Historians’ dispute

There has been some dispute among professional historians of science as to who should be entitled to write a history such as this. Those trained as historians are understandably apt to resent the presumption of working scientists, in the evening of their days, in trying to take the bread from the historians mouths. We, the superannuated scientists, are decried by some historians as whigs , mere uncritical... 

T. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness Philip Melanchthon s Exeget-ical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Oxford, 1998), concludes that the problems experienced by modem historians in analyzing the relationship between the two men was the result of a failure to make this distinction and to recognize the tact that almost without exception... 

One aspect beyond dispute is that Mendeleev made far more successful predictions than any of the codiscoverers of the periodic system. For example, he successfully predicted new elements, corrected the atomic weights of a number of known elements, and correctly reversed the positions of the elements tellurium and iodine. Why was it Mendeleev and not Lothar Meyer or others who was able to make such notable predictions Is it simply that the others lacked the courage to do so, as many historians of science state I suggest that Mendeleev had the advantage of being blessed with a deeply philosophical approach to chemistry, which allowed him to arrive at insights that his less philosophically minded contemporaries could not have reached. 

The answers themselves have been the subject of extended debate among historians. Butlerov s beliefs and his role in the development of structural theory have even become ammunition in twentieth-century scientific disputes with marked poiitical and ideological content (Graham, 1964, pp. 25-27). The "mutual influence" (to borrow Butlerov s phrase) of history, historiography, and ideology in the Butlerov controversy has been painstakingly examined by Rocke(1981). 

There is precious little else than can give us details about what the Israelite believed about his god and the world about him, or about the real nature of Christianity. The sparse references to one Christus or Chrestus in the works of contemporary non-Christian historians, tell us nothing about the nature of the man, and only dubiously—despite the claims often made for them—do they support his historic existence. They simply bear witness to the fact (never in dispute) that the stories of the Gospels were in circulation soon after 70 AD—after the revolt of 66 AD. 

The importance of the Karlsruhe conference in connection with the rationalization of atomic weights and the concept of the molecule is disputed by historian Alan Rocke,... 

The feamre that must be emphasized first is the table s confinement to pure chemical substances. This confinement, of course implied in its focus on replacement reactions, presupposed that the stated replacement reactions were established empirically by chemical analyses and syntheses. Geofffoy s table meets this condition. It is in part a summary of investigations of analyses and res)mtheses performed by the chemists at the Parisian Academy over several decades, supplemented by reversible metallurgical operations. The same holds more or less true for the subsequent affinity tables that list an established core of replacement reactions, whereas individual additions often indicate cases still disputed. Substances pertaining to the undisputed core of replacement reactions were evidently pure chemical substances the affinity tables themselves, which expanded considerably in the course of the eighteenth century, thus constitute a kind of inventory of such substances for historians. 

There are no general laws in history and historians are often wary about making predictions of future historical events. Yet few would dispute that an understanding of the past gives a better understanding of... 

The issue fell on fertile ground, not so much because of the principles of dialectical materialism, but because there had been priority disputes since 1863 about the originators of the theory of chemical structure (Butlerov, Couper and Kekule), in particular between German and Russian historians. That in English publications the name of Kekule dominates, Couper may be mentioned briefly and Butlerov often not at all seems to be an obvious bias. On the other hand, it is equally wrong to claim that Butlerov is the true creator of the theory of chemical structure. Probably it is fair to say that Butlerov, Couper, and Kekule between them made all the important contributions but, because they knew each others work and met one another on their journeys, a ranking in terms of priority doesn t make much sense. It might be added that Butlerov and Kekule were personal friends, and as far as can be known did not quarrel about priority. 

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