On Lavoisier's Achievement in Chemistry

Methodological recommendations common during the last thirty years have not prevented the emergence of views which are arguably no less caricatured and incorrect than was previously the case, even when account is taken of the heavily biased, mainly nationalistic, accounts concerning Lavoisier from the century after 1835. This article considers many of the categories of Lavoisier’s achievement in chemistry, considers some of the more startling issues in the recent historiography, including negative accounts by Bensaude-Vincent (1993), Siegfried (1988), Kim (2003) and Chang (2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012), and contributes towards a process of identifying a judicious view.