DOCSLIB.ORG

Revolutionary Science – Lavoisier to Volta

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Revolutionary Science – Lavoisier to Volta Revolutionary Science – Lavoisier to Volta Rob Iliffe An Explosion of Gases • Note importance of Industrial Revolution in Britain: • In 1754, the chemist Joseph Black isolated ‘Fixed Air’ (CO2), so named as it could apparently be returned to or ‘fixed’ in the solids in which it was found. • In 1766 Henry Cavendish produced a highly ‘inflammable air’ (hydrogen), produced by bringing certain acids into contact with various metals, and which formed water on combustion. • It was increasingly understood that ordinary air was not homogenous but was composed of a number of different ‘gases’. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) A Democratic Philosopher • Priestley born into a dissenting family and though largely self-taught, was unable to enter one of the two English universities. • Interested in chemistry and electricity from early 1760s – travelled regularly to London where he met Benjamin Franklin and others. • In late 1760s he worked near a brewery in Leeds, where he had ready access to ‘Fixed Air’ (CO2). • In 1767 he found a way to artificially impregnate water with the gas, producing the first account of soda water in 1772. • Published books aimed at educating a general audience on electricity (1767) and light (1772), which made him famous. The Theory of Phlogiston • A fiery element contained in combustible bodies and which was released by burning (‘dephlogistication’); • loss of weight of burning bodies demonstrated the loss of their phlogiston. • Combustion stopped in closed spaces as air was ‘saturated’ with phlogiston. • Metals contained phlogiston: • when a metal was corroded in air or heated it lost its phlogiston and formed a powdery metal ‘calx’ or metallic ash (oxide), • so metals were composed of phlogiston + calx. • Problem was that the calx weighed more than the original metal so perhaps phlogiston had negative weight?. Dephlogisticated Air • Joseph Priestley isolated Nitrous Oxide (‘laughing gas’, which he called “phlogisticated nitrous air”) in 1772. • In 1774 he focussed sunlight on mercuric oxide, finding that the gas emitted was “eminently respirable”, • “five or six times as good as common air” in terms of its support to breathing, while and allowed a flame to burn incredibly brightly: • He wrote: “Who can tell but that in time, this pure air may become a fashionable article in luxury”. • He called this air “dephlogisticated air” because it could apparently absorb vast amounts of phlogiston given off by burning objects. Priestley’s Later Life • Priestley met Antoine Lavoisier in Paris in 1774 and described his discovery • Lavoisier would come to understand that burning substances took on Oxygen and did not ‘give off’ phlogiston. • Priestley returned to England where he joined other philosophers and entrepreneurs (inc. James Watt and Erasmus Darwin) in Birmingham, at start of Industrial Revolution. • He was a strong supporter of the American and French Revolutions but his radical politics forced him to flee to Pennsylvania in 1794. • Became friends with Jefferson and isolated “heavy inflammable air” (CO) Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94) • Lavoisier was trained in different sciences in the 1740s but studied law instead of going to university. • Returned to science, esp. field of geology, and analysed features of various rocks and elements with great precision. • Elected to Academy of Sciences in 1768, at same time buying a share in a private firm that collected taxes for the government (a fateful decision given his ultimate fate). • Married Marie-Anne Paulze in 1771, and she acted as a research assistant and collaborator. Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Lavoisier (Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze), 1788 The ‘eminently respirable” part of the air. • Lavoisier was introduced to theory of phlogiston in 1772 but soon realized that the theory had a number of problems; • He performed exceptionally precise measurements in enclosed environments on Priestley’s airs, • and concluded that the masses of the elements were conserved after reaction – so Phlogiston theory (i.e. the idea it had negative weight) was wrong. • By 1777 he had determined that combustion was due to the reaction of a metal or organic substance with the “eminently respirable” part of air. • In 1779 he showed that most acids contained this air, and he called it ‘Oxygen’ (‘Acid generator’). Phlogiston was a fiction. Quantitative Chemistry • Lavoisier was the supreme quantitative chemist, proving his claims through meticulous measurements based on his commitment to the principle of the conservation of mass • His reform was not just in practice and theory but in nomenclature (calx became oxide, e.g.), which reflected the actual composition of the substance or compound. • New conception transformed chemistry in same year as the French Revolution, and it quickly became the dominant theory in Europe. Table of new substances with former names (where appropriate), but also including ‘calorique’ from Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie (1789), translated in to English as Elements