Marwane Elouardi: Gaston Bachelard and Chemical Substances | Mathis Pruvost: Marcellin Berthelot: Positive Chemistry and Organic Synthesis

Marwane Elouardi (École Normale Supérieure, Paris):
Gaston Bachelard and Chemical Substances
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Mathis Pruvost (École Normale Supérieure, Paris):
Marcellin Berthelot: Positive Chemistry and Organic

Synthesis

Marwane Elouardi > Gaston Bachelard and Chemical Substances
We will investigate Gaston Bachelard’s sustained engagement with the problem of substantialism through his two major works on chemistry : Le pluralisme cohérent de la chimie moderne (1932) [The Coherent Pluralism of Modern Chemistry] and Le matérialisme rationnel (1953) [Rational Materialism]. Although Bachelard is widely recognized as a philosopher of physics, his philosophy of chemistry sheds light on how he confronted the metaphysical commitments of modern science. In the 1932 book, Bachelard interprets the history of chemistry, from Lavoisier to Mendeleev, as a
progressive effort to render the multiplicity of substances coherent through mathematical relations. This reinterpretation challenges the traditional heterogeneity we ordinarily assume between substances, but retains traces of Émile Meyerson’s substantialist framework, leaving unresolved tensions between law and substance and its critique of classical atomism incomplete. In the 1953 book, Bachelard shifts focus from elements to molecules and emphasizes the role of energy as the central conceptual tool of chemical rationalism. By treating energy as a relational and transformative principle, he reorients the critique of substance from the problem of heterogeneity to that of immutability, thereby undermining the notion of stable and enduring substances. The article argues that, taken together, these two works demonstrate how Bachelard’s philosophy of chemistry develops an original antisubstantialist perspective on material reality.
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Mathis Pruvost > Marcellin Berthelot: positive chemistry and organic synthesis
Marcellin Berthelot, a 19th-century chemist, pushed forward a synthetic method in organic chemistry. Lavoisier understood chemistry as an analytic field, that was supposed to proceed from “simple” studies up to the upcoming “complex” ones. Meaning, Lavoisier mainly defined chemistry as a scientific decomposition of inorganic compounds. Doing so, early 19th-century chemistry focused on both inorganic compounds and analytic schemes. It marginalized organic matter, synthetic issues, and specific objects like organic vitality. Berthelot’s aim – from that prospect – was to extend Lavoisier’s chemical “revolution” towards the most difficult objects in the chemical field, which implied to take the “complex” part of chemistry as a starting
point. Berthelot indeed worked out a synthetic methodology, that could ensure chemistry’s epistemological basis, as chemistry would now be able to explain how organic composition can emerge from inorganic elements. This very gesture is to be considered together with Berthelot’s so-called “positivism”, that influenced his scientific practice. Indeed, Berthelot’s chemistry also targeted latent “metaphysical” prejudices in science, and he believed that synthetic method could eventually eliminate them. To expand chemical “powers” in organic matters testified that the “powers” of positive science would contradict metaphysics and finally overrule it.

Registration is not required to attend the lectures and the workshop.