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Elements of Chemistry
Monumental classic by the founder of modern chemistry is essential for undergraduate students. First explicit statement of law of conservation of matter in chemical change; first modern list of chemical elements; more. Facsimile reprint of original (1790) Kerr translation. Introduction by Professor Douglas McKie.
Introduction
1 Of the formation & decomposition of aeriform fluids, of the combustion of simple bodies & the formation of acids
2 Of the combination of acids with salifiable bases & of the formation of neutral salts
3 Description of the instruments & operations of chemistry
Appendix
Introduction
1 Of the formation & decomposition of aeriform fluids, of the combustion of simple bodies & the formation of acids
2 Of the combination of acids with salifiable bases & of the formation of neutral salts
3 Description of the instruments & operations of chemistry
Appendix
543 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1789
48 people are currently reading
1461 people want to read
About the author
Antoine Lavoisier
241 books46 followersFrench chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier isolated the major components of air, determined the role of oxygen in combustion to disprove the phlogiston theory, and devised a system of chemical nomenclature; during the Reign of Terror, the period from 1793 to 1794 of the French revolution, the hands of a small group temporarily suspended the republican government, concentrated power, and executed him and thousands of other suspected counterrevolutionaries.
This central nobleman to the 18th century largely influenced on the history of biology. People widely consider him the "father of modern chemistry."
People most note Lavoisier for his discovery. He also first established sulfur as an element in 1777 rather than a compound. He recognized and named oxygen in 1778 and hydrogen in 1783 and opposed the theory. Lavoisier helped to construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform. He predicted the existence of silicon in 1787. He discovered always the same mass of matter, which nevertheless may change its form or shape.
Lavoisier, an administrator of the Ferme Générale, served as a powerful member of a number of other aristocratic councils. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French revolution, Jean-Paul Marat accused him of selling adulterated tobacco and other crimes, and a year fater death of Marat, people eventually guillotined Lavoisier.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed importance of Lavoisier to science and, lamenting the beheading, said: "Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable." ("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")
Lavoisier also early researched in physical chemistry and thermodynamics in joint experiments with Pierre-Simon Laplace. Lavoisier also contributed to early ideas on composition and chemical changes by stating the radical theory, believing that radicals, which function as a single group in a chemical process, combine with oxygen in reactions. He also introduced the possibility of allotropy in chemical elements when he discovered that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.
Overall, his contributions are considered the most important in advancing chemistry to the level reached in physics and mathematics during the 18th century. Lavoisier's work was recognized as an International Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society, Académie des sciences de L'institut de France and the Société Chimique de France in 1999.
This central nobleman to the 18th century largely influenced on the history of biology. People widely consider him the "father of modern chemistry."
People most note Lavoisier for his discovery. He also first established sulfur as an element in 1777 rather than a compound. He recognized and named oxygen in 1778 and hydrogen in 1783 and opposed the theory. Lavoisier helped to construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform. He predicted the existence of silicon in 1787. He discovered always the same mass of matter, which nevertheless may change its form or shape.
Lavoisier, an administrator of the Ferme Générale, served as a powerful member of a number of other aristocratic councils. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French revolution, Jean-Paul Marat accused him of selling adulterated tobacco and other crimes, and a year fater death of Marat, people eventually guillotined Lavoisier.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed importance of Lavoisier to science and, lamenting the beheading, said: "Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable." ("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")
Lavoisier also early researched in physical chemistry and thermodynamics in joint experiments with Pierre-Simon Laplace. Lavoisier also contributed to early ideas on composition and chemical changes by stating the radical theory, believing that radicals, which function as a single group in a chemical process, combine with oxygen in reactions. He also introduced the possibility of allotropy in chemical elements when he discovered that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.
Overall, his contributions are considered the most important in advancing chemistry to the level reached in physics and mathematics during the 18th century. Lavoisier's work was recognized as an International Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society, Académie des sciences de L'institut de France and the Société Chimique de France in 1999.
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July 10, 2024
“Elementary, my dear Lavoisier,” I would have told the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier if I had ever had the chance to meet him. “Your book Elements of Chemistry doesn’t just systematize and regularize the study of chemistry in a way that had never been done before. It makes chemistry fun, makes it interesting, in a way that once would have seemed impossible to a non-science-savvy reader like me. So – many thanks, Monsieur Lavoisier!”
