Lavoisier and the History of Chemistry

During the eighteenth century, authors of chemical treatises and courses on chemistry often introduced their work with a chapter devoted to the history of chemistry. While there may have been different reasons for the use of history, its importance was never seriously questioned. However, when Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) took a professional interest in chemistry in the early 1770s, he progressively became uneasy with this literary tradition. In this essay, I intend to explore the ways in which Lavoisier looked at the history of chemistry and to show how, from the 1780s onwards, he began to adopt a hostile attitude towards historical erudition. This vision, which culminated in the publication of the Traité élémentaire de chimie (Paris, 1789), was not only the result of a stylistic preference but constituted a direct attack on a way of doing chemistry from which Lavoisier intended to distance himself.