Talk:Elective Affinities

Question

Why is the initial "A" capitalized and why is the title plural? Usual Wikipedia conventions call for lower case and singular except when there are special reasons to do otherwise. Michael Hardy 18:37, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The talk page says this is about a novel, but the first paragraph says it's about a concept in chemistry. Which is right? Michael Hardy 18:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Because it's an article on a book called Elective Affinities that was based on a theory called elective affinity (which in modern terms is called chemical affinity). --Sadi Carnot 00:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is mess!

If this article is supposed to be about Goethe's sociological theories and fiction writing, then it needs to say so in the first sentence. If it's supposed to be about chemistry, then that other stuff should be deleted. Michael Hardy 21:49, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

M.H., possibly you are misinterpreting things. Goethe’s Elective Affinities is three different articles in one and all contained in his 1809 book. The modern chemical theory is called chemical affinity. In the 18th and into the 19th century, however, it was called Elective Affinities (or elective attraction) the quintessential book being Torbern Bergman’s 1775 textbook A Dissertation on Elective Affinities. Elective affinities, according to Lavoisier in his 1787 Elements of Chemistry, "holds the fame place with regard to the other branches of chemistry." Goethe, in turn, based his novel on Bergman’s book, and the entire novella is sewn together with the chemical theory affinities, “the force of reaction”. There have been several books written on this, e.g. “Goethe’s use of chemical theory in his Elective Affinities” (ch. 18 by Jeremy Adler) from the 1990 book Romanticism and the Sciences, which goes through all the chemists and chemical affinity reactions Goethe used in the novel.

On the opening page of Astrida Tantillo’s 2001 book Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the Critics, for instance, it states:

“From the time of its publication to today, Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities, 1809), has been aroused a storm of interpretive confusion. Readers fiercely debate the role of the chemical theory of elective affinities presented in the novel. Some argue that it suggest a philosophy of nature that is rooted in fate. Others maintain that it is about free choice. Others believe that the chemical the chemical theory is merely a structural device that allows the author to foreshadow events in the novel and bears no relevance to the greater issues of the novel.”

Also, try reading science historian Mi Gyung Kim’s 600-page, 2003 chemistry history book Affinity, That Elusive Dream – A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution, which quotes Goethe on the opening page, to get a better picture of this intricate term. In short, the science of elective affinity was then what chemical thermodynamics and quantum chemistry are now, the latter two have supplanted the former.

In sum, this is a big topic, certainly more of the needs storyline in it, e.g. here’s the German Wiki version (English Google translation), but my efforts are only to clarify both the book and the theory used to write the book. I hope this helps. I’ll try to make the article better soon. --Sadi Carnot 00:44, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That German version says right at the beginning that it's a novel. This version did not do that at all (now it does). Michael Hardy 01:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I hope its better now. Elective Affinities is a difficult topic. I first heard about it several years ago in the footnotes of Belgian Nobelist and chemical engineer Ilya Prigogine's 1984 book Order Out of Chaos, where he states:

“ B.J. Dobbs, The Foundation of Newton's Alchemy (1975), also examined the role of the "mediator" by which two substances are made "sociable"; we may recall here the importance of the mediator in Goethe's Elective Affinities (Engl. trans. Greenwood, 1976). For what concerns chemistry, Goethe was not far from Newton. ”

Let me know if see any other areas for improvement. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 01:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

You should put the chemistry in a Background section like the German article. That would make the introduction less confusing. If you end up with too much material in the section, you can split it off into a separate article and use a {{main}} template with a summary here . --Kkmurray 02:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Good suggestion, the main template might work good when the article gets longer. There's already the chemical affinity and heat and affinity, most of which I wrote, that cover most of the scientific aspects. I'll try to work on this slowly by adding storyline to the intro and more clarification. The problem is that the Goethe's book is riddled with chemistry. In a letter to his friend, the composer Karl Friedrich Zelter, for example, Goethe wrote that he had not only placed numerous different elements within the text, but that many of these were hidden within it and that past the transparent or non-transparent veils in the novel one may be able to see the ‘truly intended Gestalt’. Some authors actually go through each chapter and assign a different chemist (and their affinity theories) to each chapter in the book. I'll work more on it later.--Sadi Carnot 11:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I hope that the article is now somewhat more logical and organized. I've expanded both the lead paragraph and the Plot section with material translated from the German Wikipedia article dealing with this book. Objectivesea (talk) 03:11, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Image

Might it not be better to have a picture of the first edition of the novel included on the article in place of the current one? Is there a reason that this isn't possible? JohnHillEU (talk) 00:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely, if one can be found. The idea that a cover of a random translation of the novel helps the reader in any way is laughable.—Kww(talk) 00:38, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

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