Imagining the Molecular World: The History and Philosophy of Chemical Structure

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Imagining the Molecular World:The History and Philosophy of Chemical StructureProject SummaryPI will investigate the historical emergence and growth of ideas concerning thepresumed structures of molecules in the 1850s and 1860s, focusing especially on thesimultaneous and partly independent work of such figures as the German August Kekulethe Russian Aleksandr Butlerov, and the Scot Archibald Couper. Intellectural Merit The research will shed important new light on a crucial and neglected turning point in the history of science, the earliest empirically-supported investigations into details of the invisibly small world of atoms and molecules. The theory of chemical structure not only transformed theoretical science, it also was immediately applied to practical concerns, becoming the earliest instance of a pure science generating technologies that transformed national industries. The subject has broad significance: first, as a case study of independent simultaneous scientific discovery demonstrating the tension between international internal/cognitive developments and the cultural embeddedness of science; second, as a crucial connecting thread between history and philosophy of science, namely the earliest example of successful distant inference to the unseen and unseeable world of molecules; and third, as an instructive way to examine the neglected subject of the role in scientific discovery of images and imagination, a revealing reflection of the creative character of scientific activity. The historical emergence of structural chemistry is the best possible test case for investigating this inner vision (the minds eye), for structural chemistry requires routine manipulation of mental images and physical representations, and the productive use of the imagination, precisely because its investigative objects are beyond direct perception. Broader Impacts. The work described in this proposal promises to have broader social impacts in three different areas: practical epistemology, science pedagogy, and public understanding of science. The twin (and tightly interconnected) investigative foci on the nature of distant inference and on the productive use of mental images are powerfully relevant for associated studies in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. The research described here is directed towards the question, how does the creative scientific mind actually produce new science? And the method used is neither experimental psychology nor abstract philosophy, but careful empirically-grounded history. By the same token, a new and deeper understanding of how science has succeeded in the past may suggest significant improvements in how science is taught to students at all levels in the present. The material in this proposal demonstrates the importance not only of deep engagement with the empirical evidence and careful logical analysis, but also of more obviously creative and playful aspects of mind, including intuition and imagination. Finally, the project will provide material to help scientists, historians, philosophers, and popular writers to present a fuller, more accurate, and more appealing image of science to the American public. Most Americans do not understand very well how science works, or even what science is. The attractive, holistic, interdisciplinary character of the research described here should have considerable public appeal, and be a good step in the direction of a better public understanding and appreciation of science.