Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
edited by
Jeffrey Kovac University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
Chemical Sciences in the 20th Century: Bridging Boundaries edited by Carsten Reinhardt Wiley–VCH: Weinheim, 2001. 281 pp. ISBN 3-527-30271-9. $75.00. reviewed by Pedro J. Bernal
The essays collected in this book were originally presented in a 1999 conference entitled “Between Physics and Chemistry: Chemical Sciences in the Twentieth Century” organized by the Commission on the History of Modern Chemistry (CHMC). The essays are divided into three parts: Theoretical Chemistry and Quantum Chemistry, From Radiochemistry to Nuclear Chemistry and Cosmochemistry, and Solid State Chemistry and Biotechnology. In each of these sections the authors set out to connect the chemical sciences in the 20th century with other disciplines such as mathematics and quantum physics in part one; astronomy, nuclear chemistry, and geology in part two; and physics, biology, and technology in part three. An extensive essay on the history of organic chemistry in the 20th century precedes part one. The book is helped a great deal by an excellent introduction to each of the sections and by an invaluable essay by the editor describing the structure and aim of the book. Each essay contains a detailed list of references. The foreword, by Roald Hoffmann, deals with the question of why a scientist should be concerned with the history of science. The essays in this book range widely and it is impossible to do them justice in a review such as this. They are all ultimately about the boundaries between chemistry and other fields of science in the 20th century but they also deal with broader issues. In part one, for example, which deals with the relationship of chemistry to quantum physics and mathematics, we find discussions of philosophical issues such as reductionism (the idea that chemistry can “in principle” be reduced to physics) and the ontological status of the con-
cept of resonance and the chemical bond. Topics such as the role of textbooks in defining the boundaries of scientific subfields and the influence of what may be called “national temper” in the selection and approach to scientific problems is considered. This is done in two essays that detail the contribution of Giovanni Battista Bonino to the development of quantum chemistry in Italy and one on Jean Barriol and the theoretical chemistry laboratory in Nancy, France. In short, these essays talk about the boundaries between chemistry and other natural sciences, but in doing so they illustrate how philosophical, political, historical, social, cultural, and technological considerations are a central part of the story. This book is an important contribution to the history of the chemical sciences in the 20th century and it should be in any library collection dedicated to the history of science. To conclude, I’d like to return to the question with which Roald Hoffmann starts his foreword to this book. Why do active chemists need the history of chemistry? His answer is that the study of the history of science can be justified on pedagogical and moral grounds. The students are starving for it, he claims, and knowing a bit of history makes you a better person. A more tolerant and empathic one, as he puts it. But does it make you a better scientist? That seems to me the question that needs to be answered if the history of science is ever to become an integral part of the way in which scientists are trained. My own answer to that is as follows: One does not need to know history to be a good scientist. One needs to know the history of science in order to understand science as an activity. It follows that the history of science is more important to those who need to understand science than to those who are being trained to do it. As desirable as it is, the history of science is not likely to become part of the training of scientists any time soon but it should be an integral part of the way we teach science to the nonscientist. That seems to me the ultimate pedagogical justification. Pedro J. Bernal is in the Chemistry Department, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 79 No. 4 April 2002 • Journal of Chemical Education
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