of Chemistry. The End of Natural Philosophy in the Ancien Régime • With few exceptions, French science dominated period 1780-1830, spanning the end of Ancien Régime to the decade after Napoleon. • Towering figures in analytic mechanics and mathematical physics were Joseph-Louis Lagrange (originally from Turin) and Pierre Simon de Laplace. • Many Académiciens, like Condorcet, were fervent supporters of the Revolution, and used its aftermath to promote the metric system. • In the period of the Jacobin Reign of Terror (May 1793-July 1794), the Académie Royale des Sciences was abolished: • major figures were led away to the guillotine (e.g. Lavoisier and the astronomer Charles Bailly), with others (Condorcet) taking their own life. The Reorganization of Science • New institutions, and reorganized versions of older societies, emerged during this period. • Most significant of these were the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, the Société Philomatique, the Ecole Polytechnique (founded 1794), • and the successor to the Académie, the Institut de France (1796). • From 1799, the advent of the scientifically-obsessed Napoleon energized French science and a new generation of brilliant thinkers emerged with Laplace as inspirational leader – • Concerned both with ‘pure’ science but also with the application of science to technology and issues of social utility. Luigi Galvani (1737-98) • Born in Bologna, attending medical school where he studied surgery and anatomy (and later took up university positions in both subjects). • Galvani became interested in medical electricity in late 1770s, and made his famous observation of the twitching of a frog’s leg in 1780. • This happened when the crural nerve of a dissected frog was touched with a scalpel, with sparks being produced at the same time by a nearby electric machine. • After further experiments Galvani inferred that muscles were activated by an electric fluid that was secreted by the brain and which entered the muscles via the nerves. Galvanism • Galvani believed that the metals created a circuit that revealed the existence of innate animal electricity. • Galvani realized that the phenomenon required the use of two different metals as electrodes - • The publication of his short Latin text "De Viribus Electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius" in 1791, announcing the discovery of the electrical power in all animate bodies, caused a sensation. • Numerous natural philosophers successfully repeated and extended Galvani’s work by making various circuits in their own bodies. Electrodes (C and Z are two different metals – iron and bronze or silver) link sciatic nerve N to exposed leg of frog, thereby creating a circuit and causing them to twitch upwards. Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) • Performed many experiments on electricity in 1770s and 80s, discovering proportionality between electrical potential (V) and charge (Q), • the unit of electrical potential being named after him. • Became prof. of Experimental Physics at Pavia in 1779 • Astounded by Galvani’s (1791) discovery of “animal electricity”, Volta initially agreed that it was a different kind of electricity (and named the phenomenon ‘Galvanism’) • But soon showed that the frog’s leg could be replaced by an inanimate object (e.g. paper soaked in saltwater or ‘brine’ – the electrolyte) • This produced similar effects, so ‘animal electricity’ was a fiction. The Battery • Volta announced invention of the battery (cell) in 1800, and it was immediately used to effect the electrolysis of water (into O2 and 2H2) • It was recognised as a revolutionary device, serving as a continuous power source, an unparalleled scientific instrument, and a model for understanding natural phenomena. • Volta was praised across Europe, and scientists like Humphry Davy and Johann Wilhelm Ritter took great pride in building bigger and longer-lasting batteries. • Problems with leaking of the electrolyte (due to weight of the metals) led to many different designs for the battery in the next half century. Volta addressing the Institut de France on the battery, in presence of Napoleon Bonaparte, 18 November 1800 Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834) • Nephew of Galvani and professor of Physics at Bologna, • Aldini was concerned for many years with proving the existence of ‘animal electricity’ (against views of Volta). • Used Peace Treaty of Amiens (1802-3) as opportunity to tour Europe with experiments on the phenomenon of ‘galvanism’; • Did experiments with decapitated dogs and bulls, making parts of their bodies move by passing
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor Emeritus
