Lavoisier, Antoine simple substances

In 1789, Antoine-Larrrent Lavoisier (1743-1794 CE) pubhshed a Table of Simple Substances (p. 175-176) in his book Traite Mementaire de Chimie, presente dans un ordre nouveau at d apres les decouvertes modernes, (55). The subtitle to the table was Simple substances belonging to all the kingdom of natrrre, which may be considered as the elements of bodies . None of the fom elements of Empedocles (earth, air, water, fire) or the three principles of Paracelsus (mercury,... 

Si par le nom d elemens, nous entendons designer les molecules simple indivisibles qui composent les corps, il est probable que nous ne les connoisons pas que si au contraire nous attachons au nom d elemens ou de principe des corps I idee du dernier terme auquel parvient I analyse, toutes les substances que nous n avons encore pu decomposer par aucun moyen, sont pour nous des elemens. [Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent, Traits Elementaire de Chimie, Vol. 1 (Paris 1789), p. xii]. 

Antoine Lavoisier s views were a considerable step forward in this field. He clearly stated his conceptions of simple bodies he believed that all substances which scientists had failed to decompose in any way were elements and he divided all simple substances into four groups. 

The study of the nature of elements and compounds is at the heart of much of Aristotle s philosophy of substance and matter and even his most general views of being and becoming. This was also true of many of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who were the first to discuss and theorize about the elements. About 20 centuries later, the nature of the elements was a mty or issue in the revolution of chemistry. Antoine Lavoisier seems to have been one of the first chemists to renounce the metaphysical view of the elements, which he replaced with a form of empiricism, which considered only substances that could actually be isolated as elements. Elements in this latter sense of the term are often called simple substances. ... 

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