Boerhaave’s Mineral Chemistry and Its Influence on Eighteenth-Century Pharmacy in the Netherlands and England

In the eighteenth century, the use of mineral or fossil substances was relatively common in European medicine and pharmacy. However, this period also saw profound changes in ideas about the nomenclature, chemistry, and curative properties of minerals. Jonathan Simon has recently argued that an increasing orientation towards the mineral kingdom and the chemical transformation of minerals, and a rise in the number of mineral preparations demanded of the pharmacist, were characteristic for eighteenth-century chemistry within pharmacy. Yet in the Netherlands, and to a certain extent in England, another pattern is visible: although there certainly was an interest in the mineral kingdom and the chemical transformation of nonorganic materials, nothing suggests that this resulted in a strong increase in the demand for mineral-based pharmaceutical preparations – rather the contrary. Unlike English and French eighteenth-century pharmacy, Dutch pharmacy and its relation to academic medicine and chemistry have hardly received attention from historians of science thus far. This paper aims to fill that gap and argues that Herman Boerhaave’s (1668–1738) view on mineral medicine was crucial in the development of a certain wariness of “mineral medicine” in the eighteenth-century Netherlands and England, especially among apothecaries.     

Nature’s Chemical Signatures in Human Olfaction: A Foodborne Perspective for Future Biotechnology

The biocatalytic production of flavor naturals that determine chemosensory percepts of foods and beverages is an ever challenging target for academic and industrial research. Advances in chemical trace analysis and post‐genomic progress at the chemistry–biology interface revealed odor qualities of nature’s chemosensory entities to be defined by odorant‐induced olfactory receptor activity patterns. Beyond traditional views, this review and meta‐analysis now shows characteristic ratios of only about 3 to 40 genuine key odorants for each food, from a group of about 230 out of circa 10 000 food volatiles. This suggests the foodborn stimulus space has co‐evolved with, and roughly match our circa 400 olfactory receptors as best natural agonists. This perspective gives insight into nature’s chemical signatures of smell, provides the chemical odor codes of more than 220 food samples, and beyond addresses industrial implications for producing recombinants that fully reconstruct the natural odor signatures for use in flavors and fragrances, fully immersive interactive virtual environments, or humanoid bioelectronic noses.     

高中生“芳香烃”心智模型的测评及其教学启示*

采用二阶式纸笔测验以及半结构化访谈法对高中生持有的“芳香烃”心智模型进行测评,并重点分析了学生建构的与“芳香烃和苯的同系物的概念”“芳香烃的结构”“苯及其同系物的化学性质”等概念群相关的缺陷模型。研究发现学生建构的有关“芳香烃”缺陷模型包括3大类共计11种;学生对有机物空间结构的想象力和建构能力较为薄弱;学生对“有机化合物结构内基团之间相互作用对其化学性质的影响”认识不足,“性质结构”模型不完善;学生建构的有机化学的心智模型尚不具备整体性。     

The Corundum Stone and Crystallographic Chemistry*

This article presents a detailed history and exegesis of the 1798 paper of Charles Greville and Jacques-Louis Count de Bournon, “On the Corundum Stone from Asia.” This was the first published argument to establish that the mineral corundum was related to, or identical with, the ruby and the sapphire. It was also the first time that the science of crystallography, recently developed in France, was publically introduced to a British scientific audience. René Just Haüy’s theory of the three-dimensional structure of minerals proposed a new kind of extension of chemistry into the solid state. The story of corundum illustrates the new and sophisticated mineralogy that had emerged in the late eighteenth century and how an increasingly global natural history relied upon extended networks of trade and empire. It shows also how mineralogical debates had begun to move beyond the private and restricted milieux of mining schools and wealthy collectors and into more public scientific fora.     

