HUM3060, SCI3050, SOC3060 - Science and Civilization - Day 5  

 

  
Part Two: The Watershed
Before them, no science; after them, science. Seeing the old with new eyes changed our power over the world around us.
"I have tried...to arrive at the truth by linking up facts; to suppress as much as possible the use of reasoning, which is often an unreliable instrument which deceives us, in order to follow as much as possible the torch of observation and of experiment." Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

Lavoisier worked with the considerable help and support of his strikingly beautiful wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, whom he married in 1771 when she was 13 and already an accomplished translator and student. They painstakingly determined the composition of air, and along with others, introduced the metric system, and created a useful system for naming chemical compounds. Executed by the French Revolution's bloody guillotine*, his final great conclusion remained just out of reach, to be finished by Proust in 1800 as the "Law of Definite Proportions".

Reflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), dismantled the phlogiston theory, then Methods of Chemical Nomenclature (1787) established the system of chemical nomenclature still used today.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Line engraving by Louis Jean Desire Delaistre, after a design by Julien Leopold Boilly. (University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.)

Lavoisier, born August 26, 1743, executed by the French Revolution May 8, 1794 *
   

Robert Boyle publishes The Sceptical Chymist in 1661. Every theorem must be proven by experiment.

Van Helmont - 1620 classic experiments on physiological chemistry

  

 

Priestley - "activated air"

  

 

 

Data: graphs show a lot of information in a small package.

This graphic created by the brilliant French engineer and cartographer, Charles Minard, shows the progressive losses of Napoleon's army during the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. It shows the date, direction and distance of the movement of the army, the size of the army and auxiliaries, (notably the losses at the crossing of the rivers during the retreat) and the temperature (degrees below zero). Six variables, totally clear and easy to follow.

The distinguished historian, E.J. Marey said, "... it defies the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence."

Edward Tufte, the greatest living expert on graphs, said that "This may well be the best graphic ever drawn."

*as a bizarre footnote, it has been claimed (including on a NOVA program) that Lavoisier was the subject of a gruesome experiment in which he agreed that after he was beheaded he would try to blink as many times as possible in order to determine if a head survived after it was chopped off! According to the story, he blinked 15 or 20 times. Cool!. But unfortunately, totally apocryphal. There is no account of this supposed event in the detailed official biography of his life, nor in any contemporary letter, journal or news account. The story did not appear until many years later. The scientist who told the story on the NOVA program was asked how he heard the story, he could only say that someone had told it to him. Wo! Not a good answer.