The Chemical Revolution of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

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2024-06-09 18:00:03

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Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier forever changed the practice and concepts of chemistry by forging a new series of laboratory analyses that would bring order to the chaotic centuries of Greek philosophy and medieval alchemy. Lavoisier’s work in framing the principles of modern chemistry led future generations to regard him as a founder of the science.

When the 17-year-old Lavoisier left Mazarin College in Paris in 1761, chemistry hardly could be called a true science. Unlike physics, which had come of age through the work of Isaac Newton a century earlier, chemistry was still mired in the legacy of the Greek philosophers. The four elements of Aristotle — earth, air, fire, and water — had been slowly modified by the medieval alchemists, who added their own arcane language and symbolism.

Thrown into this mix was the concept of phlogiston. Developed by the German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl early in the 18th century, phlogiston was a dominant chemical concept of the time because it seemed to explain so much in a simple fashion. Stahl believed that every combustible substance contained a universal component of fire, which he named phlogiston, from the Greek word for inflammable. Because a combustible substance such as charcoal lost weight when it burned, Stahl reasoned that this change was due to the loss of its phlogiston component to the air.