    Walter Dominic Wetzels Professor emeritus Ph.D., German Literature, Princeton University Career Highlights Research Focus: Eighteenth-century literature; German literature and science; the literature which popularized science, with particular emphasis on the eighteenth century Education 1965-1968 PhD, German Literature, Princeton University 1964-1965 German Literature, University of Cologne 1949-1954 University of Cologne; Staatsexamen in mathematics and physics Employment 1996- Professor emeritus, Dept. of Germanic Languages, U of Texas at Austin 1984-1996 Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1973-1984 Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin 1968-1973 Assistant Professor, Department of Germanic Languages, UT Austin Awards Spring 1989 University of Texas Faculty Research Assignment Fall 1988 University of Texas Presidential Leave Publications: Books (Edited with Leonard Schulze) Literature and History. Lanham, New York, London: University Press of America, 1983 Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Physik im WIrkungsfeld der deutschen Romantik. Quellen und Forschungen, N.F., 59. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973. (Edited with and introduction) Myth and Reason. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973 Publications: Articles "Physics for the Ladies: Early Literary Voices and Strategies For and Against the Popularization of Copernicus and Newton." In: Themes and Structures: Studies in German Literature from Goethe to the Present. Ed. Alexander Stephan. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997: 21-38 "Newton for the Ladies: Algarotti's Popularization of Newton's Optics." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 304. Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1992: 1152-55 "Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Romantic Physics in Germany." Romanticism and the Sciences, ed. A Cunningham and N. Jardino. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
    [Show full text]
  • Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and His Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter
    Andreas Kleinert Volta, the German Controversy on Physics and Naturphilosophie and his Relations with Johann Wilhelm Ritter A characteristic of German science around 1800 is the violent debate about concepts and methods between the supporters and opponents of a certain philosophy of nature that is generally designed by the German term of Naturphilosophie.1 In the early nineteenth century, physicists who were arguing in the spirit of Naturphilosophie were defined as a community of people that could be sharply distinguished from the “normal” or traditional physicists. This was especially the standpoint of observers from outside Germany.2 But also German physicists spoke of “so-called philosophers of nature who declared that dualism is the principle of order everywhere in physics and chemistry”.3 The philosopher Friedrich Wilhem Schelling, who had given the term of “spekulative Physik”4 to the kind of science by which he wanted to overcome traditional experimental physics and chemistry, is often considered as the ideological forerunner of this group of scientists. Another way of dividing German physicists into different camps was the distinction between “Atomisten” and “Dynamisten”, atomists believing in the existence of matter, including imponderable matter, and dynamists believing only in 1 For more details, see the article of von Engelhardt in this volume. With regard to physics, see CANEVA (1997). 2 See OERSTED (1813). On p. XIV, the translator apologises for translating such an eccentric essay into French and mentions that Naturphilosophie was widely considered as having a detrimental influence on empirical sciences. (“Depuis peu on a fait aux Allemands le reproche très-grave de vouloir porter dans les sciences les spéculations, et pour ainsi dire les rêves d’une imagination exaltée.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century and German Aesthetics
    10 Goethe’s Exploratory Idealism Mattias Pirholt “One has to always experiment with ideas.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg “Everything that exists is an analogue to all existing things.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe Johann Wolfgang Goethe made his famous Italian journey in the late 1780s, approaching his forties, and it was nothing short of life-c hanging. Soon after his arrival in Rome on November 1, 1786, he writes to his mother that he would return “as a new man”1; in the retroactive account of the journey in Italienische Reise, he famously describes his entrance into Rome “as my second natal day, a true rebirth.”2 Latter- day crit- ics essentially confirm Goethe’s reflections, describing the journey and its outcome as “Goethe’s aesthetic catharsis” (Dieter Borchmeyer), “the artist’s self-d iscovery” (Theo Buck), and a “Renaissance of Goethe’s po- etic genius” (Jane Brown).3 Following a decade of frustrating unproduc- tivity, the Italian sojourn unleashed previously unseen creative powers which would deeply affect Goethe’s life and work over the decades to come. Borchmeyer argues that Goethe’s “new existence in Weimar bore an essentially different signature than his pre- Italian one.”4 With this, Borchmeyer refers to a particular brand of neoclassicism known as Wei- mar classicism, Weimarer Klassik, which is less an epochal term, seeing as it covers only a little more than a decade, than a reference to what Gerhard Schulz and Sabine Doering matter-o f- factly call “an episode in the creative history of a group of German writers around 1800.”5 Equally important as the aesthetic reorientation, however, was Goethe’s new- found interest in science, which was also a direct conse- quence of his encounter with the Italian nature.
