Methode de nomenclature

Isabelle Stengers and Judith Schlanger, Les concepts scientifiques Invention etpouvoir (Paris Editions La Decouverte, 1988) and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, A propos de methode de nomenclature chimique Esquisse historique suivie du texte de 1787 (Paris Centre de Documentation Sciences Humaines, 1983). 

A Propos de methode de nomenclature chimique Esquisse historique suivie du texte de 1787. Paris Centre de Documentation Sciences Humaines, 1983. 

In 1787 Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Fourcroy introduced in their Methode de nomenclature chimique the terms carbone, for the element carbon, instead of charbon (charcoal) and acide carbonique (carbon dioxide) instead of air fixe ( fixed air ). 

A.-L. Lavoisier, Memoire sur la necessite de reformer et du perfectionner la nomenclature de la chemie, published in Methode de nomenclature chimique, propose par MM, de MorveaUy Lavoisier Berthollet, et de Fourcroy (Paris, 1787). Quotation from Oeuvres de Lavoisiery vol. 5, 354-364 at 361. 

B. Bensaude-Vincent, Methode de Nomenclature Chimique [Par] L. B. Guyton de Morveau A. L. Lavoisier, C. L. Berthollet et A. F. de Fourcroy, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1994. 

In Baron Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau Methode de nomenclature chimique (p. 16)... 

See B. Bensaude-Vincent s introduction to L. B. Guyton de Morveau, A. L. Lavoisier, C. L. Berthollet, and A. E de Fourcroy, Methode de nomenclature chimique (Seuil, 1994). See also W. R. Albury, The Logic of Condillac and the Structure of French Chemical and Biological Theory, 1780-1801, Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1972 John G. McEvoy, The Enlightenment and the Chemical Revolution, in Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. R. Woolhouse (Kluwer, 1988). 

Fourcroy, Antoine-Fran9ois de. Memoire pour servir Texplication du tableau de nomenclature (1787). 109-122 in Methode de nomenclature chimique (Paris Seuil, 1994). 

Guyton de Morveau, Louis-Bernard. Memoire sur le developpement des principes de la nomenclature methodique, lu a FAcademie, le 2 mai 1787. 75-108 in Methode de nomenclature chimique (Seuil, 1994). 

Berthollet, Morveau, and Fourcroy, decided to formulate a new nomenclature for chemistry based on Lavoisier s work. They believed that to reform chemistry, it had to be reformed completely, with a new language of chemistry for a new system of chemistry. Their work was published in 1787 as Methode de nomenclature chimique. It is from this work that the modern system of naming chemicals developed. It introduced word endings like -ic to represent acids and -ide to indicate oxides. 

Condillac, Lavoisier and Nomenclature Reform Contrary to the historiography of the crucial year , which focused on Lavoisier s early training in experimental physics and Rouellian chemistry, the historians of science William Albury, Marco Beretta and Trevor Levere located the core of the Chemical Revolution in the epistemological and linguistic principles underlying the Methode de Nomenclature Chimique, published in 1787, and the Traite Elementaire de Chimie, which appeared two years later. Influenced by Crosland s... 

The language of science, Lavoisier, maintained in his Methode de Nomenclature Chimique, was itself an analytical instrument. The system of chemical nomenclature that he devised gave us for every substance, in a word or two, a clean indication of its chemical nature and composition. That even after more than two centuries of further discovery since he devised this system, it has survived until today, with very little modification, is but a testament to his exceptional vision. Lavoisier s influence on the course of modern chemistry indeed cannot be overemphasized. 

Fourcroy, Antoine Frau9ois, comte de (1755—1809) French chemist he collaborated with Lavoisier, Guyton de Morveau, and Claude Berthollet on the Methode de nomenclature chimique. 

Bensaude-Vincent [1983] p. 1. In Poirier [1993], R. Balinski translates There was a before and an after 1787. La Methode de nomenclature introduced such a rupture in the history of chemistry that the natural language of the old chemists became a foreign language for us. All of chemistry was profoundly modified. These names are the baptismal certificates of a new rational, experimental, rjuantitative, and rigorous science. The typical example of a revolution. ... 

As its title states, the Methode de nomenclature chimique was a treatise on chemical nomenclature, or, more precisely, on the methods of constructing names of chemical substances. As Lavoisier stressed, the aim of the work was to present a method for systematic naming— mmc methode de nommer Classification was one prerequisite of this method, and linguistic rules were another. Whereas the authors elaborated broadly on the latter—not only in the opening Memoire by Lavoisier, but also on several occasions in Guyton s Memoire—, they said almost nothing about their mode of classifying, at least not verbally, in the essays of the Methode. Yet their classification is presented in form of a table inserted in the Methode, the Tableau de la nomenclature chimique. 

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