Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Pedagogical Reform of the Chemical Arts

Powers John C, Richmond VA

Investigators

Abstract

This project explores the role of university pedagogy in the development of chemistry into an academic discipline. The project consists of a historical case study on the Dutch medical and chemical professor, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), and his efforts to reform the teaching of chemistry at Leiden University. It examines how Boerhaave established chemistry as a university subject by successfully integrating it into the curriculum of the Leiden medical faculty as part of his general reform of medical education. This process of integration required the re-structuring and re-interpretation of various practices and concepts from diverse chemical traditions in order to shape them into a chemical course which conformed to the pedagogical and philosophical norms of Leiden's medical faculty as well as presenting himself and his work in a manner which would enlist the support of the Leiden University curators and Dutch religious community. The P.I. will base his account largely on manuscript materials found in Boerhaave's papers currently held at the Military Medicine Academy in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. This project will make a significant contribution to the history of chemistry by suggesting an alternate view regarding the institutional and disciplinary development of the field and add to the debates on the relationship between chemistry and alchemy and chemistry and medicine. The project also presents a strong case for the importance of the university, especially in the Dutch Republic, in the development and spread of new empirical and experimental natural philosophies during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Finally, with regard to its wider significance for science and society, the project will enhance the growing interest in science pedagogy among scientists and STS scholars, especially regarding the changing status of pedagogical work over time and the uses of pedagogy to promote disciplinary reforms and philosophical agendas.