Chemistry and Dual Use: From Scientific Integrity to Social Responsibility

Ethical aspects of chemical activity are often exclusively located in the field of scientific integrity and good scientific practice. Yet, there is another dimension of ethics in chemistry that is not covered by research ethics: the impact of chemical scientific and technological progress on society and environment. Here, especially, the dual character of manifestations of chemical progress (new compounds, materials, and processes) is discussed. This essay aims at clarifying the roles, responsibilities, and chances of chemists to contribute to the assessment and management of dual use risks. Its main argument is that the framework for an efficient risk assessment has been established in science and technology governance, based on the sustainability concept. Without having to worry about exceeding their core competences too much – as in ‘Ethics is not my business!’ – chemists’ expertise and knowledge plays a crucial role in tackling the most urging issues of our times as part of a larger interdisciplinary endeavour.     

Humphry Davy and the Problem of Analogy

Analogy, the comparison of one set of relations to another, was essential to Humphry Davy’s understanding of chemistry. Throughout his career, Davy used analogical reasoning to direct and to interpret his experimental analyses of the chemical reactions between substances. In his writing, he deployed analogies to organise and to explain his theories about the relations between physical processes and between the properties of different chemical elements and compounds. But Davy also regularly expressed two concerns about analogical comparison: first, that it was founded not on the rational interpretation of facts but on imaginative speculation; and second, that it was a kind of rhetoric, the persuasiveness of which depended not on material evidence but on misleading figures of speech. This article discusses the influences that informed Davy’s ambivalent assessment of the value of analogy, and it examines the distinct yet overlapping ways in which this assessment was expressed in his notebooks, his lectures and treatises on chemistry, his philosophical writings, and his poetry.     

Viewing chemistry through its ways of classifying

The focus of this contribution lies on eighteenth-century chemistry up to Lavoisier’s anti-phlogistic chemical system. Some main features of chemistry in this period will be examined by discussing classificatory practices and the understanding of the substances these practices imply. In particular, the question will be discussed of whether these practices can be regarded as natural historical practices and, hence, whether chemistry itself was a special natural history (part I). Furthermore, discussion of the famous Methode de nomenclature chimique (1787) raises the question of what modes of classification tell us about chemists’ understanding of the substances they deal with (part II). Finally, in investigating what taxonomic orders reveal about deep structures of chemists’ understanding of the world of substances, the contribution will examine the question of whether Lavoisier’s anti-phlogistic chemical system was a revolution on the level of a deep structure or a revision within the untouched frame of such a structure (part III).     

Ontological tensions in sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry: between mechanism and vitalism

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marks a period of transition between the vitalistic ontology that had dominated Renaissance natural philosophy and the Early Modern mechanistic paradigm endorsed by, among others, the Cartesians and Newtonians. This paper will focus on how the tensions between vitalism and mechanism played themselves out in the context of sixteenth and seventeenth century chemistry and chemical philosophy, particularly in the works of Paracelsus, Jan Baptista Van Helmont, Robert Fludd, and Robert Boyle. Rather than argue that these natural philosophers each embraced either fully vitalistic or fully mechanistic ontologies, I hope to demonstrate that these thinkers adhered to complicated and nuanced ontologies that cannot be described in either purely vitalistic or purely mechanistic terms. A central feature of my argument is the claim that a corpuscularian theory of matter does not entail a strictly mechanistic and reductionistic account of chemical properties. I also argue that what marks the shift from pre-modern vitalistic chemical philosophy to the modern chemical philosophy that marked the Chemical Revolution is not the victory of mechanism and reductionism in chemistry but, rather, the shift to a physicalistic and naturalistic account of chemical properties and vital spirits.     

Klein on the origin of the concept of chemical compound

Ursula Klein has argued that Geoffroy’s table of chemical affinities, published in 1718, marked the emergence of the concepts of chemical compound and chemical combination central to chemistry. In this paper her position is summarised and then modified to render it immune to criticism that has been levelled against it. The essentials of Geoffroy’s chemistry are clarified and adapted to Klein’s picture by way of a detailed comparison of it with Boyle’s corpuscular chemistry that proceeded Geoffroy’s by over half a century. The idea that Geoffroy’s notion of chemical combination marked a significant turning point in the emergence of modern chemistry is defended against the charge that it is Whiggish.     