I never got that chance to offer a personal thanks to Lavoisier, of course. But Elements of Chemistry (1790) lives on. Even a reader who has never felt terribly comfortable with scientific subject matter will feel more confident walking into a science lab once they have read Elements of Chemistry. The reason, I think, is that Lavoisier is a singularly able writer with a mellifluous prose style and a gift for the telling little anecdote that effectively illustrates a larger point.
Born into a wealthy family of Paris nobility in 1743, Lavoisier studied the sciences at the University of Paris, and his gift for scientific reasoning quickly gained him the favourable attention of the university’s most elite faculty. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, Lavoisier wanted to move chemistry away from the intuitive approach of the Greeks and Romans – who, among other things, had believed that there were only four elements – and to reorganize the field along quantitative and measurement-oriented principles based in scientific method. He bestrides the world of chemistry like a colossus. In the field of chemistry, there is the time before Lavoisier, and the time after Lavoisier.
Any working scientist – indeed, anyone who believes in the importance of scientific method as a way of advancing the frontiers of knowledge – must appreciate Lavoisier’s statement, in a preface to Elements of Chemistry, that “in commencing the study of a physical science, we ought to form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and immediate effect, of an experiment or observation.” Throughout Elements of Chemistry, Lavoisier proceeds in just that sort of cautious, empirically-based manner.
Lavoisier begins with a definition of terms, stating that “we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, of reducing bodies by decomposition.” He anticipates elements of later atomic theory when he writes that “the particles of all bodies may be considered as subjected to the action of two opposite powers – the one repulsive, the other attractive – between which they remain in equilibrio.”
Other suppositions of Lavoisier might not seem so persuasive to modern sensibilities, as when he writes that “we have distinguished the cause of heat, or that exquisitely elastic fluid which produces it, by the term caloric,” and adds that “the same body becomes solid, or fluid, or aëriform [gaseous], according to the quantity of caloric by which it is penetrated.” That “caloric theory,” of heat being produced by an invisible fluid, has long since fallen by the proverbial wayside, thanks to more modern insights regarding thermodynamics; but Lavoisier makes clear throughout Elements of Chemistry that he has no problem with being proven wrong, as long as the person seeking to prove him wrong has based their conclusions upon sound science.
And no one is too likely to crow over Lavoisier being wrong about caloric theory, if one can simply reflect that Lavoisier is the man who, in a very real way, gave us oxygen and hydrogen. In a chapter on “The Several Constituent Parts of Atmospheric Air,” Lavoisier chronicles how he came to call aëriform fluids “gases” – a term that seems to have stuck – and then talks of how, finding that atmospheric air was composed of two main gases, he gave “to the base of the former, or respirable, portion of the air, the name of oxygen”.
Lavoisier went on to establish that water was composed partly or oxygen, and partly of another gas that is found in atmospheric air; having found this gas, he decided that “we must find an appropriate term” to describe it, and finally found that “None that we could think of seemed better adapted than the word hydrogen, which signifies the generative principle of water.”
It is quite a thing, to be on hand at the birth of our world’s modern understanding of hydrogen and oxygen.
Another of the endearing features of Elements of Chemistry is the way Lavoisier is so open and direct about the way things can go wrong in the chem lab. Almost every person who was ever given a chemistry set as a child can probably recall their parents making an awkward joke to the effect of, “Now, don’t go blowing up the house, alright?” Lavoisier knows that chemical experimentation can be dangerous, and takes pains in offering the reader warnings to that effect.
When it comes to combining hydrogen and oxygen in order to form water, for instance, Lavoisier notifies the reader that “the combustion of the two gases takes place instantaneously, with a violent explosion”, and adds that “This experiment ought only to be made in a bottle of very strong green glass”, because “otherwise the operator will be exposed to great danger from the rupture of the bottle, of which the fragments will be thrown about with great force.”
Perhaps the most famous example of that principle being put on display before the whole world was the destruction of the German zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937. The Hindenburg was filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen gas – the United States refused to sell helium, with its potential military applications, to the Nazi regime – and that explosive reaction of hydrogen with oxygen shocked the world.
