,” Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie 40/41 (2006), 59–70.
- 9.
See Antoine-François Fourcroy, Encyclopédie méthodique, “chimie” (Paris, 1796), vol. 3, 262–303. Venel’s association with the Encyclopédie is also discussed in Jacques Proust, L’Encyclopédisme dans le Bas-Languedoc au XVIIIe siècle (Montpellier: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Montpellier, 1968), 23–7 and 33–5.
- 10.
Venel “Chymie ou Chimie,” 408–9.
- 11.
Ibid., 410.
- 12.
Ibid., 416.
- 13.
For a comprehensive survey of this see John G. McEvoy, The Historiography of the Chemical Revolution: Patterns of Interpretation in the History of Science (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010).
- 14.
Pierre Joseph Macquer, A Dictionary of Chemistry, Containing the Theory and Practice of that Science, trans. J. Keir (London: T. Cadell and P. Elmsly, 1771), vol. 1, xi.
- 15.
An exception is Rosaleen Love, “Some Sources of Herman Boerhaave’s Concept of Fire,” Ambix 19 (1972), 157–74. Otherwise see Héléne Metzger, “La théorie du feu d’après Boerhaave,” Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Étranger 109 (1930), 253–85; I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry Into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin’s Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 214–34; David R. Dyck, “The Nature of Heat and Its Relationship to Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967), 101–17; Deirdre M. La Porte, “Theories of Fire and Heat in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1970), 155–78; Bernard Joly, “Voltaire chimiste: l’influence des théories de Boerhaave sur sa doctrine du feu,” Revue de nord 77 (1995), 817–43; Arnold Thackray, Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 111–113.
- 16.
For an excellent recent study of Boerhaave’s ‘skeptical’ views of chemical elements and analysis, relating them to Boyle’s early critiques as well as to chemistry in the second half of the century, see John C. Powers, “Fire Analysis in the Eighteenth Century: Herman Boerhaave and Scepticism about the Elements,” Ambix 61 (2014), 385–406.
- 17.
Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist, in Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, eds., The Works of Robert Boyle (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999–2000), vol. 2, 375.
- 18.
Ibid., 209, 211, 213, 277, 291–2.
- 19.
Venel “Chymie ou Chimie,” 408.
- 20.
The first phrase is taken from the title of Boyle’s “Essay on Nitre: A Physico-Chymical Essay … Redintegration of Salt-Petre”; the second from the subtitle to 1661 The Sceptical Chymist, which reads “Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist’s Principles […].”
- 21.
Venel “Chymie ou Chimie,” 416 (italics in original).
- 22.
Herman Boerhaave, A New Method of Chemistry; Including the History, Theory, and Practice of the Art: Translated from the Original Latin of Dr. Boerhaave’s Elementa Chemiae, as Published by Himself. To which are added notes; and an appendix, shewing the necessity and utility of enlarging the bounds of chemistry, 2nd edition, trans. P. Shaw (London: T. Longman, 1741), vol. 1, 157.
- 23.
Ibid., 158.
- 24.
On Boerhaave’s view of instruments “as tools within the practice and philosophy of chemistry and as principles of organization within the structure of Boerhaave’s chemical courses” see John C. Powers, “Chemistry Without Principles: Herman Boerhaave on Instruments and Elements,” in Lawrence M. Principe, ed., New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 45–62 (on 47).
- 25.
Boerhaave, New Method, p. 168. Although he assumed this spirit to be largely insensible, Boerhaave suggested, at times, that it manifested itself through smell, being “so subtile as only to be perceivable by its smell or taste.” (Ibid.). For historical background see Allen G. Debus, “The Paracelsian Aerial Niter,” Isis 55 (1964), 43–61.
- 26.
Boerhaave, New Method, 167–68.
- 27.
It should be noted that Boerhaave was not unique in this regard. In fact, the ‘elementary’ status of the four elements remained uncertain throughout most of the century. But the later debates were conducted within a very different epistemological context, mostly related to greater questions about the relationship between matter, metaphysics, language, and chemical method. Cases in point are the debate on the composition of water between Priestley, Cavendish, Kirwan, and Lavoisier; the variety of phlogistic debates concerning the nature of fire; or the distinction between air as a gaseous state or as chemical species as seen in the increasing number of newly discovered gases.