    [Show full text]
  • Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W
    Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core Microscopy Pioneers Pioneers in Optics: Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Ernest Rutherford Michael W. Davidson . IP address: National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306 [email protected] 170.106.35.234 Johann Wilhelm Ritter beyond the violet. Ritter initially referred to the new type of , on (1776–1810) radiation as chemical rays, but the title of ultraviolet radiation 30 Sep 2021 at 19:10:55 Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a somewhat controversial eventually became the preferred term. scientist best known for his discovery of ultraviolet radiation. Despite his significant scientific achievements and his He was born on December 16, 1776, in Samitz, Germany, an acceptance into the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ritter area that is now part of Poland. Apprenticed to an apothecary was not well received by his contemporaries. His writing in Leignitz at the age of fourteen, Ritter developed an acute was considered oblique and confusing, and he often delayed interest in chemistry that carried over into other scientific explaining his experiments in detail. Some believed Ritter , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at fields. When he inherited a sum of made claims that he could not support and deemed him an money five years later, he was able unreliable source of information. His interest and studies of to leave his position and decided occult phenomena further damaged his reputation as a serious to enroll at the University of Jena. scientist. Jaded by his lack of credit and plagued by financial There he studied medicine, staying difficulties, Ritter suffered a premature death at the age of on in a teaching position after thirty-three and did not receive proper recognition for his his graduation, until the duke of scientific exploits until more than a century later.
    [Show full text]
  • Ley De Conservación De La Masa
    CULTURA CIENTÍFICA para la Enseñanza Secundaria LEY DE CONSERVACIÓN DE LA MASA: DE LA ALQUIMIA A LA QUÍMICA MODERNA Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Este trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco de un proyecto de investigación docente conce- dido y financiado por el Vicerrectorado de Es- tudiantes y Acción Social y el Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir. CULTURA CIENTÍFICA para la Enseñanza Secundaria Con este proyecto se pretende que los alum- nos de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria (E.S.O.) adquieran una cultura científica y co- Edita: nozcan que la ciencia, la sociedad y la tecno- UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE VALENCIA logía no se pueden concebir aisladamente. Vicerrectorado de Estudiantes y Acción Social Alumnos y profesores hemos trabajado desde Vicerrectorado de Investigación una perspectiva multidisciplinar a través de Diseño y Maquetación: diferentes asignaturas y Grados Universitarios. Medianil Comunicación / medianil.com Autores: Stephany Cuellar Mosquera Sergio Gómez Molina Mariana Herrán Gonzalez Rocío Navarro Salazar Javier Pérez Murillo María Rojas Chacón José Urpin Rangel Asignatura: Fundamentos básicos de Química Profesor/a: Dra. Ángela Moreno Gálvez Grado: Nutrición Humana y Dietética Coordinadora: Dra. Gloria Castellano Estornell ÉRASE UNA VEZ 3 Descubrimiento de la Ley de conservación de la masa Antes de Lavoisier la Química como de los productos de una reacción ciencia apenas existía. Los cono- química debe ser igual al peso de cimientos que había eran vagos los reactantes, estableciendo que y estaban incluso en ocasiones “la materia ni se crea ni se destru- mezclados con conceptos cercanos ye en cualquier reacción química”, a lo mágico o lo esotérico, según y transformando así la química en la tradición alquímica provenien- ciencia con mayúsculas.
    [Show full text]
  • Electrolysis of Water - Wikipedia 1 of 15
    Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 1 of 15 Electrolysis of water Electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen gas due to the passage of an electric current. This technique can be used to make hydrogen gas, a main component of hydrogen fuel, and breathable oxygen gas, or can mix the two into oxyhydrogen, which is also usable as fuel, though more volatile and dangerous. It is also called water splitting. It ideally requires a potential difference of 1.23 volts to split water. Simple setup for demonstration of Contents electrolysis of water at home History Principle Equations Thermodynamics Electrolyte selection Electrolyte for water electrolysis Pure water electrolysis Techniques Fundamental demonstration Hofmann voltameter Industrial High-pressure High-temperature An AA battery in a glass of tap water Alkaline water with salt showing hydrogen Polymer electrolyte membrane produced at the negative terminal Nickel/iron Nanogap electrochemical cells Applications Efficiency Industrial output Overpotential Thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water Electrolysis of water - Wikipedia 2 of 15 See also References External links History Jan Rudolph Deiman and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk used, in 1789, an electrostatic machine to make electricity which was discharged on gold electrodes in a Leyden jar with water.[1] In 1800 Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile, and a few weeks later the English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used it for the electrolysis of water. In 1806
    [Show full text]
  • LAVOISIER-The Crucial Year the Background and Origin of His First
    LAVOISIER-THE CRUCIAL YEAR: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in z772 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, 17 43-1794, a portrait by David (Photo Roger-Viollet) LA VOISIER -The Crucial Year The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772 /J_y llenr_y (Juerlac CORNELL UNIVERSITY CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca, New York Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. This work has been brought to publication with the assistance of a grant from the Ford Foundation. Copyright © 1961 by Cornell University First paperback printing 2019 The text of this book is li censed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommerciai-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the li cense, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978- 1-501 7-4663-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-4664-2 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-5017-4665-9 ( epub/mobi) Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress TO Andrew Norman Meldrum (1876-1934) AND Helene Metzger (188g-1944) Acknowledgments MUCH of the research and much of the writing of a first draft of this book was completed while I was a mem­ ber of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1953-1955.