Indeed, those who find that chemistry is cool because you can blow stuff up will find much to enjoy in Elements of Chemistry. In a chapter on “The Combustion of Phosphorus,” Lavoisier discourses on how substances like ether, alcohol, and essential oils “dissolve in considerable quantity in oxygen gas and, when set on fire, a dangerous and sudden explosion takes place, which carries the jar up to a great height, and dashes it in a thousand pieces. From two such explosions, some of the members of the Academy and myself escaped very narrowly.”
Similarly, a chapter on “The Combustion of Alcohol” provides a vivid description of another chem-lab mishap: “The moment I attempted to set the little morsel of phosphorus on fire by means of the red-hot iron, a violent explosion took place, which threw the jar with great violence against the floor of the laboratory, and dashed it in a thousand pieces.” I am thankful that Lavoisier survived these difficult days at the lab, and lived to write Elements of Chemistry -- a book that has enriched all our lives, including the lives of countless people who have never heard of this book, let alone read it.
Part III of Elements of Chemistry, with its “Description of the Instruments and Operations of Chemistry,” may be of greatest interest to working chemists, because of Lavoisier’s painstaking setting-forth of how to make sure than one has the essential instruments for accurate experimentation and measurement. The generalist may draw more inspiration from Lavoisier’s suggestion that the Latin motto Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (“Nothing can be understood that was not first experienced through the senses”) expresses “an important truth never to be lost sight of by either teachers or students of chemistry.” Nothing was true, for Lavoisier, until it had been proven.
Lavoisier did receive a measure of recommendation in his time. In 1784, Lavoisier worked with Benjamin Franklin on a royal commission that used controlled-trial methods to debunk the then-popular pseudo-science of "animal magnetism." And just the other day, I saw in the National Archives a lovely thank-you note that Lavoisier sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, acknowledging Jefferson's recommendation of Lavoisier for membership in the American Philosophical Society. If only Lavoisier could have continued to live on into a dignified old age, to see his work transforming the study of science world-wide.
Sadly, however, that was not to be. Lavoisier’s pre-Revolutionary participation in the Ferme générale, an unpopular system for customs and excise taxation, brought him under the attention of Revolutionary officials during the Reign of Terror. He was tried and convicted of tax fraud (even though he had in fact tried to reform the system, to make it more equitable), and was sentenced to death. There were pleas for clemency: Lavoisier has remade the world of chemical science! Lavoisier is a genius! But one French official is said to have replied that “The Revolution has no need for geniuses.”
Lavoisier was guillotined in 1794, at the age of 52. His exoneration eighteen months later, by a less extreme French government, did him no good. But Elements of Chemistry lives on, a lasting testament to the power of the human mind when it is set free to pursue knowledge in a spirit of scientific rigour.
I never got that chance to offer a personal thanks to Lavoisier, of course. But Elements of Chemistry (1790) lives on. Even a reader who has never felt terribly comfortable with scientific subject matter will feel more confident walking into a science lab once they have read Elements of Chemistry. The reason, I think, is that Lavoisier is a singularly able writer with a mellifluous prose style and a gift for the telling little anecdote that effectively illustrates a larger point.
Born into a wealthy family of Paris nobility in 1743, Lavoisier studied the sciences at the University of Paris, and his gift for scientific reasoning quickly gained him the favourable attention of the university’s most elite faculty. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, Lavoisier wanted to move chemistry away from the intuitive approach of the Greeks and Romans – who, among other things, had believed that there were only four elements – and to reorganize the field along quantitative and measurement-oriented principles based in scientific method. He bestrides the world of chemistry like a colossus. In the field of chemistry, there is the time before Lavoisier, and the time after Lavoisier.
Any working scientist – indeed, anyone who believes in the importance of scientific method as a way of advancing the frontiers of knowledge – must appreciate Lavoisier’s statement, in a preface to Elements of Chemistry, that “in commencing the study of a physical science, we ought to form no idea but what is a necessary consequence, and immediate effect, of an experiment or observation.” Throughout Elements of Chemistry, Lavoisier proceeds in just that sort of cautious, empirically-based manner.
Lavoisier begins with a definition of terms, stating that “we must admit, as elements, all the substances into which we are capable, by any means, of reducing bodies by decomposition.” He anticipates elements of later atomic theory when he writes that “the particles of all bodies may be considered as subjected to the action of two opposite powers – the one repulsive, the other attractive – between which they remain in equilibrio.”
