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Ever since the earliest use of fire and
long after the medieval alchemists' search for the philosophers'
stone, the secrets of the elements have been pursued by
human civilization. But, as the authors of this concise
history remind us, "disciplines like physics and chemistry
have not existed since the beginning of time; they have
built up little by little, and that does not happen without
difficulties." Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle
Stengers present chemistry as a science in search of an
identity has changed in response to its relation to society
and to other disciplines. The authors have written a book
deeply enthusiastic about the conceptual, experimental,
and technological complexities and challenges with which
chemists have grappled over many centuries.
Beginning with chemistry's polymorphous
beginnings, featuring many independent discoveries all over
the globe, the narrative moves to a discussion of chemistry's
niche in the eighteenth-century notion of Natural Philosophy
and on to its nineteenth-century role as an exemplary scientific
means of reaching positive knowledge. The authors also address
contentious issues of concern to contemporary scientists:
whether chemistry has become a service science; whether
its status has "declined" because its value lies
in assisting the leading-edge research activities of molecular
geneticists and materials scientists; or whether it is redefining
its agenda.
A History of Chemistry treats chemistry
as a study whose subject matter, the nature and behavior
of qualitatively different materials, remains constant,
while the methods and disciplinary boundaries of the science
constantly shift.
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is Associate
Professor at the University of Paris X, Nanterre. Isabelle
Stengers is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of
Science, University of Brussels.
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