Du Clos, un chimiste post-Sceptical Chymist

International audienceDu Clos is a post-Sceptical Chymist chemist. He showed that it was possible to remain a chemist after 1661 by observing that chemistry had no principles anymore. The Sceptical Chymist didn’t destroy the chemistry based on principles as it planed; on the contrary it allowed its reconstruction and the possibility of getting resituated in the field of knowledge, something that was impossible few years after being officially recognized as a true discipline. Actually Boyle’s book did affect Du Clos, and chemistry of that time, not because of its content but because it made him realize that its necessary to rebuild chemistry on new principles set up experimentally (that was the only impact of this book on chemistry). However the post-Sceptical Chymist chemist who tried to re-found chemistry in order to save it thanks to a knowledge based on tangible reality, becomes dissatisfied with a text like Boyle’s Tentamina Chimica which deals with a corpuscular philosophy non proved according Du Clos. Du Clos demands now manifest proofs when one talks about chemistry. The reversal is striking: Boyle becomes a vulgar chemist and Du Clos a sceptical one.Du Clos démontre que l’on peut encore être chimiste après la publication du Sceptical Chymist de 1661 de Boyle, tout en tenant compte des principaux arguments exposés dans cet ouvrage à l’encontre des principes de la chimie, qui loin d’avoir été destructeurs pour cette dernière, lui ont permis de se retrouver et de se resituer dans le champs des savoirs. Du Clos examine les écrits de Boyle, et réclame à son tour des preuves tangibles. Le renversement est éclatant : Boyle devient le chimiste vulgaire et Du Clos, le chimiste sceptique