    [Show full text]
  • Study Guide for Oxygen
    STUDY GUIDE for OXYGEN By Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann 1 The authors of the play “Oxygen” have distinguished careers as chemists. And they also have a commitment to reaching out to the general public, each in a distinct way, through essays, books, poems, novels, and plays. “Oxygen” is a play they have written together. The play has been performed in the USA, the UK and Germany, and broadcast over UK and German radio. It has also been published in book form in English, and in German translation, by Wiley-VCH. The play and the book serve as an excellent introduction to the culture and mores of science and scientists. The nature of discovery, the critical role of competition and priority, the joy and drama of discovery, the role of women in science – these are some of the issues that emerge in a lively, witty play. We believe “Oxygen,” whether in play or book form, can serve an important educational mission, stimulating interest and debate about the nature of science in young people. To help teachers at both the secondary and university level to present the play to young people, we have written this study guide. It first summarizes the play, and gives an extended description of the main characters (a selection of literature on the protagonists is also included). Then it sets some of the historical background for the events of the play, especially that of an erroneous but plausible chemical theory, phlogiston. And the way the discovery of oxygen played the critical role in the chemical revolution. We also include an essay by one of us on the way science has been portrayed in contemporary theatre.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sublime in Art and Science
    C. Djerassi & R. Hoffmann, “Oxygen (Oxygen-15 version) (Not to be copied without authors’ permission) OXYGEN (A play in 20 scenes) By Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann Carl Djerassi Roald Hoffmann Department of Chemistry Department of Chemistry Stanford University Cornell University Stanford, CA 94305-5080 Ithaca, NY 14853-1301 Tel. 650-723-2783 Tel: 607-255-3419; Fax: 415-474-1868 Fax: 607-255-5707 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.djerassi.com 1101 Green Street, Apt. 1501 San Francisco, CA 94109-2012 Tel: 415-474-1825; Fax: 415-474-1868 25 Warrington Crescent, Flat 3 London W9 1ED, United Kingdom Tel. 44-20-7289-3081; Fax:44-20-7289-5902 1 C. Djerassi & R. Hoffmann, “Oxygen (Oxygen-15 version) Authors’ Biographical Sketches Carl Djerassi Carl Djerassi, born in Vienna but educated in the US, is a writer and professor of chemistry at Stanford University. Author of over 1200 scientific publications and seven monographs, he is one of the few American scientists to have been awarded both the National Medal of Science (in 1973, for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive--”the Pill”) and the National Medal of Technology (in 1991, for promoting new approaches to insect control). A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as many foreign academies, Djerassi has received 19 honorary doctorates together with numerous other honors, such as the first Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the first Award for the Industrial Application of Science from the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Chemical Society’s highest award, the Priestley Medal.
    [Show full text]
  • Hommes Et Femmes De Science
    EXERCICE : HOMMES ET FEMMES DE SCIENCE PRESENTATION Objectifs : découvrir l’essor des sciences, ses acteurs, ses facteurs, ses méthodes. S’exercer à l’expression orale. Outils proposés : un corpus de fiches complémentaires présente des savant-e-s du 18ème siècle, leur fonctionnement en réseau, leurs origines sociales, le rôle qu’y tiennent deux femmes, les limites de la place qui leur est reconnue. On pourra les utiliser dans un travail de groupe, avec mise en commun et construction d’une trace écrite. Par exemple un schéma heuristique à compléter dans une phase d’écoute active, comme exercice de prise de notes… Compétences mises en œuvre : prélever et hiérarchiser des informations ; présenter à l’oral un exposé construit en utilisant le vocabulaire spécifique ; prendre part à une production collective. Intérêt des exemples proposés : focaliser sur ce moment de l’histoire des sciences permet de présenter un réseau de scientifiques, et de dépasser la figure du « héros des sciences » tel Newton. Le réseau de savants présenté ici comprend des femmes. Deux exemples de femmes de science : Emilie du Chatelet et Marie Anne Lavoisier sont deux rares exemples de femmes de science relativement bien documentées. Emilie du Chatelet est célèbre mais a souvent été présentée sous un jour qui n’échappe pas aux stéréotypes de genre : traductrice de Newton, passeuse, vulgarisatrice, frivole maîtresse de Voltaire. Or, il faut insister sur sa carrière propre et indépendante de scientifique. Après une jeunesse à la cour, et dans le monde, elle s’émancipe de Voltaire et se spécialise dans le perfectionnement des thèses de Newton. Elle fait la synthèse avec les intuitions de Leibnitz, qu’elle démontre, participe à des polémiques entre savants, réfute le secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des sciences dans la « querelle des forces vives ».
