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Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Hepler-Smith, E
Published in: Ambix
February 2018

In two books published in 1969 and 1973, the philosopher François Dagognet articulated a sharp contrast between the verbal and the visual in the history of chemical representation. Ursula Klein took up Dagognet's argument as both inspiration and foil in her account of Berzelian formulas as productive "paper tools." Building on Klein's work, I show how Dagognet portrayed chemical names and formulas not just as representations and paper tools, but as material abstractions that were objects of inquiry in themselves. Dagognet associated this way of doing chemistry with chemists' use of computers, citing the work of the physical organic chemist Jacques-Émile Dubois. However, I show that chemical editors and mathematicians had begun to treat chemical names and formulas in this way long before anyone used computers for such studies. Indeed, some of the techniques of graph theory central to the application of computers to chemistry in the mid-twentieth century were themselves in part derived half a century earlier from the application of chemical formulas to mathematical reasoning.

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Published In

Ambix

DOI

EISSN

1745-8234

ISSN

0002-6980

Publication Date

February 2018

Volume

65

Issue

1

Start / End Page

76 / 98

Related Subject Headings

  • 5002 History and philosophy of specific fields
  • 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields
  • 0399 Other Chemical Sciences
 

Citation

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Hepler-Smith, E. (2018). Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph. Ambix, 65(1), 76–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2017.1418232
Hepler-Smith, Evan. “Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph.Ambix 65, no. 1 (February 2018): 76–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2017.1418232.
Hepler-Smith E. Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph. Ambix. 2018 Feb;65(1):76–98.
Hepler-Smith, Evan. “Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph.Ambix, vol. 65, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 76–98. Epmc, doi:10.1080/00026980.2017.1418232.
Hepler-Smith E. Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph. Ambix. 2018 Feb;65(1):76–98.

Published In

Ambix

DOI

EISSN

1745-8234

ISSN

0002-6980

Publication Date

February 2018

Volume

65

Issue

1

Start / End Page

76 / 98

Related Subject Headings

  • 5002 History and philosophy of specific fields
  • 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields
  • 0399 Other Chemical Sciences