Learned inquiry into materials

The bulk of the substances studied by eighteenth-century chemists originated in the artisanal world, and many of the new chemical substances that were discovered in academic chemists laboratories soon became transformed into remedies and other commodities. In the eighteenth century substances traveled from pharmaceutical laboratories and workshops to academic chemical laboratories, and vice versa, to become reproduced, analyzed, technically improved, and applied as useful materials. But were the materials studied, produced, and applied by apprenticed artisans and craftsmen and investigated by academic chemists actually identical kinds of objects of inquiry This is a key question tackled in detail in parts II and III of our book. 

26 For further arguments concerning the hybrid persona of the eighteenth-century chemist, see Klein [2005b]. 

27 For these distinctions see, in particular, Sellars [1963] Bachelard [ 1996] (first publication 1957) and Rheinberger [1997]. Sellar s distinction between manifest and scientific images largely coincides with the distinction between perceptible and imperceptible objects (see also van Brakel [2000] pp. 41-46). 

---