Resumo A Revolução Química possui diversas interpretações na historiografia da ciência, associadas ao desenvolvimento e às mudanças pelas quais passou a História da Ciência. Na literatura do ensino de química com viés histórico, trabalhos recentes defendem abordagem a partir das práticas científicas. Neste trabalho, buscamos apresentar a Revolução Química sob a interpretação da História Cultural da Ciência, apontando implicações e potenciais de mudança no ensino desse episódio na escola básica e como isso se articula com a abordagem baseada nas práticas científicas. Ao final, trazemos reflexões sobre o que essa reorientação historiográfica pode significar, de uma forma mais ampla, para a reaproximação entre História e ensino de Química.

Abstract The Chemical Revolution has several interpretations in the Historiography of Science, associated with the development and the changes which the History of Science has experienced over the years. In the literature of chemistry education with historical approach, recent works champion the idea of teaching chemistry based on scientific practices. In this work, we seek to present the Chemical Revolution under the interpretation of the Cultural History of Science, pointing out the implications and potential of change in the teaching of this episode in the elementary school and how does it articulate with teaching based in scientific practices. Also, we discuss what this historiographical reorientation might mean, more broadly, to the rapprochement between History of Chemistry and Chemistry Teaching.

This article shows the genesis of the law of volumes of combining gases, formulated by Gay-Lussac in 1808, and how it allowed the expression of the composition of organic compounds in terms of whole numbers of volumes, thus leading to the first classification of organic compounds, formulated by Dumas and Boullay in 1828. It was from this work that Organic Chemistry began to shed its purely taxonomic nature, analogous to what prevailed in Natural History, and to then develop in a vigorous and continuous process, initiating what may be the most significant historical phenomenon in the History of Chemistry of the nineteenth century.

The present work discusses the appearance of the concepts of valence and molecular structure, and describes the appropriation and evolution of the concept of molecule in the period following the publication of Avogadro's Hypothesis. The point of reference is the development of what became known as Organic Chemistry, which encompassed Pharmacy, Physiological Chemistry, Animal and Plant Chemistry, Chemistry of Dyestuffs, Agricultural Chemistry, and the fledgling Organic Synthesis industry in the early 19th century. The theories formulated in these areas and the quest for accurate atomic weights led to those concepts of valence and molecular structure and to a precise differentiation between atom and molecule.