The long-announced practical utility of science began to become a reality
only in the late 19th century, in the development of the science-based
industries-the electrical industry and the synthetic dye industry. This
talk focusses on the history of the latter and its relation to the science
of organic chemistry. Historians often refer to a 'marriage' of science and
industry in this period, but I want to emphasise the alchemical aspects of
this wedding. I want, that is, to suggest that it should be understood
non-dualistically, as a process of the mutual becoming of the human and the
nonhuman, of people and things: of technological artefacts and their
powers; of social roles and relations, and of scientific knowledges. All of
these heterogeneous elements evolved open-endedly and in relation to one
another, eventually entering into a quasi-biological symbiosis that lies at
the origins of the modern scientific-industrial complex.
The topic is important for several reasons. Politically, this wedding of science and industry has been constitutive of the world we live in (for
better and for worse), and the present analysis might help us to see more
clearly what that entails. Theoretically, the analysis gains significance
from the fact that the academic disciplines are so bad at thinking
alchemically. With their taken for granted dualism of people and things,
they obscure important features of being in the world. My aim in this
respect is to exemplify a new way of thinking about science, technology and
society more generally. Aesthetics might also enter here: I personally find
the alchemical image beautiful, difficult and fascinating.
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