Origins of the Ambiguity of the Current Definition of Chemical Element

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Joseph E. Earley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chemical Element ◽  
Major Difficulty ◽  
Chemical Substances ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Current Definition ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Internal Inconsistency ◽  
Definition Of

The current (IUPAC) definition of “chemical element” has two parts. The first part describes a concept on which chemists generally agreed when important aspects of the structure of chemical substances became clear by the middle of the twentieth century; the second part concerns a concept which had been important in “the chemical revolution” of the late eighteenth century—but which is not consistent with the definition first given. Although long familiarity has made the internal inconsistency of this “dual definition” of chemical element nearly undetectable by chemical professionals, that lack of clarity still causes major difficulty for logically minded beginning chemistry students. The concept of chemical element described in the second part of the current IUPAC definition has long been obsolete; it should now be abandoned. Retention of an obsolete definition for an important concept is characteristic of what John Dewey called “unmodern philosophy.”

Referring to Chemical Elements and Compounds

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Blumenthal ◽  
James Ladyman ◽  
Vanessa Seifert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Chemical Elements ◽  
Chemical Substances ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
Descriptive Theory ◽  
Philosophical Questions

How do we refer to chemical substances, and in particular to chemical elements? This question relates to many philosophical questions, including whether or not theories are incommensurable, the extent to which past theories are later discarded, and issues about scientific realism. This chapter considers the first explicit reference to types of colorless air in late-eighteenth-century chemical practice. Reference to a gas by one chemist was generally intended to give others epistemological, methodological, and practical access to the gas. This chapter proposes a causal-descriptive theory of reference for chemical substances. Implications for debates about incommensurability and realism are also briefly noted.

Medical Men, Negligent Mothers, and Malleable Children

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
Mary Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Medical Intervention ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter considers the medicalization of childhood from the late eighteenth century into the 1840s. What we might now term a ‘biological’ definition of childhood is seen first in late eighteenth-century medical intervention into the care of infants. These texts are part of a wider ‘rationalization’ of childhood which emerged in scientific and child-rearing genres. The influence in Ireland of John Locke, William Buchan, and the Edgeworths’ contributed to a reformulation of childhood as a period of enormous intellectual and physical malleability. As the matter of children’s health shifted from the female domain to the business of men, medical professionals defined the child body in opposition to the adult male body. Elite women were criticized for coddling their children excessively, while the lower classes were characterized as neglectful and uncaring. By the mid-nineteenth century, objective standards of growth were deployed as mechanisms for governing parental as much as childhood behaviour.

The Operational Definition of the Elements

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-187
Author(s):  
Joachim Schummer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Definition Of

The paper reappraises the operational definition of elements, adopted in the late eighteenth century, by investigating both epistemic discontinuities and continuities within the broader epistemological and cultural context. The first part points out the radical disruption that the operational definition implied for most of science, which consisted in giving up explanation, the primary goal of natural philosophy, because the new elements had to be discovered. The operational turn in chemistry is then compared to several well-discussed “revolutions,” including the Kantian, relativistic, and quantum revolutions in physics, which similarly modified our understanding of fundamental concepts of natural philosophy, such as time, space, and causation, by relating them to human capacities.

Sensitive limit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mechthild Fend
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Art ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter focuses on the significance of skin in neoclassical art and aesthetics. The most distinctive features of neoclassicism - an emphasis on the contour and a preference for more finished surfaces - are understood as elements crucial for the visual formation and understanding of the human body, its surface and borderlines. The culture of neoclassicism, extending well beyond the realm of art and art discourse, was generally characterised by a heightened concern with the shaping of the body and the safeguarding of its boundaries. Skin as the body's physical demarcation, was increasingly perceived not merely as an envelope and organ, but as the boundary of the self. The chapter considers the new attention to skin and contour in late eighteenth-century French art discourse, in particular in Watelet's and Levesque's Dictionnaire des beaux-arts. It equally looks at the discussion of membranes and the definition of skin as ‘sensitive limit‘ in the works of anatomist Xavier Bichat and analyses a set of portraits by Jacques-Louis David painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

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