Prior to remember the tragedy of the great scientist Lavoisier, I want to reflect on another case, and praised as an example of intolerance have always carried the Galileo case. Both have been tried, but that of Lavoisier, remember him in a few, both have had a conviction. But the condemnation of Galileo consisted of several provisions: the indexing of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in the world, the recantation of the Copernican theory, a term of imprisonment of life that would please the Holy Office, the recitation of the seven psalms penitential once a week for three years took charge of acting with the consent of the Church, his daughter Maria Celeste, a Carmelite nun. Galileo was able to avoid the devices of the toughest sentence became effective. The prison was changed in confinement within the house of the ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Rome then in the house of Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena and finally in the villa he owned in the campaign of Arcetri. Lavoisier A cut off his head. The self-proclaimed critical conscience of the nation, which claims an official apology yells at the ecclesiastical courts, for Lavoisier, does not say anything, contrary to his death there is no trace in the history books. What was the revolution of 1789. The French Revolution is presented to our contemporaries as an event that allowed both men to break free from the tyranny of absolute monarchs or despotic regimes, which from a social system that prevented social mobility, inhibiting the free development of their potential, their rights and progress. This description, which is found in all the history books, is false. It is only the first product of materialistic ideologies and now nihilistic, the revolutionary process and has had only one idea to destroy the religious view of life. The budget of the French Revolution is truly terrifying. René Sedillot recently summed up this balance in internal wars killed 600,000, 117,000 of them in the Vendée; 40,000 executed, of which 28% of farmers, artisans and laborers 31%, 20% merchants, nobles and 8 to 9% by 6 to 7% belonging to the clergy; 400,000 deaths in foreign wars until 1800, a million deaths in the Napoleonic wars; more than 100,000 immigrants and a decline in the birth rate. Among the "victims" should be counted even the stone heads of saints that adorn Notre Dame. But most illustrious victim and forgotten by history books and the great scientist, Lavoisier. Lavoisier the ancestor of the Stalinist purges scientific was born in Paris in 1743, from a wealthy family. As a young man showed aptitude for scientific and technical research, just 25 years he was appointed a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Then began a career at all other than scientific entered in the 1768 general shutdown: an organization of financial, to which the kings of France for centuries relied on the task of collecting taxes. Debt collectors retain a percentage. Craft unappreciated by the people. Lavoisier. like others who did not squander the profits for personal gain: he used the entry of money to equip its science lab and buy expensive equipment and raw materials that were used for experiments. The results, which pursued made him one of the most famous and influential members of the academy. Nothing is created nor destroyed, everything changes. This law of conservation of matter that has become part of mass culture, common sense, is the principle of Lavoisier. He showed that before and after each chemical reaction, the weight of the compounds is always the same, solving the mystery of combustion, eliminating the hypothesis of phlogiston. The old theory, in vogue in the 700, asserts that the burning of the bodies is because they contain phlogiston, which is released during combustion. So after burning the body's weight must decrease. Lavoisier was a conservative for the community of scientists, having tried to keep intact the Academy of Sciences, a modern man of finance, of his time by introducing improvements in agricultural production to improve the balance of payments, made after the experience in its model farm. Lavoisier's story involves the relationship between science, society and politics and raises the question of neutrality of science, chemistry before him was not a science, after you. he worked with other scientists Claude Louis L. Berthollet (1748-1822), Jean Charles de Borda (1733-1799), Jacques Dominique Cassini (1748-1845), Antoine François Fourcroy, Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816), Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) . He had founded the new chemistry with quantitative methods. With his colleagues he founded a journal of the Academy, the Annales de Chemie. For Laplace Lavoisier was a proponent of a constitutional monarchy. He argued that the strength and power of a nation are not only the land and pasture, we also need industry to organize the wealth, but these are not enough because they depend on another principle: science. The purge of scientists from the Academy, commissioned by Friends of goats Robespierre, that did no good because all the conservatives had already emigrated. Scientists and science should be free, not at the service of someone or something. The process and revolutionary justice The citizen Gaspard Monge, see the movie "hypothesis on the sentencing of Lavoisier involved in the process:" They were arrested 27 directors-general of taxes, including Lavoisier. The I blame that is not to have joined the call of the government to collaborate with other scientists in the face of grave danger is located in the republic. Judgement is not its great scientific merit, which are out of the question. "Lavoisier proved that he tried unsuccessfully for three years had left the office. Trusting that his great fame as a scientist could save him, did not even try to escape arrest and was formed. He also knew that many of his fellow scientists, who knew him thoroughly, they were friends of the revolutionaries and hoped that supported him. It was not so cowardice is a "virtue" revolutionary. Monge the ancestor of the "sublime" Vyshinsky, rebuke again to Lavoisier the hallway towards the needs of the nation. "We use of his ideas, but he is not with us. "The court said all the defendants guilty of conspiracy against the people. Lavoisier was beheaded the same day on 8 May 1794. The trial lasted a few hours. The next day, Lagrange said: "It took only an instant to cut off that head, but perhaps a century will not be enough to produce another like it." Who apologizes, who among the bright minds of the weak and nihilistic thinking, which claims to intellectual honesty, but I do not even have a micron clearly says that the judges were Lavoisier emeritus of fool scum foaming at the mouth gathers no dense Justice but by envy? Who among the descendants of the so-called Enlightenment does public recanting processes farce?
CIRCULAR EDGE
No 178 Year 6 of 11 October 2010