- 28.
Boerhaave, New Method, vol. 1, 200 (italics mine).
- 29.
Ibid., 178.
- 30.
Ibid., 155.
- 31.
Ibid., 205 (italics mine).
- 32.
Ibid., 205.
- 33.
Ibid., 580–93; titles of the subsections in the chapter “Of the Chemical Apparatus, and Vessels.”
- 34.
Ibid., 3.
- 35.
Ibid., 2.
- 36.
Ibid., 5.
- 37.
Water and menstruums are also examined at relative length. The chapters on air and earth are the shortest. Boerhaave’s exploration of fire has later gained popularity among French chemists and was commonly referred to as Traité du feu.
- 38.
Ibid., 167.
- 39.
Ibid., 205.
- 40.
Ibid., 379.
- 41.
Ibid., 436.
- 42.
Ibid., 473.
- 43.
See Robert Siegfried and Betty J. T. Dobbs, “Composition, A Neglected Aspect of the Chemical Revolution,” Annals of Science 24 (1968), 275–293.
- 44.
Ibid., 209–10.
- 45.
Ibid., 207.
- 46.
Ibid., 212–13.
- 47.
“Fire,” in The Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, in which the whole circle of human learning is explained […], eds., Temple Henry Croker, Thomas Williams, Samuel Clark (London: for the authors, 1765), vol. 2.
- 48.
Boerhaave, New Method, vol. 1, 246.
- 49.
Ibid., 156.
- 50.
Ibid., 157.
- 51.
Ibid., 300, 336.
- 52.
Ibid., 339–40.
- 53.
Venel “Chymie ou Chimie,” 416 (italics in original).
- 54.
Robert Boyle, “New Experiments, To Make the Parts of Fire and Flame Stable & Ponderable, (Essays of Effluviums, 1673),” in Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, eds., The Works of Robert Boyle (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999–2000), vol. 7, 227–336.
- 55.
Boerhaave, New Method, vol. 1, 339.
- 56.
Boyle, “New Experiments,” 306, 330.
- 57.
For a recent study, revealing the influence of this lineage on leading French chemists like Étienne François Geoffroy and especially Pierre-Joseph Macquer (particularly about their own work with burning mirrors and lenses to establish the nature of metals), see Christine Lehman, “Alchemy Revisited by the Mid-Eighteenth Century Chemists in France: An Unpublished Manuscript by Pierre-Joseph Macquer,” Nuncius 28 (2013), 156–216. For the cultural context see Gregory Lynall, “‘Bundling up the Sun-Beams’: Burning Mirrors in Eighteenth-Century Knowledge and Culture,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (2013), 477–90.
- 58.
Knowles Middleton, “Archimedes, Kircher, Buffon, and the Burning-Mirrors,” Isis 52 (1961), 533–43.
- 59.
W. A. Smeaton, “Some Large Burning Lenses and their Use by Eighteenth-Century French and British Chemists,” Annals of Science 44 (1987), 265–76.
- 60.
Boerhaave, New Method, vol. 1, 212, 268.
- 61.
Ibid., 281.
- 62.
Ibid., 268.
- 63.
Ibid., 339.
- 64.
Ibid., 359.
- 65.
Ibid., 340.
- 66.
Ibid., 342 (italics mine).
- 67.
For general information about Homberg see Kim, Affinity, ch. 2.
- 68.
For background on Duclos and the Academy see Victor D. Boantza, Matter and Method in the Long Chemical Revolution: Laws of Another Order (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 17–26.
- 69.
“Antimony metal can be made to form a visibly crystalline structure by slowly cooling the molten antimony beneath a thick layer of slag. The antimony is reduced from stibnite (Sb2S3) by heating it with iron and saltpeter until fusion ensues.” Chymical Products: Star regulus of antimony, The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, W.R. Newman, ed., December 2013. http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/reference/chemProd.do
- 70.
Procès-Verbal de séance de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, t. 1, fols 39–41 (hereafter: AdS, PV, followed by tome and page numbers).
- 71.
Ibid., fols 45–7.
- 72.
Ibid., fol. 48.
- 73.
Ibid., fol. 48.
- 74.
Ibid., fol. 49.
- 75.