    [Show full text]
  • GREAT BOOKS CURRICULUM Core Author List
    GREAT BOOKS CURRICULUM Core Author List 1. Chinua Achebe 49. Joseph Conrad 97. Hafez 2. Aeschylus 50. Nicolas Copernicus 98. Tawfiq Al-Hakim 3. Dante Alighieri 51. Charles Darwin 99. Hammurabi Code 4. Thomas Aquinas 52. Daniel Defoe 100. Thomas Hardy 5. Ariosto 53. Rene Descartes 101. William Harvey 6. Aristophanes 54. Charles Dickens 102. Nathaniel Hawthorne 7. Aristotle 55. Emily Dickinson 103. G. W. F. Hegel 8. Matthew Arnold 56. Denis Diderot 104. Martin Heidegger 9. W. H. Auden 57. John Donne 105. Tale of the Heike 10. Augustine of Hippo 58. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) 106. Werner Heisenberg 11. Marcus Aurelius 59. Fyodor Dostoyevsky 107. Ernest Hemingway 12. Jane Austen 60. Frederick Douglass 108. Herodotus 13. Francis Bacon 61. Theodore Dreiser 109. Hesiod 14. James Baldwin 62. W. E. B. Dubois 110. Hippocrates 15. Honore de Balzac 63. The Egyptian Book of the 111. Thomas Hobbes 16. Pedro Calderon de la Dead 112. Homer Barca 64. Albert Einstein 113. Horace 17. Karl Barth 65. El Cid 114. Langston Hughes 18. Matsuo Basho 66. George Eliot 115. David Hume 19. Frederic Bastiat 67. T. S. Eliot 116. Zora Neale Hurston 20. Charles Baudelaire 68. Ralph Ellison 117. Taha Husayn 21. Samuel Beckett 69. Ralph Waldo Emerson 118. Aldous Huxley 22. Aphra Behn 70. Epictetus 119. T. H. Huxley 23. Jeremy Bentham 71. Olaudah Equiano 120. Henrik Ibsen 24. Beowulf 72. Desiderius Erasmus 121. Henry James 25. Henri Bergson 73. Euclid 122. William James 26. Bhagavad-Gita 74. Euripides 123. Thomas Jefferson 27. The Bible and Apocrypha 75. Michael Faraday 124.
    [Show full text]
  • Biography: Antoine Laurent De Lavoisier Antoine Laurent De Lavoisier (1743 – 1794) Was a French Scientist Considered by Many to Be the Father of Modern Chemistry
    Biography: Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier (1743 – 1794) was a French scientist considered by many to be the father of modern chemistry. His most im- portant experiments investigated the nature of ignition and combustion. While not having discovered any new substances in his lifetime, he im- proved laboratory methods and devised the system of chemical terminol- ogy which is, to a great extent, still used today. He was instrumental in the overthrow of phlogiston theory. Moreover, he proved the law of con- servation of mass and discovered that hydrogen, in combination with ox- ygen, produces water. His work was characterized by organizational skills, abundance of good ideas, universality, and modernism. As a result of his accomplishments, his name appears among the 72 names at the Eiffel Tower. Lavoisier was born in Paris on August 26, 1743. mineralogy. It was shortly after his graduation, on He was born to an affluent bank-clerk family. At August 11, 1764, that he began his apprenticeship the age of five, he inherited possessions left to him in the Parisian Parliament (Parlement de Paris). after his mother’s death. From a young age, he was He was open-minded and curious about every- interested in nature and he often carried out bar- thing that surrounded him. Not giving up on his ometrical and meteorological observations. interests, he devoted himself to geology, physics, In 1754, Antoine started attending Collège des and chemistry, which resulted in his first pub- Quatre Nations (Collège Mazarin), which was lished book in chemistry in 1764. known for its advanced teaching and focus on Ex- In 1767, he obtained a job working as a geolo- act and Natural Sciences.
    [Show full text]