Structural formulas and explanation in organic chemistry
Structural formulas and explanation in organic chemistry
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有机化学结构式及解释
DOI：
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发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
W. Goodwin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
W. Goodwin
有机化学家已经能够对他们所研究的现象形成一个强有力的理论理解；然而，在这个领域中使用的主要理论设备不是数学方程或定律，而在大多数其他物理科学中是这样。相反，它是图表，特别是结构公式和势能图，在学科中具有解释力。为了理解这是怎么回事，有必要调查有机化学中使用的图表的性质，以及这些图表如何在学科解释中使用。我将以描述结构式在有机化学中使用的一些主要方式开始本文。接下来，我将提出一个有机化学解释的模型，并描述结构式和势能图如何有助于这些解释。接下来将有几个例子来支持我对图解在解释有机化学中的作用的抽象描述。特别是，我将考虑在解释烯烃稳定性时对“超共轭”的吸引力，以及如何发展“环应变”的概念来解释环状化合物的相对稳定性。
Organic chemists have been able to develop a robust, theoretical understanding of the phenomena they study; however, the primary theoretical devices employed in this field are not mathematical equations or laws, as is the case in most other physical sciences. Instead it is diagrams, and in particular structural formulas and potential energy diagrams, that carry the explanatory weight in the discipline. To understand how this is so, it is necessary to investigate both the nature of the diagrams employed in organic chemistry and how these diagrams are used in the explanations of the discipline. I will begin this paper by characterizing some of the major ways that structural formulas used in organic chemistry. Next I will present a model of the explanations in organic chemistry and describe how both structural formulas and potential energy diagrams contribute to these explanations. This will be followed by several examples that support my abstract account of the role of diagrams in the explanations of organic chemistry. In particular, I will consider both the appeal to ‘hyperconjugation’ in the explanation of alkene stability and how the idea of ‘ring strain’ was developed to explain the relative stability of cyclic compounds.