Etiqueter ou définir: L'évolution de la nomenclature chimique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Dans la prétendue révolution chimique, un point de rupture demeure indiscutable : la réforme de la nomenclature chimique réalisée en 1787 par Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet et Fourcroy. Cet événement est ici replacé dans le contexte plus large de l'évolution de la chimie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La réforme de la terminologie est considérée dans le long terme ; les débats menés et les efforts déployés avant 1787 sont interprétés à la lumière de quatre facteurs : le développement de la chimie des gaz, l'introduction d'une nomenclature systématique pour les sels, le modèle suscité par la nomenclature linéenne et les réformes de la pharmacopée. Comparée aux efforts de Bergman et Guyton de Morveau, la Méthode de nomenclature chimique crée une rupture en approuvant la théorie de l'acidité et de la combustion de Lavoisier ; elle attire également l'attention sur le fait qu'il vaut mieux nommer une substance (méthode) que d'en chercher le terme approprié (nomenclature).     

France,Patrie, Nation: figures de lutte et discours national (XVIème–XIXème siècles)

This article explores the conceptual changes and semantic shifts of ‘patrie’ and of nation from the Renaissance up to the French Revolution and the First Empire. It emphasises the causes and consequences of both concepts' occurrence and tries to discover their fundamental differences synchronically and diachronically. A brief comparison with other European countries allows us to understand that both concepts are not typically French and highlights the very fact that they are interactive, discontinuous, and at the same time evolutionary, since they are successively inserted in a specific historical context. Above all, ‘patrie’ and nation turn out to be used more often during national and international political conflicts, even though they did not have the same connotation and register. It is therefore interesting to consider precisely what characterises both concepts, and to reflect upon the origins of the modern meaning of nation.     

Les jésuites et l’utopie du «comédien honnête» aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles

The author focuses her approach on the quite unknown actor’s figure, central in the theatrical activity of the jesuit colleges, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. The author attempts to decipher the portrait of the christian actor, an antiactor invested by all the strenght of truth whose image is feigned by the comedian. But, more generally, the paper places the actor of Jesuit religious dramas, which were often written by the professors of the colleges, in the framework of those colleges, which constitutes the ultimate guarantee, since the actor is a student, and in no way a future actor, of the specificity of this theatre.     

“Mourir au monde”. Les ordines de séparation des lépreux en France aux XVe et XVIe siècles

Since the recent publication of a catalogue of the printed rituals in French dioceses, we can list seven ordines of seclusion of lepers existing in France around 1490–1550. In fact, for two of them, the most common, two distinct versions having the same incipit are found. Most of these ceremonies are parodies, some closer than others, of funerals and tell the sick: Sis mortuus mundo. As far as France is concerned, these rites were only followed in one diocese out of ten, but they represent a common liturgical habit in the northeast part of the country. They may have originated in 1400–1450 from the same inclination towards a grim mood as the Dances of Death. They probably exorcised other fears than that of the leper — then dying out-, and were only to disappear slowly and gradually at the time of the Counter-Reformation, after about 1560.     

Machiavélisme et Staats-Raison au XVIIIe siècle d’après L’Universal-Lexikon de Zedler

This article examines the manner in which the Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon published by Johann Heinrich Zedler from 1732 to 1750 and considered as the most important german language encyclopedia of its time, welcomes and restructures the classical doctrine of the reason of State. Contrary to the interpretation in which the concept of the State developed by the Lexikon would fit into a pure jusnaturalistic logic, it shows the permanence, parallel to wolffian natural law, of a prudential tradition of political thought. The Lexikon, a contemporary of the Anti-Machiavel of Frederic II, thus appears to be the faithful mirror of the heterogeneous tendencies which then illustrate the field of the problems in the reason of State.     

L’autobiographie allemande du XVIIIe siècle,interprétée à la lumière de la sociologie de niklas Luhmann

With the help of Luhmann’s theory, this essay tries to define the connection between the boom of autobiographical writing in the late 18th century and the rise of the middle classes. Central to this, is his definition of “career”, with which he describes the individuals’ behaviour in the new functional bourgeois society. Strictly speaking, the individual gains personal and social identity, through his or her spoken or written autobiography as can be seen clearly in Jung-Stilling’s autobiography, which was published bit by bit. The individual hereby improves its prospects of social advancement. On the other hand, K. P. Moritz in hisAnton Reiser describes his hero’s life as the “career” of a failure whose hyperactive imagination interferes with the formation of his identity. Thus autobiographical writing in the 18th century shows itself as the literary autopoiesis of the authors’ concrete individuality.