A history of chemistry1996

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers present chemistry as a science in search of an identity, or rather as a science whose identity has changed in response to its relation to society and to other disciplines. The authors have written a book deeply enthusiastic about the conceptual, experimental, and technological complexities and challenges with which chemists have grappled over many centuries.

Beginning with chemistry's polymorphous beginnings, featuring many independent discoveries all over the globe, the narrative moves to a discussion of chemistry's niche in the eighteenth-century notion of Natural Philosophy and on to its nineteenth-century role as an exemplary scientific means of reaching positive knowledge.

The authors also address contentious issues of concern to...