The influential French chemist Marcelin Berthelot spoke against the use of Dalton's atomic theory and Avogadro's hypothesis in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper argues that Berthelot conceded that atomism might be acceptable as a system of conventions, but he feared the power of such conventions in constructing a realistic picture of atoms which was not warranted empirically. Equally, Berthelot's anti-atomism was a last-ditch effort to assert the place of chemistry within the tradition of (...) natural history and to deny the possible reduction of chemical science to the laws of nineteenth-century physics. (shrink)

The famous French chemist, Marcelin Berthelot, published his first scientific paper in 1850. However, reference to this paper has been largely ignored in the various accounts of his lasting contributions to chemistry. The probable reason for this is that this paper is concerned with a method of subjecting a liquid to tension, and it is more appropriate to regard it as a paper on physics rather than on chemistry. In the work described in this largely-forgotten paper, written whilst he (...) was still a young research student, Berthelot showed that liquids contained in his ‘Berthelot tube’ could withstand a considerable tension; and he is the first person to have observed cavitation, a phenomenon which has been studied so widely this century. The next mention in the literature of the Berthelot tube method is at the turn of the present century, after which it again seems to have been forgotten until the 1940s; since then there has been considerable progress using the Berthelot tube technique. In this paper the work described in Berthelot's original paper is discussed in some detail, and the subsequent fruitful development of the method is also traced and assessed. (shrink)

Tous les textes publiés dans l'ouvrage parlent directement de l'œuvre de Jean-Michel Berthelot. La première partie, " Sociologie de Jean-Michel Berthelot ", rassemble les contributions restituant des traits de son œuvre à l'aide d'études de cas précis ou de panoramas plus larges, et balise des domaines de recherche dans lesquels il s'est illustré : sociologie de l'éducation, du corps, des sciences, épistémologie des sciences sociales. La deuxième partie rend compte des perspectives ouvertes par ses travaux et de la (...) manière dont des chercheurs ont mis en œuvre ses réflexions pour leurs propres recherches. Il s'agit donc de restituer la façon dont on peut faire de la sociologie " avec " Jean-Michel Berthelot - à l'aide de ses travaux et des jalons qu'ils posent. La troisième partie est biographique en restituant l'itinéraire académique, intellectuel et humain de Berthelot, que ce soit son parcours universitaire et social, notamment à l'ENS durant mai 68, ou encore sa période " toulousaine " où sa carrière universitaire a débuté et qui en constitue une partie essentielle. Dirigé par Jean-Christophe Marcel et Olivier Martin, cet ouvrage rassemble les contributions de collaborateurs, d'anciens étudiants ou de proches collègues de Jean-Michel Berthelot. (shrink)

La séparation des sexes caractérise le système scolaire français, et tout particulièrement l’enseignement secondaire, jusqu’aux années 1960. Dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, la mixité, telle que nous l’envisageons aujourd’hui, n’est pas concevable. Pourtant, à sa création, en octobre 1938, le lycée de garçons Marcelin Berthelot, à Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, accueille également des filles. Expliquer cette présence féminine, absolument singulière, oblige à faire la part des facteurs circonstanciels, de l’évolution des identités de sexe et de celle de la demande parentale. (...) Si le lycée continue, en dépit des critiques, à accueillir des élèves des deux sexes jusqu’à l’instauration officielle de la mixité, il ne faut cependant pas voir dans cette expérience une simple anticipation des évolutions postérieures. (shrink)

A cursory review of the philosophy of sport readily reveals that it is dominated by Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophical milieux, in the departments of philosophy and kinesiology, the centers of bioethics, and the faculties of health around the world. In France, however, with the exception of a few researchers working in the philosophy or sport, and within an analytical paradigm, the development of the subject has gone almost unnoticed. By contrast, the discipline of history of sport clearly moved away from philosophy (...) in France with the establishment of a separate field of study based on the Anglo-Saxon model from the work pioneer of Pierre Arnaud developed by Thierry Terret and other sports historians. Nevertheless, in French universities, faculties of philosophy have not been open to research in the philosophy of the body. The philosophy of sport is not taught as such in French Universities even if our generation pursues ways opened by Jacques Ulmann, Bernard Jeu, Bernard Guillemain, Michel Bernard, Jean-Michel Berthelot, Gilbert Andrieu, Bertrand During, André Rauch, Marie-Hélène Brousse, Françoise Labridy, and Georges Vigarello, among others, through their reflections on the philosophy of the body. This article discusses the influence of some of these authors, and especially of Georges Gusdorf, Michel Foucault, and Georges Snyders on the nature and prospects for the philosophy of sport in France. (shrink)

In 1846 the Belgian scientist François Donny published a very important but still virtually unknown paper. Apparently the first publication on the ability of liquids to withstand tension, it appeared some four years before Marcelin Berthelot's famous paper on this property of liquids. It seems only fair to record the fact that, contrary to accepted belief, Donny, not Berthelot, was really the first pioneer in this field. In his paper Donny describes how he first observed by chance the (...) fact that a column of sulphuric acid in a manometer could sustain a small tension. This led him to investigate the matter further, and he found that a column of this acid could stand a tension of about a quarter of an atmosphere. From later experiments he concluded that a column of water could sustain at least one atmosphere of tension. The work described in Donny's paper is discussed and compared with the related work of Marcelin Berthelot and Osborne Reynolds which was published later in the nineteenth century. The relevance of this to current research work is also discussed briefly. (shrink)

