One of the rare instances in which chemistry has been present in the “big picture” discussions of the history of science is John Pickstone’s emphasis on the role of Lavoisierian chemistry in the establishment of analysis as a way of knowing. I have previously tried to build on Pickstone’s work to discern a longer history of the development of “compositionist” thinking in chemistry. In this paper I would like to suggest that 19th-century atomic chemistry has served as a model for micro-reductionist practices that became pervasive in modern science, including the biological and social sciences. While physics is often taken as the foundation for reductionist science, the development of physics through the 20th century has actually pushed against naïve ideas of material composition. Rather, it is pre-quantum chemistry that has continued to provide the image of compositionist science underlying much of the philosophical and popular discourse about science by scientists and others alike.
