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The Natural PhilosopherA Bridge Between Specialists here are two ways to approach any problem. One is to draw on Tthe current available body of knowledge. The other is to learn more, on the premise that a better solution will result. From this simple beginning, one can build in his mind a system in which some people spend all their time using the current body of knowledge, others spend all their time learning more. From this, one can build users specializing in this or that, learners specializing in this or that. People being people, each of these specialists will tend to talk intensively only with others just like himself. When he goes outside his specialty, he will do so at a relatively shallow level because to do otherwise requires considerable effort. And outside his specialty, he will think in stereotypes, for he has no basis from which to do otherwise. Individuals therefore tend to become estranged from others-even from others in their own profession who direct their efforts in different directions. This estrangement is accompanied by the creation of a pecking order of values which says that some activities are more worthy of the label of professional than others. Naturally, knowing our own work best, we tend to classify that high on the scale; conversely, that about which we know the least will tend to be classed far down the list. This description of a social structure applies to politics, religion, countries-and to chemistry and c h e k c a l engineering as well. We all recognize the internecine wars between the theorist and experimentalist, idealist and pragmatist, chemist and engineer. By this definition of a social system, a n appropriate way to break down some of these tendencies is to communicate across specialist lines with a message of substance (it having been proved that general communications tend to reinforce stereotypes rather than break them down). We therefore introduce you to our lead article this month. Kenneth Hickman is a keen observer and gifted experimentalist who reasons intuitively rather than mathematically. He has also attracted able coworkers and inspired them to observe nature with wonder and with open eyes. By our definitions, he is a natural philosopher, a rather rare person to find these days in the physical sciences. Liquid boules are .not directly relevant to chemical process or product development and design. I n this sense, they hold the same position as the inviscid fluid, the adiabatic process, the infinite medium, or any other idealized model. But to many of us locked into a life of time limitations, economics, and other constraints that tend to dominate our thinking, Hickman’s study of boules comes across as a man’s love affair with nature, and his unraveling of their complexities reads like a well planned mystery story. I t is a face of chemical engineering that seldom surfaces, but a face that, in our opinion, “cornmunicates across specialist lines with a message of substance.’’
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