In the summertime when the weather was fine, the chemical philosophers
gathered once again to discuss the under-currents of their science. Chemical
philosophy is not so much revolutionising the way chemists work but providing a
quiet insight into the workings of the science and what chemistry means.
One of the main problems facing chemical philosophy is the disparity between
philosophy and physical science that ought not to exist. At one time, philosophy
was defined as physical science and indeed the PhD is all about deep thought;
isn't it? There are few working scientists around today though with the time or
budgetary freedom to consider the in-depth workings of science or its
implications beyond the limited self-discovery provided by the likes of drug
development, material gain in materials science or the application of data in
patent applications.
The growing philosophy of science movement, however, and its chemical cousin,
can allow the chemist to stand back and think about their science rather than
simply doing it. It isn't as if chemistry has not reached a point at which it
can take a well-earned break - just look at the Chemical Abstracts Service web
site for instance, which now has more than 21 million registered compound…
Indeed, chemical philosophers such as Eric Scerri at the Department of
Chemistry, Purdue University, believe it is essential that chemists take the
time to stand back from the task of creating yet more entries in the CAS
registry and instead look more closely at what underlies the scientific problems
they face today. By adopting such an attitude, it might be possible to solve
countless problems away from the benchtop. The ability to understand vitally
important molecules such as DNA is at the heart of this philosophical approach.
Davis Baird of the Department of Philosophy at South Carolina presents an
argument for the idea that scientific instruments are themselves scientific
knowledge. What he means by that is that the devices that scientists use to
measure and model their data should be seen on a par with theory. This is more
than the fundamental quantum science concept of the act of observation impinging
on the results that lies at the heart of the Uncertainty Principle. What Baird
offers is the idea that the devices themselves are just as valid as the results
in terms of providing a perspective on a particular scientific view of reality.
As an example, of this seemingly rather esoteric idea, Baird looks closely at
the common-or-garden 'ball and stick' models, with which no chemist can be
unfamiliar. A close relative of the ball and stick system was that used by
Watson and Crick in their well-known construction of the DNA double helix and
its crystallographic verification by Rosalind Franklyn - who incidentally is one
of the greatest unsung heroes of chemistry given that the Nobel Prize cannot be
handed out posthumously…but that's another tale. The point, explains Baird, is
that W&C's model of DNA is itself a valid scientific element - in other words it
is a result despite not being an experimentally measured set of data points.
With such a scientific result it is possible to interpret the properties of DNA
and to make predictions about its behaviour. The W&C model is not only an
artistic representation of the actual molecule - as aesthetically pleasing as it
may be - but a device through which science can learn about the actual without
the need to resort to abstract theory. Like other models and machines in science
it can be manipulated and so is in fact crucial to the process of discovery.
While we're thinking about DNA, it is important to realise that biology provides
a rather different philosophical perspective in science with the survival of the
fittest, the struggle for survival, sex and death, being its main themes from
the molecular level up to the organism. Physics too provides a view of the
so-called heat death of the universe - the gradual entropic winding down of some
huge machine. Chemistry, on the other hand, according to Theodor Benfey of
Guilford College and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, is different and this is
perhaps why it has presented a different set of challenges to those who want to
think about it more deeply.
Rather than providing a view of struggling reality inexorably heading towards
disorder and death, chemistry has always been about structure and beauty and if
we consider the aims of the alchemists - life. After all, their search for
beauty in the form of gold from base materials and the philosopher's stone that
would bring them immortality was always about life and aesthetics, and
admittedly money and power. Even today, there are many chemists side-tracked
from the mundane task of adding to the vast database of knowledge when a
beautiful structure surfaces from the seething mass of molecules in their
laboratories. Just think of the fullerenes, for instance, and how their
intrinsic symmetry has captured the essence of chemical beauty, even in the
popular perception.
The very molecular structures offer immense food for thought. Ursula Klein of
the Max Planck Institute for The History of Science in Berlin presents an
argument that is concomitant with Baird's but steps back more than a century.
She believes that the chemical formulae devised by Jacob Berzelius in the early
nineteenth century were more than mere abbreviations and representations of
previously existing knowledge.
She says that chemical formulae were in themselves tools - albeit paper ones -
that could produce models of reactions and the constitution of organic
substances. Analogously to Baird's consideration of instrumentation and the more
esoteric devices, including the Watson-Crick model of DNA, chemical formulae in
the nineteenth century helped chemists understand and consequently create
chemistry itself. If I can mention the CAS registry once more without it
sounding like an advert, try to imagine how difficult the task of handling just
a handful of those 21million plus compounds would be without their chemical
formulae - names and numbers are fine but the chemist's true creativity is
demonstrated in the shape and structure of the molecules they create.
Just...think about it.
The ISPC site can be found at
http://www.georgetown.edu/earleyj/ISPC.html.