Frases de Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

„Considero a la Naturaleza como un amplio laboratorio químico en el que tienen lugar toda clase de síntesis y descomposiciones.“

Fuente: Poirier, Jean Pierre. Lavoisier, chemist, biologist, economist. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8122-3365-4, pág. 311.

„Nada más grande ni más sublime ha salido de las manos del hombre que el sistema métrico decimal.“

„En una reacción química ordinaria la masa permanece constante, es decir, la masa consumida de los reactivos es igual a la masa obtenida de los productos.“

Ley de Lavoisier o ley de conservación de la masa en las reacciones químicas.

„Un terrateniente rico no puede cultivar y mejorar su granja sin extender la comodidad y el bienestar a su alrededor. Los cultivos ricos y abundantes, con una población numerosa y un paisaje rural próspero son las recompensas por sus esfuerzos.“

Fuente: Poirier, Jean-Pierre y Rebecca Balinski. Lavoisier: Chemist, Biologist, Economist http://books.google.es/books?id=uFLwcEZMrOcC&pg=PA124. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8122-1649-0, pág. 124.

„We may lay it down as an incontestible axiom, that, in all the operations of art and nature, nothing is created; an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the experiment; the quality and quantity of the elements remain precisely the same; and nothing takes place beyond changes and modifications in the combination of these elements. Upon this principle the whole art of performing chemical experiments depends: We must always suppose an exact equality between the elements of the body examined and those of the products of its analysis.“

Fuente: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p. 226

„We must trust to nothing but facts“

Fuente: Elements of Chemistry (1790), pp. xviii
Contexto: We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

„Thus, while I thought myself employed only in forming a Nomenclature, and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.“

Fuente: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p.xiv

„When I began the following Work, my only object was to extend and explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry. While engaged in this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the justice of the following maxims of the Abbé de Condillac, in his System of Logic, and some other of his works. "We think only through the medium of words.—Languages are true analytical methods.—Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method.—The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."“

Fuente: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p.xiii

„The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists—and all those who abuse public credulity—is founded on errors in this type of calculation.“