The following is an essay review of Paul Needham's translation of Pierre Duhem's Lemixte et la combinaison chimique and a numberof other essays. In this review we describe theintent and general features of Le mixte and try to place it in the larger context of Duhem'sprogram for energetics. The long essay (Essay3) opposing Marcellin Berthelot'sthermochemistry is singled out for detailedcommentary, since it gives Duhem's reasons forendorsing Josiah Willard Gibbs's chemicalstatics. We argue that a chemical mechanics ofa Gibbsian sort, defended (...) in Le mixte and otheressays in this volume, was the inspiration for,and basis of, Duhem's energetics. Needham'swelcome translations help an English-languageaudience to better understand the basiccontours of Duhem's important, if ultimatelymisguided, project. We conclude with somecomments on the difficulties in translatingDuhem and on the quality of the translationsNeedham has provided. (shrink)

The following is an essay review of Paul Needham's translation of Pierre Duhem's Lemixte et la combinaison chimique and a numberof other essays. In this review we describe theintent and general features of Le mixte and try to place it in the larger context of Duhem'sprogram for energetics. The long essay (Essay3) opposing Marcellin Berthelot'sthermochemistry is singled out for detailedcommentary, since it gives Duhem's reasons forendorsing Josiah Willard Gibbs's chemicalstatics. We argue that a chemical mechanics ofa Gibbsian sort, defended (...) in Le mixte and otheressays in this volume, was the inspiration for,and basis of, Duhem's energetics. Needham'swelcome translations help an English-languageaudience to better understand the basiccontours of Duhem's important, if ultimatelymisguided, project. We conclude with somecomments on the difficulties in translatingDuhem and on the quality of the translationsNeedham has provided. (shrink)

Parent pauvre de la formation polytechnicienne à l’époque de Poincaré, la chimie resta en dehors des centres d’intérêt du savant malgré l’importance sociale qu’elle acquit à la fin du xixe siècle. Le mathématicien, physicien et philosophie y fut confronté assez fortuitement en 1907 comme président de la Commission scientifique d’étude des poudres de guerre créée après l’explosion du cuirassé Iéna car Marcellin Berthelot, qui avait été pressenti comme éminent spécialiste des poudres et explosifs mourut dans l’intervalle. Dans un contexte (...) international tendu entre la France et l’Allemagne depuis l’annexion de l’Alsace-Moselle en 1871 et alors que la crise marocaine relança l’esprit de revanche, cet accident catastrophique porta un rude coup à la confiance du pays dans ses moyens de défense. Le gouvernement jugea alors que seul Poincaré avait l’autorité scientifique nécessaire pour rassurer l’opinion publique sur la sécurité des poudres sans fumée issues de l’industrie chimique inventées par son camarade de promotion Paul Vieille et maintenir l’ennemi à distance. Les archives de la Commission et la correspondance administrative de Poincaré témoignent de son investissement. Sa correspondance personnelle avec Henry Le Chatelier, autre ingénieur X-Mines spécialiste des poudres et explosifs, permet de mieux cerner son appréhension des problèmes complexes posés par les nouvelles poudres et de dévoiler sa stratégie pour contourner les blocages institutionnels dus à la rivalité entre le service producteur des Poudres et salpêtres et les services consommateurs de l’Artillerie et la Marine et aux attaques contre le monopole des poudres de la part des industriels et de leurs partisans au Parlement. (shrink)

Is there an ideology of chemistry? Given recent developments in history of science, we would almost certainly answer “yes” in some form to this question; and in this detailed institutional study Ulrike Fell uses the example of chemistry in France to define more precisely what the “ideology” of a science would be. Fell outlines the collective system of common beliefs and cultural goals of chemists using three interrelated concepts: “discipline” , “profession” , and “nation” .Fell's multilayered analysis is divided among (...) three major episodes. The first section of the book treats the institutional and educational patterns in French chemistry to 1914, focusing on the formation and professionalization of the Société de Chimique de Paris with a prosopographical study of its membership by subdiscipline and occupation. She also notes that the loss of the Alsace‐Lorraine region in 1871 reinforced among French chemists their sense of inferiority to the Germans , leading to a desire to emulate the chemical educational system found in Germany. In the second part Fell closely analyzes the effect of World War I on the identity of French chemists. Prior to 1914 French chemists, as indicated by the study of the membership of the Société de Chimique and the content and origin of the publications in its Bulletin, were predominantly academic and oriented toward pure research, rather than industrial chemists interested in practical results. The outbreak of war spurred the growth of a native French chemical industry, especially in dyestuff production, along with the apparatus necessary for research in applied chemistry and the production of chemicals on an industrial scale. This increasing importance of industrial chemistry resulted in the formation of the Société de Chimie Industrielle. In the third section Fell shows how chemists in France attempted to show the unity of their discipline amid increasing fragmentation. Both the Centenaire de Marcelin Berthelot in 1927 and the creation of the Maison de la Chimie in 1934 were attempts to show the unity of chemists.Fell has a thorough knowledge of the large secondary literature on French science and has based much of her argument on archival documents. Her book, in which she reworks and rethinks the long‐standing issue of the “decline” of French science and Parisian centralization, is a welcome addition to our understanding of science in the French state and the dynamics of professional identity. (shrink)