Ultimate analysis terms Links

In this statement, Lavoisier cut the bond between the old search for ultimate elements or principles and the chemical analysis that had been developing alongside that search for many decades. As we have seen above, that bond had been further elaborated and refined, especially by G. E. Stahl and P. J. Macquer. By contrast, Lavoiser proclaimed that it was metaphysical ballast, which caused endless problems. One of his main achievements, which may justify to some extent the claim that his chemistry was revolutionary, was the rigid destruction of the many sophisticated links his predecessors had created between experimental analysis and its perceptible analytical products, on the one hand, and theories of matter such as the philosophy of principles and atomism, on the other. Lavoisier s definition of elements or principles as substances which cannot be further decomposed by chemical analysis came as a postulate we must not take elements to be more than substances that can actually be isolated from more compound substances in the laboratory and we must not speculate about the possibility of further decomposing substances as long as we cannot achieve that decomposition in practice. This definition of element was relative, that is, it depended on the available tools and techniques of chemical analysis. Lavoisier did not argue theoretically for his notion of element, and he did not exclude the idea that simpler elements existed than the ones hitherto isolated by chemical art. Therefore he substituted the term simple substance for the ancient term element. In so doing he left open some space for theoretical speculation about the proper ultimate... 

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