Enlightenment discourse

Rouelle assumed his teaching post at a time when the demise of the five principles had left French theoretical chemistry in disarray without a clear alternative. The Enlightenment public sphere also demanded a more rational chemical discourse than a mere apothecary s manual. Although the decline of the Cartesian paradigm called for a new textbook to replace Nicolas Lemery s, the last authenticated edition of which was published in 1716, Erench teachers did not step up to fill the gap. In the meantime, foreign authors such as Newton, Stahl, and Boerhaave... 

Rouelle performed exceptionally well as a public and private lecturer by reconstructing the defunct theoretical discourse of French chemistry for the literary audience of the High Enlightenment. He did not fulfill, however, another function of the chemical teacher that of a textbook writer. It was one of Rouelle s early students, Pierre-Joseph Macquer,... 

A. R. Albury, The Logic of Condillac and the Structure of French Chemical and Biological Theory, 1780-1801, Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1972 Daniel Brewer, The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 1993). 

Brewer, Daniel. The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Prance (Cambridge University Press, 1993). 

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