Composites Based on Polytetrafluoroethylene and Detonation Nanodiamonds: Filler–Matrix Chemical Interaction and Its Effect on a Composite’s Properties

Specific properties of PTFE composites filled with ultradisperse detonation diamonds (UDDs) with different surface chemistries are studied. It is found for the first time that filler in the form of UDDs affects not only the rate of PTFE thermal decomposition in vacuum pyrolysis, but also the chemical composition of the products of degradation. The wear resistance of UDD/PTFE composites is shown to depend strongly on the UDD surface chemistry. The presence of UDDs in a PTFE composite is found to result in perfluorocarbon telomeres, released as a readily condensable fraction upon composite pyrolysis. The chemical interaction between PTFE and UDDs, characterized by an increase in the rate of gas evolution and a change in the desorbed gas’s composition, is found to occur at temperature as low as 380°C. It is shown that the intensity of this interaction depends on the concentration of oxygen-containing surface groups, the efficiency of UDDs in terms of the composite’s wear resistance being reduced due to the presence of these groups. Based on the experimental data, a conclusion is reached about the chemical interaction between UDDs and a PTFE matrix, its dependence on the nanodiamond surface chemistry, and its effect on a composite’s tribology.     

将矿物学理论与实验知识引入基础无机化学教学的探讨

矿物学是与无机化学密不可分的兄弟学科之一。无机化学知识的一个重要来源就是人类对矿物的观察与研究,同时元素化学的基础研究也被广泛应用于矿物学。对于矿物的认识可以加深学生对于无机化学理论联系实际的感性和理性认识,并进一步熟悉相关元素的性质。本文从基础无机化学教学的角度整理了矿物学的理论与实验教学要点,并以多种典型矿物为实验对象描述其实验性质,并阐述如何结合矿物实例进行矿物学理论与实验的教学。将矿物学相关内容引入基础无机化学教学,不失为一种交叉学科与基础化学教育相结合的新模式。     

Chemistry and the Origin of Life

The natural genesis of life on Earth is a hypothesis of evolutionary science; it is the task of synthetic organic chemistry to test this hypothesis experimentally. The aim of an experimental aetiological chemistry is not primarily to delineate the pathways along which our (‘natural’) life on Earth could have originated, but to provide decisive experimental evidence, through the realization of model systems (‘artificial chemical life’), that life can arise as a result of the organization of organic matter.     

Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) and the Saline Chymistry of Plants

Abstract

In a series of lectures appended to his magisterial Anatomy of Plants (1682), Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) explained the results of his own research into the saline chemistry of plants, following an established tradition in early modern chemistry. Members of the Royal Society such as Daniel Coxe were heavily involved in researching salt chemistry in the latter part of the seventeenth century, analysing the role of salts in spa waters, physiology, and as a fundamental element in iatrochemistry. Such researches of Royal Society members were often based upon the chemistry of Johann Van Helmont (1577–1634). As this paper will demonstrate, Grew's work drew from his microscopic research to elaborate and question some of Coxe's and hence Van Helmont's ideas about the principles of matter. Grew also used the results of his chemical research to draw conclusions about plant structure and colour, and applied his results to other areas in natural history such as meteorology, illustrating that chemistry was the basic analytical tool for seventeenth-century investigators of anatomy and natural history.     

由早餐争论引发的对“基本营养物质”的教学思考

由早餐建议引发的争论反思基本营养物质在高中必修阶段的教学。从课标要求和科学史、能力培养和学习阶段特点等角度,分析了教学价值,设计了突出培养“化学指导生活”意识的高中必修阶段基本营养物质的教学。以“早餐吃点什么”为主题,围绕典型物质,引导学生从物质的作用和人体的需求两方面、多角度地建立、完善和巩固评价早餐的思路,挖掘了学科知识的思维培养价值和育人功能。     

有机化学进展(2011~2012)

本文综述了中国大陆地区有机化学研究人员2011至2012年两年内在合成方法学、有机合成化学、元素有机化学以及天然产物化学等领域获得的重要成果。文章中共引用参考文献355篇,其中110多篇手性金属配合物和有机小分子催化的不对称反应、金属催化的碳氢键活化等合成方法学论文和30余篇氟有机化学论文基本来源于德国《应用化学》(国际版)和《美国化学杂志》。本文汇集了中国有机化学家两年中合成的150多个具有生物活性和化学结构多样性的天然产物,其中不乏具有高度挑战性的复杂天然分子。在近两年中中国有机化学家从陆地和海洋的生物体内发现各种不同类型新天然产物90多个。     

