In "Inventing Chemistry", historian John C. Powers turns his attention to Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), a Dutch medical and chemical professor whose work reached a wide, educated audience and became the template for chemical knowledge in the eighteenth century. The primary focus of this study is Boerhaave's educational philosophy, and Powers traces its development from Boerhaave's early days as a student in Leiden through his publication of the Elementa chemiae in 1732. Powers reveals how Boerhaave restructured and reinterpreted various practices from diverse chemical traditions - including craft chemistry, Paracelsian medical chemistry, and alchemy - shaping them into a chemical course that conformed to the pedagogical and philosophical norms of Leiden's medical faculty. In doing so, Boerhaave gave his chemistry a coherent organizational structure and philosophical foundation and thus transformed an artisanal practice into an academic discipline. "Inventing Chemistry" will be essential reading for historians of chemistry, medicine, and academic life.
Inventing Chemistry
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"Herman Boerhaave was famous in the eighteenth century as the man who taught Europe chemistry, though he has been little studied since. John C. Powers has finally given him his due. In a work of meticulous and imaginative scholarship, he has shown how Boerhaave built his reputation by organizing chemistry for the purpose of pedagogy. In Boerhaave's classroom, as Powers shows, chemistry shrugged off its alchemical heritage and emerged as a science of the Enlightenment." (Jan Golinski, University of New Hampshire)"
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John C. Powers is collateral assistant professor in the Department of History and assistant director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By dip
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It's a nice thesis but it's makes some hard reading. I was expecting a history book about chemistry and Boerhaave. I got something which can best be described as a thesis. It's interesting but it's full of references, and doesn't cover the chemistry in detail. It mentions experiments but does not go into the specifics.
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