Hélène Metzger and the Interpretation of Seventeenth Century Chemistry

Metzger Hélène , Les doctrines chimiques en France du début du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Première partie, Paris, 1923; reprinted Paris, 1969); idem, La chimie (Histoire du monde, xiii: La civilisation européene moderne, 4ème partie, Paris, 1930).

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 26.

Metzger H. , “L'historien des sciences doit-t-il se faire le contemporain des savants dont il parle?”, Archeion, xv (1933), 34–44, pp. 36, 37.

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 26, 103–4, 146–65, 249–50.

Metzger , La chimie, 20.

On the ‘doctrine of signatures’: Les doctrines chimiques, 24–26; on astrological correspondences: La chimie, 20, Les doctrines chimiques, 103–4, 146–52; on affinities: La chimie, 51; and on the Paracelsian theory of the elements: La chimie, 20, Les doctrines chimiques, 154–62.

Lévy-Bruhl Lucien , Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris, 1910) (translated as How natives think, by Clare L. A. , New York, 1966). See also Cazeneuve Jean , Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, tr. by Rivière Peter (Oxford, 1972).

Lévy-Bruhl , How natives think, chs 2, 3; Cazeneuve , Lévy-Bruhl, 5–8, 22ff.

Cazeneuve , Lévy-Bruhl, 19–22.

Metzger H. , “La philosophie de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl et l'histoire des sciences”, Archeion, xii (1930), 15–24; idem, “L'a priori dans la doctrine scientifique et l'histoire des sciences”, Archeion, xviii (1936), 29–42.

Metzger , “Philosophie de Lévy-Bruhl”; idem, “L'a priori”, 34–35, 36.

Metzger H. , Les concepts scientifiques (Paris, 1926), 35–50.

Metzger , “Philosophie de Lévy-Bruhl”.

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 430.

Compare the views of Abel Rey, cited ibid., 251–2 fn; and in Metzger , Concepts scientifiques, 156.

Metzger , Les doctrines chimique, 251.

Meyerson Émile , Identité et réalité (Paris, 1908) (translated by Kate Loewenberg as Identity and reality (New York, 1962)).

Meyerson , Identity and reality, 249, 5.

ibid., 91, 95.

Metzger , La chimie, 126 fn.

Metzger H. , “La méthode philosophique dans l'histoire des sciences”, Archeion, xix (1937), 204–16, pp. 206–8.

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 10–11.

ibid., 11.

Foucault Michel , Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966) (translated as The order of things (London, 1970), 17–44, 52–56 (in the translated edition).

For Foucault's claims to have exposed the level of a priori determinants of knowledge, see The order of things, pp. xxi, xxii, 31, 157; and for the disavowal of ‘structuralism’, ibid., p. xiv. For further discussion of the ‘archaeological level’ of analysis, and of the 'historical a priori”, see Foucault Michel , The archaeology of knowledge (translated by Smith A. M. Sheridan (New York, 1976)), esp. 126–31; and compare the discussion of Kantian themes in Foucault's method in Megill Allan , “Foucault, structuralism and the ends of history”, Journal of modern history, li (1979), 451–503, pp. 459, 468, 474–6, 482–3.

On discontinuities, see Foucault , Archaeology of knowledge, 166–77.

Vickers Brian , (ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984), “Introduction”, 1–55, pp. 6, 42.

Compare the approaches adopted in papers in the same volume by Vickers , “Analogy versus identity: The rejection of occult symbolism, 1580–1680” (pp. 95–163) and by Westman Robert , “Nature, art and psyche: Jung, Pauli and the Kepler-Fludd polemic” (pp. 177–229).

Vickers , (ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities, 33–44.

ibid., 13–17, 30, 32.

Theoretical endorsement for this kind of approach can be drawn from (for example) Foucault Michel , “The discourse on language”, in Archaeology of knowledge, 215–37. See also the works of some historians who have stressed the importance of the practices of writing in science, notably in the history of chemistry: Hannaway Owen , The chemists and the word (Baltimore and London, 1975); and Anderson Wilda C. , Between the library and the laboratory (Baltimore and London, 1984).

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 426.

Metzger , La chimie, 40–42; idem, Les doctrines chimiques, 284–5, 287–9.

Metzger , La chimie, 42.

Glaser Christophe , The compleat chymist, tr. by “A Fellow of the Royal Society” (London, 1677; original edn, Paris, 1663), sigs A2r-v, A3r; Sendivogius Michael , A new light of alchimie, tr. by John French (London, 1650), sigs A3v-A4r; ‘Eyraeneus Philaletha Cosmopolita’, Secrets reveal'd (London, 1669), “Author's preface”, unnumbered pages.

Hannaway , Chemists and the word; Lémery Nicolas , Cours de chymie (ninth edn, Paris, 1697), pp. *3r-v (original edn, Paris, 1675).

Lémery , Cours de chymie, p. *3v.

Metzger , Les doctrines chimiques, 316–24.

Lémery , Cours de chymie, 2–5 and passim.

Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 481–520; Schaffer Simon , “Making certain”, ibid., xiv (1984), 137–52. See also Golinski J. V. , “Robert Boyle: Scepticism and authority in seventeenth-century chemical discourse”, in Benjamin A. Cantor G. N. and Christie J. R. R. (eds), The figural and the literal (Manchester University Press, forthcoming).

On this question, see for example The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. by Birch Thomas (6 vols, London, 1772), i, 354–9; iv, 230–353; and the discussion in Shapin , “Pump and circumstance”.

The social and political context of Boyle's work is developed at greater length by Shapin S. and Schaffer S. in their Leviathan and the air-pump (Princeton, 1985).

Hannaway , Chemists and the word; Contant Jean-Paul , L'enseignement de la chimie au Jardin Royal des Plantes de Paris (Cahors, 1952).

Metzger , La chimie, 66–67; idem, Les doctrines chimiques, 26, 262–4 fn.