Anders Lundgren, history of ideas, Uppsala University

2007-2013

The aim of the project has been to investigate the significance of smell and taste for the formation of knowledge within the sciences, especially in chemistry. The project has concentrated on three case studies: 1. Mineralogical classification during the 18th century, 2. Textbooks and education during the 19th century, and 3. Development of organic chemistry during the 1920 and 30s.

The significance of smell and taste in the sciences has not been much studied. This is the more remarkable since references to smell and taste are frequently occurring in chemical literature, up to modern times. They are especially frequent in pedagogical literature, like text books and laboratory manuals, but can also be found manuscripts such as correspondences, laboratory journals and other material with immediate connection to the practical parts of chemistry, as well as in scientific texts.

During the work the framing of the overall question has deepened, and the project has been directed towards more specific questions, although still focusing on taste and smell. In order to better understand their role in chemistry, it has been fruitful to study them from the following three aspects. It should however be noted that the following results mainly come from work with the two first case studies.

1. The study of smell and taste has shown that the qualitative element for a long time (and probably still today) has bee an important feature of knowledge making in modern science. This is important since much earlier research, including my own, has been directed toward what has often been considered a scientific ideal as well as the most important characteristic of modern science, namely quantification. Consequently focus for interests have been those sciences, which have had the goal to formulate general laws as mathematical formulas. Certainly quantification was/is important in science, but my results points in the direction that it perhaps has been given a too important role, and at least it has to be complemented with an increased study of the qualitative features of the sciences. So especially in the sciences which aim at describing and characterizing the unique properties of specific substances, and how these substances change properties when reacting with each other. Such an aim was often considered to be an important part of chemistry, sometimes even its essence. In such a characterization descriptions of the qualitative properties of smell and taste plays an important role. However, even if such characterizations can be said to be important in chemistry, they can be found in other sciences as well, and not the least if we turn to other senses, especially sight. Knowledge of qualitative properties is an essential part of scientific knowledge.

2. The study of smell and taste has also pointed to the importance of studying and understanding the daily work in the laboratory, "everyday science". For natural and obvious reasons much history of science has concentrated on the so called "revolutions" and on more spectacular experiments. Within recent history of science there has been an obvious trend from this kind of history, and my research connects to this trends. To do science means to carry out daily activities and to experiment often in a both boring and monotonous way, constantly repeating the same experiment, over and over again. But such work is the foundation for all science, and it is a work which is characterized by a continuity, which partly contradicts the idea of important breakthroughs in science. One of my results is that the qualitative properties of smell and taste play an important role in preserving this continuity, and to a greater extent than one intuitively could believe. At least up to the middle of the 20th century many chemists as a matter of routine tasted almost every substance in the laboratory. It was a quick an easy way to make a quick analysis, to verify an assumed composition or the like. But tasting could also have a heuristic function. To taste a new substances was not only to verify but could lead to observations of phenomenon, earlier not observed. Everyday tasting can thereby be of importance even for the formation of new research areas.

3. It has also been demonstrated the smell and taste plays an important role in pedagogy. Smell and taste were considered properties uniquely characterizing every substance, and the knowledge of unique properties was an important part of chemistry. How this knowledge was transferred to the pupils and learned is therefore an essential question. This was obviously done in a laboratory, when the pupils as apprentices in a handicraft way, learned the tastes of different substances. This knowledge is often referred to as "tacit knowledge", and as such it is said to be "embodied" in the observer. This is certainly true, but I should also like to point to the role of language in this knowledge making process. Many textbooks had developed a language, rich in nuances, to describe different both tastes and smells. It was for example possible to described the quality of bitter, not only as "bitter", but also making a difference between "bitter", "very bitter", agreeable bitter", "disgustingly bitter" etc. The discussion is also valid for other qualitative properties, like colours with distinctions between "rose", "bleak rose", etc. One of the results of my research is thus to show the significance of the language, by which sensory qualities are described. This is a language important in pedagogy, since it makes communication of these sensory qualities possible (although tastes could not be leaned only by language, but practical laboratory work was also needed). It is a language which is characterized by what I have chosen to call "qualitative exactness".

Further research
An evident enlargement of the project would be to study the significance of the qualitative properties also within other sciences, not the least physics which in contemporary literature often was presented as a science striving to formulate general mathematical laws valid for many different phenomenons. Associated with both physics, astronomy and chemistry was spectroscopy, which in chemistry was used to identify specific chemical substances, and which also contained qualitative features. The reading of a spectrum was depending on the light source, and to spearate between different lines with a naked eye could also be a delicate matter, in which qualitative criterion was used.

Since all science also is part of a cultural context, and increased cooperation with anthropologists could increase our understanding of small and taste also as cultural phenomenon.

Stress on everyday science could lead us to a new way of writing scientific biographies where less know personalities could be put in focus (see item 3 in the publication list for a beginning).

Publications
Item 1 studies sense observations in education and research during the end of the 19th century. Its main sources are textbooks in chemistry and some popular science books. The study is a summary of the results so far reached during work with the second case study, which above all focuses on the relation between smell, taste and teaching, and "everyday work" in research, as described above,

Item 2 discusses how Mendeleev's periodical system was received in Sweden. The item is part of an international project. My contribution has essentially been influenced by the results reached during my work on the significance of smell and taste. It describes an everyday science in Sweden where laborious mineral analysis dominated. An important part of this everyday science was descriptions of taste and smell and other qualitative properties. The article discusses what happens when a chemistry described as pioneering meets such a chemistry. It turns out that the force in these descriptions was so strong that the periodic system could not touch them, and thereby not chemistry as a whole. Mendeleev's system was insignificant for chemistry in Sweden, a fact which leads to the question if not the general significance of the system in chemistry, has been overestimated.

1. “Kemi, pedagogik och lite estetik: Om sinneskunskap i naturvetenskaplig undervisning och forskning runt sekelskiftet 1900”, Anders Burman, Rebecca Lettevall och Sven-Eric Liedman (red), Löftet om lyckan: Estetik, musik och bildning: Till Sten Dahlstedt (Göteborg, 2013), 149-168.

2. “When a daring chemistry meets a boring chemistry: The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden” (artikel i antologi, accepterad för publicering av Oxford UP, beräknad utgivning våren 2014).

3. ”Lars Fredrik Svanberg”, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon (under tryckning)