NATURE 



THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1909. 



THE UNIVERSITY TEACHING OF 

 CHEMISTRY. 

 Lcfoiis siir Ic Carbone. La Combustion. Lcs Lois 

 chimiques. By H. le Chatelier. Pp. xiv+456. 

 (Paris : Dunod and Pinat, and A. Hermann, igo8.) 

 Price 12 francs. 



THIS is a book which is likely to have a most 

 important influence on the teaching of chemistry, 

 certainly in France, and probably in other countries. 

 The fact that it is the first general treatise on 

 chemistry from the hand of M. le Chatelier is suffi- 

 cient in itself to attract the attention of chemists. 

 But it is much more than this ; it is an attempt to 

 lead a reform of a far-reaching character, to part 

 from traditions honoured by time, and to show uni- 

 versity teachers a more excellent way of presenting 

 the essential science of chemistry to the ever-increas- 

 ing number of students who come to them for guid- 

 ance. It is very rarely that a book on general 

 chemistry appears which exhibits anything like the 

 individuality that is to be found in M. le Chatelier's 

 new work, one that is at the same time so free 

 from extravagance in developing a new idea, and one, 

 it may be added, that is so entirely worthy of study 

 by all who have the duty of teaching chemistry. 



.According to M. le Chatelier, the system of teach- 

 ing inorganic chemistry in France has been com- 

 pletely unchanged for three-quarters of a century. 

 In 1825, Gay-Lussac and Th^nard inaugurated what 

 was then a new treatment of the subject, and this 

 was stereotyped in the text-book of Regnault founded 

 on his notes of Gay-Lussac's lectures. Whilst 

 Lavoisier had treated chemistry primarily as a body 

 of principles and generalisations, the new system re- 

 garded it primarily as a classification and description 

 of substances. The only attempt to break away from 

 the tradition is due to Mendel^eff, whose treatise is 

 arranged on an entirely special plan. In pleading 

 for a change of our methods, M. le Chatelier admits 

 that chemistry cannot be placed in the same position 

 as physics. It is impossible merely to lay down 

 general principles and tables of constants ; chemistry 

 must still include the enumeration of a host of de- 

 tailed facts, methods of preparation, methods of 

 analysis, methods of manufacture. It is to be re- 

 membered that this is not in itself science, but mere 

 documentation, and that it is the body of chemical 

 principles which really constitutes the science of 

 chemistry. Since 1825 a revolution in chemical know- 

 ledge has taken place by the discovery and applica- 

 tion of the laws of chemical mechanics, and to this 

 full effect should be given in the courses of chemical 

 instruction. Special chapters dealing with these 

 matters are, indeed, commonly included in the text- 

 books, but whereas the subsequent detail of the book? 

 is permeated by the laws of quantitative composition, 

 no such general application is made of the laws of 

 chemical dynamics. 



There is a second matter of importance that leads 

 NO. 2064, VOL. 80] 



the author to depart from established custom. Higher 

 scientific teaching to-day has not, he says, the ex- 

 clusive aim of training future teachers ; the majority 

 of students will spend their lives in quite different 

 fields — medicine, agriculture, industry. The instruc- 

 tion given in universities ought to be so conceived 

 as to fit people for doing their best for themselves 

 and their country in the particular sphere they will 

 occupy. It is necessary, above all, to form des isprits 

 pratiques. It is often said with some justice that 

 scientific teaching does not develop good sense ; it 

 produces too often, not men of action, but thioriciens, 

 des dsprits faux. Scientific instruction is, in fact, 

 essentially analytic ; it regards things too much in 

 one aspect at one time. In speaking of the electric 

 conductivity of copper we ignore deliberately its other 

 properties, and yet in all the electrotechnical uses of 

 copper we cannot get rid of the existence of mass, 

 specific heat, tenacity, &c., nor prevent them from 

 exhibiting themselves sometimes in a most embarrass- 

 ing manner. Some examples of industrial science 

 should be introduced into a scientific course to direct 

 the attention of students to the complexity of the 

 actual phenomena, to the importance of applying the 

 details of knowledge and sifting them according to 

 their relative practical importance for achieving the 

 end in view. The usual superficial description of 

 industrial processes is not enough ; it is merely a part 

 of general culture. 



" II faut avoir vu, sinon en nature, au moins en 

 image, un haut fourneau, une chambre de plomb, 

 une cornue Bessemer, au meme titre que des tableaux 

 de Raphael, Tare de Triomphe, ou la Tour Eiffel, 

 mais ces descriptions rapides n'ont aucune valeur 

 didactique, elle ne peuvent contribuer ni k la forma- 

 tion intellectuelle, ni au dtSveloppement des aptitudes 

 professionelles." 



M. le Chatelier insists again and again on the 

 fruitfulness of a close association between theory 

 and practice. Lavoisier, he says, was led to his great 

 work by taking part in an open competition for a 

 better system of lighting Paris. His constant pre- 

 occupation with practical questions — the making of 

 plaster of Paris, the exploitation of coal mines, the 

 metallurgy of iron, the manufacture of gunpowder, 

 the organisation of hospitals, agriculture— enabled him 

 to escape without effort from the fictions and conven- 

 tions amid which the chemists of his day simply 

 marked time. Similar remarks apply to Carnot, 

 Deville, Pasteur, and others. 



M. le Chatelier has some trenchant and timely 

 remarks to make about another aspect of chemistry. 

 The science, he says, is suffering from a very grave 

 malady, le surmenage. Since chemistry has begun 

 to afford a remunerative calling, chemists have be- 

 taken themselves to an intensive cultivation, seeking 

 at all costs to make discoveries which shall create a 

 title to promotion — quantity, from their point of 

 view, superseding quality. To happen upon a sub- 

 stance sufficiently devoid of interest to ensure that, in 

 all probabilitv, no one else will examine it for a decade, 

 procures a situation free from all anxiety; the mis- 

 takes will not be discovered before the published work 



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