Abstract

Gunnar Berg und Rainer Godel: Die Begriffe ›Verwandtschaft‹ und ›Wahlverwandtschaft>in der Chemie. Zur Geschichte einer Metapher This article shows that the metaphor ›Wahlverwandtschaften‹ – which had become eponymous for Goethe’s early 19th century novel – was used in chemistry for almost 200 years, from theearly 18th century onwards, although the concept referred to widely diverging semantic fields that emerged with the development of the natural sciences. By using this example, the authors argue that, within the fields of history of science and history of knowledge, conceptual history (or, more precisely, Begriffsgeschichte) needs to precede the history of metaphors.