ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s own emphasis on the moment and the prominence of the writings that came from it have led to a fairly uniform view of his career, even among scholars who evaluate his work in different ways. Rousseau’s mature critique of modernity was preceded by a sustained absorption with one of modernity’s proudest claims: its aspiration to scientific knowledge. Since the publication of the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Rousseau has been regarded as a critic of the sciences. Even in the case of the one science with which he is closely associated, namely botany, his best-known discussions sharply distinguish this science from other natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. Rousseau’s most intriguing arguments concern the status and foundation of chemistry as a science. What seems to have mattered most to him in his study of chemistry is his account of what this science—and, indeed, science in general—can claim to accomplish and the foundations of that claim.