Other suppositions of Lavoisier might not seem so persuasive to modern sensibilities, as when he writes that “we have distinguished the cause of heat, or that exquisitely elastic fluid which produces it, by the term caloric,” and adds that “the same body becomes solid, or fluid, or aëriform [gaseous], according to the quantity of caloric by which it is penetrated.” That “caloric theory,” of heat being produced by an invisible fluid, has long since fallen by the proverbial wayside, thanks to more modern insights regarding thermodynamics; but Lavoisier makes clear throughout Elements of Chemistry that he has no problem with being proven wrong, as long as the person seeking to prove him wrong has based their conclusions upon sound science.
And no one is too likely to crow over Lavoisier being wrong about caloric theory, if one can simply reflect that Lavoisier is the man who, in a very real way, gave us oxygen and hydrogen. In a chapter on “The Several Constituent Parts of Atmospheric Air,” Lavoisier chronicles how he came to call aëriform fluids “gases” – a term that seems to have stuck – and then talks of how, finding that atmospheric air was composed of two main gases, he gave “to the base of the former, or respirable, portion of the air, the name of oxygen”.
Lavoisier went on to establish that water was composed partly or oxygen, and partly of another gas that is found in atmospheric air; having found this gas, he decided that “we must find an appropriate term” to describe it, and finally found that “None that we could think of seemed better adapted than the word hydrogen, which signifies the generative principle of water.”
It is quite a thing, to be on hand at the birth of our world’s modern understanding of hydrogen and oxygen.
Another of the endearing features of Elements of Chemistry is the way Lavoisier is so open and direct about the way things can go wrong in the chem lab. Almost every person who was ever given a chemistry set as a child can probably recall their parents making an awkward joke to the effect of, “Now, don’t go blowing up the house, alright?” Lavoisier knows that chemical experimentation can be dangerous, and takes pains in offering the reader warnings to that effect.
When it comes to combining hydrogen and oxygen in order to form water, for instance, Lavoisier notifies the reader that “the combustion of the two gases takes place instantaneously, with a violent explosion”, and adds that “This experiment ought only to be made in a bottle of very strong green glass”, because “otherwise the operator will be exposed to great danger from the rupture of the bottle, of which the fragments will be thrown about with great force.”
Perhaps the most famous example of that principle being put on display before the whole world was the destruction of the German zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937. The Hindenburg was filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen gas – the United States refused to sell helium, with its potential military applications, to the Nazi regime – and that explosive reaction of hydrogen with oxygen shocked the world.
Indeed, those who find that chemistry is cool because you can blow stuff up will find much to enjoy in Elements of Chemistry. In a chapter on “The Combustion of Phosphorus,” Lavoisier discourses on how substances like ether, alcohol, and essential oils “dissolve in considerable quantity in oxygen gas and, when set on fire, a dangerous and sudden explosion takes place, which carries the jar up to a great height, and dashes it in a thousand pieces. From two such explosions, some of the members of the Academy and myself escaped very narrowly.”
Similarly, a chapter on “The Combustion of Alcohol” provides a vivid description of another chem-lab mishap: “The moment I attempted to set the little morsel of phosphorus on fire by means of the red-hot iron, a violent explosion took place, which threw the jar with great violence against the floor of the laboratory, and dashed it in a thousand pieces.” I am thankful that Lavoisier survived these difficult days at the lab, and lived to write Elements of Chemistry -- a book that has enriched all our lives, including the lives of countless people who have never heard of this book, let alone read it.
Part III of Elements of Chemistry, with its “Description of the Instruments and Operations of Chemistry,” may be of greatest interest to working chemists, because of Lavoisier’s painstaking setting-forth of how to make sure than one has the essential instruments for accurate experimentation and measurement. The generalist may draw more inspiration from Lavoisier’s suggestion that the Latin motto Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu (“Nothing can be understood that was not first experienced through the senses”) expresses “an important truth never to be lost sight of by either teachers or students of chemistry.” Nothing was true, for Lavoisier, until it had been proven.
Lavoisier did receive a measure of recommendation in his time. In 1784, Lavoisier worked with Benjamin Franklin on a royal commission that used controlled-trial methods to debunk the then-popular pseudo-science of "animal magnetism." And just the other day, I saw in the National Archives a lovely thank-you note that Lavoisier sent to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, acknowledging Jefferson's recommendation of Lavoisier for membership in the American Philosophical Society. If only Lavoisier could have continued to live on into a dignified old age, to see his work transforming the study of science world-wide.