Bernard de Fontenelle, “Sur des experiences faites a un miroir ardent convexe” Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Avec les mémoires de mathématique & de physique, pour la même année (1702), 34–5. (Hereafter Histoire or Mémoires, followed by year.)
- 76.
Boerhaave, New Method, 277.
- 77.
Wilhelm Homberg, “Observations Faites par le moyen du Verre Ardent,” Mémoires (1702), 149.
- 78.
Boyle, “New Experiments,” 302–3.
- 79.
Wilhelm Homberg “Observations sur la Quantite d’Acides absorbées par les Alcalis Terreaux,” Mémoires (1700), 69.
- 80.
Wilhelm Homberg, “Suite des Essays de Chimie. Article Troisieme. Du Souphre Principe,” Mémoires (1705), 94.
- 81.
Kim, Affinity, 93; Homberg’s chemical theory and its relation to chemical practice and analysis is discussed by Kim, Affinity, 66–110; Alice Stroup, “Wilhelm Homberg and the Search for the Constituents of Plants at the seventeenth-Century Académie Royale des Sciences,” Ambix 26 (1979), 184–201; and Mi Gyung Kim, “Chemical Analysis and the Domains of Reality: Wilhelm Homberg’s Essays de chimie, 1702–1709,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31 (2000), 37–69. For Homberg’s views on the relations between chemistry and physics see Rémi Franckowiak and Luc Peterschmitt, “La Chimie de Homberg: Une vérité certaine dans une physique contestable,” Early Science and Medicine 10 (2005), 65–90.
- 82.
Homberg, “Suite des Essays,” 88–9.
- 83.
Homberg, “Suite des Essays,” 89; Kim, Affinity, 96. For Homberg’s “chemistry of light” see Lawrence M. Principe, “Wilhelm Homberg: Chymical Corpuscularianism and Chrysopoeia in the Early Eighteenth Century” in Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch, William R. Newman, eds., Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 535–56; Lawrence M. Principe, “Wilhelm Homberg et la chimie de la lumière,” Methodos 8 (2008). Retrieved 26 January 2014, from http://methodos.revues.org/1223.
- 84.
See Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Boantza, Matter and Method, 67–82.
- 85.
AdS, PV, t. 4, fols 48r–55v.
- 86.
Ibid., fol. 58r.
- 87.
Ibid., fols 58r–v.
- 88.
Ibid., fol. 58v.
- 89.
Ibid., fols. 59r–v.
- 90.
For controversies on fire analysis in the early modern period see Allen Debus, “Fire Analysis and the Elements in the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries,” Annals of Science 23 (1967), 127–47; Frederic L. Holmes, “Analysis by Fire and Solvent Extractions: The Metamorphosis of a Tradition,” Isis 62 (1971), 128–48. See also Mi Gyung Kim, “The Analytical Ideal of Chemical Elements: Robert Boyle and French Didactic Tradition of Chemistry,” Science in Context 14 (2001), 361–95.
- 91.
AdS, PV, t. 4, fol. 60r.
- 92.
Ibid., fols 60r–61v.
- 93.
The subject of the inflammable particles is further linked in Duclos’ cosmology to what he termed the igneous spirit, a universal agent of change that was a material–immaterial hybrid.
- 94.
Ibid., fols. 63v–64r.
- 95.
Ibid., fols. 64r–v.
- 96.
Ibid., fol. 53v.
- 97.
Duclos’ reference is evocative of the medieval and Renaissance dyadic view of composition (especially of metals), consisting of the two principles of sulfur and mercury.
- 98.
Ibid., fols. 64v–65v.
- 99.
Boerhaave, New Method, 489.
- 100.
Ibid., 489 (italics mine).
- 101.
Ibid., 489–90.
- 102.
Ibid., 222.
- 103.
Ibid., 359.
- 104.
Ibid., 361 (italics mine).
- 105.
Venel “Chymie ou Chimie,” 413.
- 106.
Ibid., 493, 495 (italics mine).
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Boantza, V.D. (2017). Elements, Instruments, and Menstruums: Boerhaave’s Imponderable Fire Between Chemical Masterpiece and Physical Axiom. In: Buchwald, J., Stewart, L. (eds) The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere. Archimedes, vol 52. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_2
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