初中生化学方程式前概念及其影响因素探查研究*

根据自编的“初中生化学方程式前概念及其影响因素”探查问卷,了解初中生可能在化学方程式的概念内涵(概念、意义、“+”和“=”的含义等)和外延(化学符号的重要性、化学方程式的唯一性、化学方程式与数学方程式的关系)方面存在的前概念认识,探查学生背景信息以及学习环境、学习方式、已有化学知识水平等外在因素的影响。对石家庄市某中学即将学习化学方程式的学生的176份有效问卷和8位学生的访谈分析结果表明,初中生化学方程式的前概念虽然在班级类型、数学成绩、课外书阅读类型、已有化学知识水平方面存在差异,很多已有认识与科学概念一致,但学生的认识并不全面,甚至有部分偏差认识。分析初中生化学方程式的前概念内容,建议化学方程式的教学重点是帮助学生从宏观与微观、定性与定量相结合角度认识化学方程式,理解不同化学符号的功能和价值。     

Abilities in chemistry and possibilities of their diagnosing

Experimental results indicating the existence of special abilities in chemistry were reported, with chemistry interpreted as the science about substances and their transformations in accordance with the classical definition. It was shown that the key component of abilities in chemistry is a learner’s particular attitude to a substance. The possibilities of diagnosing schoolchildren’s abilities in chemistry were discussed. Promising directions for further psychological and educational research concerning the abilities in chemistry were considered.     

化学教师模型认识与模型教学观的关系研究*

主要使用李克特式量表问卷测查了256名中学化学教师的模型认识与模型教学观的结构与水平,并使用结构方程模型进一步探查化学模型认识与模型教学观的关系。结果表明:(1)化学教师对化学模型的描述与解释功能以及模型的暂定性具有较好的认识,但对模型预测功能认识不足;(2)化学教师在模型教学中倾向于使用模型描述、解释或预测化学现象,并且较认可以学生为中心的模型教学,但缺乏对模型暂定性的反思;(3)化学教师的模型认识基本上可预测其模型教学观,如关于模型功能的认识能显著预测其模型教学观。文末据此为我国化学教师培训及其研究提出相关建议。     

If You Don't Have a Good Laboratory,Find a Good Volcano: Mount Vesuvius as a Natural Chemical Laboratory in Eighteenth-Century Italy

This essay that examines the role of the volcano as a chemical site in the late eighteenth century, as the “new chemistry” spread throughout the southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, resulting in lively debates. In Naples itself, these scientific debates were not confined to academies, courts, and urban spaces. In the absence of well-equipped chemical laboratories, Neapolitan scholars also carried out research on chemistry on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, a natural site that furnished them with all the tools and substances necessary for practising chemistry. By examining various Neapolitan publications on Vesuvius and the chemical reactions and products associated with its periodic eruptions, I argue that the volcano's presence contributed to a distinctive, local approach to chemical theory and practice. Several case studies examine the ways in which proximity to Vesuvius was exploited by Neapolitan scholars as they engaged with the new chemistry, including Giuseppe Vairo, Michele Ferrara, Francesco Semmola, and Emanuele Scotti.     

Robert Hare's Theory of Galvanism: A Study of Heat and Electricity in Early Nineteenth-Century American Chemistry

As a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Hare actively shaped early American science. He participated in a large network of scholars, including Joseph Henry, François Arago, and Jacob Berzelius, and experimented with and wrote extensively about electricity and its associated chemical and thermal phenomena. In the early nineteenth century, prominent chemists such as Berzelius and Humphry Davy proclaimed that a revolution had occurred in chemistry through electrical research. Examining Robert Hare’s contributions to this discourse, this paper analyzes how Hare’s study of electricity and the caloric theory of heat led him to propose a new theory of galvanism. It also examines the reception of Hare’s work in America and Great Britain, highlighting the contributions of early American chemists to the development of electrochemistry.