PURGING LANGUAGE. “When Antoine Lavoisier, Antoine-François Fourcroy, Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Claude Berthollet put forth their revolutionary new nomenclature in 1787, they were proposing not only a new system of naming, but one of classification as well, which exemplified a shift towards considering the fundamental, hidden principles of nature, rather than the effects that a substance produced. “Principles” now referred to the ultimate constituents of matter: hydrogen, oxygen, etc.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786