Professional Development Award in Science, Technology, and Society

莱斯教授是一名物理化学家，正在印第安纳大学的诺雷塔·柯尔特格教授的指导下，进行为期两年的化学史和化学哲学的半日制学习和研究计划。他正在对化学家、生物学家和物理学家提出的渗透作用的理论和机制解释进行比较，包括普通渗透和反常渗透。渗透是他进行过科学考察和研究的课题。它代表了一个对历史学家和科学哲学家具有相当大潜在价值的案例研究。根据这笔赠款，他将参加科学史和科学哲学的研究生调查和研讨会，以及这一领域基本和必要著作的有组织的阅读计划。赖斯教授在与印第安纳大学的历史和科学哲学系进行定期咨询的同时，将研究渗透的历史及其相互竞争的理论。这段历史相当简单，直到范特霍夫，他根据稀溶液和气体之间的类比进行了渗透压的热力学分析。然而，在这一点上，化学家们对渗透作用的机械论描述失去了兴趣，尽管生理学家保持了他们的兴趣，并对对立的解释进行了热烈的讨论。这些生理学家中的一些人主张拉伸溶剂理论，该理论似乎消除了热力学中活度概念的必要性。对所谓的反常渗透的兴趣，包括带电的膜和溶液中的离子之间的静电相互作用，在20世纪初发展起来，至今仍占据着化学家和生物学家的时间。赖斯教授的目标是调查来自不同学科或范式的科学家研究同一现象的方法、问题、信念和可接受的答案、模型和理论，方法是比较(1)不同范式相关主题内容的历史发展，(2)不同范式为讨论相同现象而形成的语言的语义或语言差异，(3)相似问题可接受答案的认识论差异。

Professor Rice, a physical chemist, is undertaking a two year half-time study and research program in the history and philosophy of chemistry under Professor Noretta Koertge of Indiana University. He is undertaking a comparison of theories and mechanistic explanations for osmosis, both ordinary and anomalous, proposed by chemists, biologists, and physicists. Osmosis is a topic on which he has carried out scientific research and study. It represents a case study of considerable potential value to historians and philosophers of science. Under this grant, he will participate in graduate surveys and seminars in the history and philosophy of science and an organized reading program of basic and essential works in this area. While undertaking regular consultation with the faculty in history and philosophy of science at Indiana University, Professor Rice will be examining the history of osmosis with its competing theories. This history is fairly straightforward up to the time of van't Hoff who carried out a thermodynamic analysis of osmotic pressure on the basis of the analogy between dilute solutions and gases. At this point, however, chemists lost interest in mechanistic descriptions of osmosis, although physiologists have maintained their interest and a lively discussion of rival interpretations. Some of these physiologists advocate the tensile solvent theory, which appears to eliminate the need for the concept of activity in thermodynamics. An interest in so-called anomalous osmosis, which includes electrostatic interactions between charged membranes and the ions in solution, developed in the early 1900s and still occupies the time of both chemists and biologists. Professor Rice's goal is to investigate approaches, questions, beliefs and acceptable answers, models and theories of scientists from different disciplines or paradigms studying the same phenomena by comparing (1) the historical development of the pertinent thematic content of different paradigms,(2) the semantic or linguistic differences in the languages developed by different paradigms to discuss the same phenomena, and (3) the epistemological differences in acceptable answers to similar questions.