Chemophobia Part One: A Chemophilic Society

In the late 19^th century, and especially in the early 20^th century, the Second Industrial Revolution took off, building off of the successes of the First Industrial Revolution. This phase of the industrial revolution was distinctive in that many of the most significant innovations came from applied science. And so, science continued to grow and continued to improve the standard of living of those in the industrializing areas. From physics came electricity, telecommunications, and the light bulb. From chemistry came fertilizer, new and stronger alloys, and petroleum distillation. Other innovations include the automobile, bicycles, paper. I could go on, but you get the point: science was helping to make peoples’ lives better.

And the prevailing attitudes of the time reflected that. This blog is about how people respond to changes and new ideas, so this time period offers us a near-perfect natural experiment, in which people had their standards of living drastically changed by science. The result was a growing appreciation for science in the society of the time. This change is reflected in an important philosophy of the time: modernism.

Modernism was a philosophy that flourished in the early 20^th century, growing out of the massive changes of the Second Industrial Revolution. One of the principles of modernism is the idea that technology and science would serve to better man’s life and help man gain power. As this site explains, that thought was an extension of the experience man had in the modern world, in which technology had expanded the scope of his abilities. Technology, at this time, was seen as a driving factor for positive, not dangerous, changes.

Of course, when the society’s views of the technology changed for the positive, it only became a matter of time before a change in the society’s habits was seen, and that was exactly what happened. Especially in the 1920s, with its growing economy and affluence, consumption of this new technology took off. One can even go so far as to say that society overreacted in response to the technological change. (That overreaction is a theme you will be seeing again in the next few posts.) Bakelite, which we mentioned earlier, became extremely popular and was soon used to produce, as this article mentions, just about everything. The alloy technology of the Second Industrial Revolution allowed for automobiles to be built and popularized so much that, in the 1920s, families would choose buying cars, the status symbol of the time, over simple necessities like bathtubs. This was a very high point for views technology and chemistry in particular, evidenced by DuPont’s popular 1935 slogan: "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry."

This attitude would carry into the beginning of the post-WWII years. As Jon Entine explores, the return of abundance in the postwar years led to increased demand for consumer goods that chemistry could supply. The pharmaceutical industry became more sophisticated in this time. Agriculturalists used pesticides and fertilizers to launch the Green Revolution. But the seeds of chemophobia were being sown, and this level of chemophilia would not survive much longer.