Scientific Explanation and the Emergence of Theoretical Chemistry: The Manchester and Paris Schools

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There are many different factors which affect the development of modern science. Not only are there the intellectual factors which drive a particular discipline, but there are also influences of adjacent fields, the philosophical milieu in which the science is imbedded, and the institutional and social factors which influence the direction of research, the methods to be used, and the selection of problems to be addressed. Professor Nye is examining this whole complex of influences in her study of the development of theoretical chemistry at the turn of this century. Specifically, she is looking at the interactions between physics and chemistry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the aims of explanation in the modern physical sciences, especially the nature of chemical explanation in contrast to explanation in physics; and the emergence in the twentieth century of a "theoretical chemistry." She is approaching these problems through both the conceptual history of science and the social history of science, analyzing explanations and theories in chemical textbooks, monographs and papers; as well as scientific correspondence and statements on the aims and methods of chemistry and physics; and records and histories of laboratories and research schools. As a detailed case study within the larger project, she is working on a study of aspects of the historical development of physical organic chemistry with emphasis on France and England from roughly 1880- 1950. This case study compares two distinct research schools, over three generations, one loosely associated with training in London and Manchester and the second with education at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.