Science Serving Industry Documentary Authority and Industrial Influence in 19th - Century American Chemistry Shawn Martin Indiana University Document Academy September 29, 2017

Methodological Framework “Adopting the concept of ‘affordance’ to analyze the nature of chemical studies, it becomes clear that chemical ‘facts’ are attributes not of an independent world revealed by the use of apparatus, but are dispositional properties of a hybrid entity and indissoluble union of apparatus, experimenter, and world.” Rom Harré. “New Tools for the Philosophy of Chemistry,” HYLE – International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry, 20 (2014): 79.

Journal of the American Chemical Society

J. Lawrence Smith (1818 – 1883)

American Chemical Society

Universities Indiana University, ca. 1879

Apparatus “Science is only an accurate record of the processes of nature; that its laws are only generalizations of its observations, and not a declaration of an inherent necessity; and that one of its observations is the uniformity of natural sequence.” - J. Lawrence Smith, 1874

Experimenter “Any chemist who would quit his method of investigation, of marking every foot of his advance by some indelible imprint, and go back to the speculations of Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and other alchemists of former ages, would soon be dropped from the list of chemists and ranked with dreamers and speculators.” - J. Lawrence Smith, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1873

World “Our universities (or rather our so-called universities) are too numerous. Nowadays every college must have a scientific school attached. . . . it would be far better to have fewer scientific schools.” - J. Lawrence Smith, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1873

World Indiana University, ca. 1879

Chemistry in 1874 “In our days a useful discovery is scarcely made, or a happy application of one found out before it is published, described in the scientific journals, or other technical periodicals . . . . From these multiplied and diverse efforts . . . arises an industry which has no sooner sprung into existence than it becomes prosperous” - J. Lawrence Smith, American Chemist

Conclusion “Some iconic or representational models were taken to be verisimilitudinous representations of unobservable entities, properties, processes, and mechanisms.” Rom Harré. “New Tools for the Philosophy of Chemistry,” 86.