{"id":36836,"date":"2006-08-07T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/les-matieres-explosives\/"},"modified":"2022-11-25T23:31:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T22:31:13","slug":"les-matieres-explosives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/les-matieres-explosives\/","title":{"rendered":"Explosive Materials (Futures of Yesteryear)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='post-container'><p>The enormous contribution of Marcelin Berthelot to organic chemistry has somewhat overshadowed his important work in thermochemistry which inspired this article. When he obtained the first synthesis of organic molecules, he demolished for ever the idea of a mysterious &#8220;life force&#8221; that was thought to be inherent in all living organisms and indispensable to the formation of organic molecules. He thus established the overlap between biology and chemistry, a continuity which we observe very clearly today. Berthelot rarely philosophized about this major scientific work which raised chemistry from its position as a descriptive science and started to link it closely with biology and physics.<br \/>\nThe extract reproduced here is taken from Science et philosophie, a collection of articles originally published in journals and newspapers. His attitude to the effects of the discovery of explosives on the course of history is naturally imbued with the prejudices of his time with regard to race and civilizations, most noticeable in the choice of vocabulary.<br \/>\nIf, however, one is prepared to overlook Berthelot&#8217;s politically incorrect phraseology (for example when he talks about &#8220;the supremacy of the knowledgeable and civilized races over the barbarians&#8221;), this text offers some fascinating parallels with today, in both geopolitics and science.<br \/>\nOne just has to replace chemical explosives &#8211; though they are still relevant &#8211; with nuclear materials to recognize all the elements present in the current situation: use of technology to explore the laws of nature, the part played by scientists in making nations powerful, asymmetrical conflicts, political terrorism and even, in a historical perspective, Islamic fanaticism.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The enormous contribution of Marcelin Berthelot to organic chemistry has somewhat overshadowed his important work in thermochemistry which inspired this article. When he obtained the first synthesis of organic molecules, he demolished for ever the idea of a mysterious &#8220;life force&#8221; that was thought to be inherent in all living organisms and indispensable to the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/les-matieres-explosives\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1324],"tags":[133],"keyword":[871],"class_list":["post-36836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurs-dantan","category-revue-futuribles","tag-economie-et-emploi-en","keyword-retroprospective-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52006,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36836\/revisions\/52006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36836"},{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.futuribles.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=36836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}