Sadly, however, that was not to be. Lavoisier’s pre-Revolutionary participation in the Ferme générale, an unpopular system for customs and excise taxation, brought him under the attention of Revolutionary officials during the Reign of Terror. He was tried and convicted of tax fraud (even though he had in fact tried to reform the system, to make it more equitable), and was sentenced to death. There were pleas for clemency: Lavoisier has remade the world of chemical science! Lavoisier is a genius! But one French official is said to have replied that “The Revolution has no need for geniuses.”
Lavoisier was guillotined in 1794, at the age of 52. His exoneration eighteen months later, by a less extreme French government, did him no good. But Elements of Chemistry lives on, a lasting testament to the power of the human mind when it is set free to pursue knowledge in a spirit of scientific rigour.
February 7, 2025
One of the great classics of science that nobody reads. With nothing but what amounts to a child's chemistry set of today, Lavoisier builds an entire theory of chemistry and in essence also develops atomic theory. The logic is so simple, you think, wow I could've figured that out. But he had no benefit of all the modern science preconceptions we take for granted. He was assembling a puzzle in the dark.
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March 20, 2017Lavoisier liked to blow stuff up. More than once he describes how a jar filled with some flammable content burst from which he and “members of the Academy” narrowly escaped harm. And when he wrote this he planned to blow more stuff up. Near the end of the book, he talks about his plans for a jar of alcohol:
Chemistry seemed a bit cooler in the 1700s.
But his proclivity toward combustion may have just been the natural reaction of his studies. He separated and named “oxygen” and was critical of the idea of phlogiston. He dedicated a lot of intellectual energy to understanding how things burned.
The first half of the book is dedicated to classifying elements. His new nomenclature for elements seemed like it makes him the Carl Linnaeaus of chemistry. The second-half describes his experiments and the tools he devised to make them happen. That kind of makes him the Tesla of chemistry too.
In the end, I took away that 18th century chemistry was pretty punk rock. And that I am wholly unqualified to rate this book. Sorry for wasting your time.
The jar A in which the combustion is performed is near 1400 cubical inches in dimension; and, were an explosion to take place in such a vessel, its consequences would be very terrible, and very difficult to guard against. I have not, however, despaired of making the attempt. Pg. 434.
Chemistry seemed a bit cooler in the 1700s.
But his proclivity toward combustion may have just been the natural reaction of his studies. He separated and named “oxygen” and was critical of the idea of phlogiston. He dedicated a lot of intellectual energy to understanding how things burned.
The first half of the book is dedicated to classifying elements. His new nomenclature for elements seemed like it makes him the Carl Linnaeaus of chemistry. The second-half describes his experiments and the tools he devised to make them happen. That kind of makes him the Tesla of chemistry too.
In the end, I took away that 18th century chemistry was pretty punk rock. And that I am wholly unqualified to rate this book. Sorry for wasting your time.
Want to read
March 10, 2024Modern physics was born in the late 1500s, thanks to Galileo, and modern chemistry was born in the late 1700s, thanks to Lavoisier. The peculiarity that Galileo and Lavoisier shared, that set them apart from their predecessors in their fields, and allowed them to usher in the modern era in their science, was
atheism
a diploma
phlogiston theory
quantitative measurement.
-- "Slow Burn" (1962) in Asimov on Chemistry (1974)
quantitative measurement.
-- "Slow Burn" (1962) in Asimov on Chemistry (1974)
June 12, 2007
Or, if you had the Dover facfimile edition, Lavoifier, the Elements of Chemiftry
December 18, 2010
Pleafe make fure not to mifs page 41.
May 5, 2024
Nunca dejarán de asombrarme los hombres pasados que hicieron tanto con tan poco. Sencillamente magnífico.
September 26, 2022
I read part one for the Great Books of the Western World reading project.
The paramount importance of defining words simply and concisely is what philosophers have strived for throughout history. The definitions of words must be understood to have a 'reasonable' discussion. That same concept is found in the Elements of Chemistry. In the preface, he quotes Abbé de Condillac, 'We think only through the medium of words. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.' 1 Lavoisier's understanding is that science and language are intricately entwined, 'we cannot improve the language of any science without at the same time improving the science itself.' 1 'In correcting their language they reason better.'
Chemistry had stayed the same from Aristotle to Lavoisier. In this text, he, along with his wife, makes discoveries with meticulous calculations, can understand those discoveries, and can relay his findings with his nomenclature.
Lavoisier is using a version of what is today called the scientific method. After each experiment, he states 'further experiments upon this subject are necessary,' understanding that more can be studied and learned. In chapter IX Lavoisier uses the words' probable' and 'if we suppose' in the manner of what the scientific method would call a hypothesis. He also is aware of the concept of reliability in his experiments.
The paramount importance of defining words simply and concisely is what philosophers have strived for throughout history. The definitions of words must be understood to have a 'reasonable' discussion. That same concept is found in the Elements of Chemistry. In the preface, he quotes Abbé de Condillac, 'We think only through the medium of words. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.' 1 Lavoisier's understanding is that science and language are intricately entwined, 'we cannot improve the language of any science without at the same time improving the science itself.' 1 'In correcting their language they reason better.'
Chemistry had stayed the same from Aristotle to Lavoisier. In this text, he, along with his wife, makes discoveries with meticulous calculations, can understand those discoveries, and can relay his findings with his nomenclature.
Lavoisier is using a version of what is today called the scientific method. After each experiment, he states 'further experiments upon this subject are necessary,' understanding that more can be studied and learned. In chapter IX Lavoisier uses the words' probable' and 'if we suppose' in the manner of what the scientific method would call a hypothesis. He also is aware of the concept of reliability in his experiments.
November 30, 2021
I read this little by little over the last few years and finally finished it. Although it is not up to date and somewhat dry at times, what motivated me to read it was hearing what one of the great fathers of chemistry had to say, and also finding out how he experimented. I have to say that he was very thorough in describing his scientific method and means of eliminating uncertainties, or at least compensating for them when the technology of his time wouldn’t let him remove all variables adequately. I also enjoyed the archaic vocabulary, e.g. azote and muriate, etc. I especially enjoyed when he related anecdotes resulting in explosion and narrowly escaped injury. What a shame that the revolution had to guillotine him in his prime; who knows what else he may have discovered the rest of his life…
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November 21, 2021Lavoisier is a joy to read; mainly because he is wonderfully bitter about chemistry. He looks at the field and decides to build it up from scratch. He's a little stubborn and tough to follow at some points but his attitude toward the science is something familiar in many ground breaking scientists of the past and I love it
July 9, 2017
DNF. Chemistry has always been one of my least favorite subjects.
February 20, 2019
Way too technical and specific to chemistry to ever be considered a classic. Well written though.
April 7, 2020
Most excellent! Very readable. A must for anyone who is a tinkerer!
July 29, 2020
The weird S thing made it tough to read at times. But the perspective from a brilliant chemist while so little was known was fascinating to read.
July 21, 2022
Fascinating read. I can u derstand why it be difficult to enjoy without knowledge of chemistry or a zeal for scientific research. Would recommend.
August 1, 2024
there’s a reason he got guillotined
August 5, 2025
Lavoisier embodies the joyful spirit of the Enlightenment.
February 8, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the preface by Lavoisier, though I’ll need to return to finish the rest another time. His facts-ideas-words construct for understanding the observable world is a great way to approach any science, and it’s a great reminder that we need reproducible facts to inform our knowledge rather than just trusting to proposed and sometimes widely accepted speculations.
February 10, 2024
Part one is most exciting, covering his experiments and inferences. Part two classifies acids and bases he has identified. Part three describes his equipment and experimental set ups. Apparently he studied the contents of gunpowder by firing pistols under water and collecting the gas. Old timey chemists were badass
September 4, 2011
Given that I am an ignoramus at chemistry, I found this treatise informative. I think I got a basic idea what chemical reactions are. But maybe a real expert on the subject will argue all that I have read is outdated.
April 5, 2014
It is surprising how many science majors have never read this book. Lavoisier not only had many findings, experiments and proposed a bunch of theories, but also laid the foundation of modern science and presented through his clear and philosophical writing.
April 29, 2010
Read the preface through chapter 8.
February 2, 2012
Interesting book on the beginings of modern chemistry.
June 28, 2013
The illustrations by Marie Lavoisier are beautiful and very clearly illustate the steps described in the text.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews