Contents 2 Value disciplines

They vary from discipline to discipline and from time to time. As might be expected, although appropriate in the context of their development, such standards are often likely to be incomplete or otherwise inappropriate for universal application because they are value-laden rules for making choices (vide infra). Through use, however, they become valuable to those who use them. Often these standards also become a cause of contention when, in interdisciplinary settings, practical knowledge must be extracted from experimental data. Thus, controversies often arise when scientists trained in different disciplines influence public policies or make decisions based on the conversion standards in which they were trained. 

Taken together, these papers provide insights on the structure and cognitive content of twentieth century chemistry. They all deserve careful reading and, rather than trying to summarize them, I have organized my presentation around a number of salient issues which relate them to one another the value and status of physical evidence in chemical disciplines the relationship between the identification of an element and its production the contrast between natural and artificial elements and the disciplinary dynamics that attended all of these changes. 

At the conclusion of the ASI, most participants felt that the meeting was successful. Because we came from many different disciplines, we were novices in many of the sessions, and the lectures had to be more descriptive and less detailed than they are in more specialized conferences. Some of us came away with a deep respect for the difficulties and subtle aspects of another discipline. In I.I. Rabi s 1955 Morris Loeb Lecture he stated his belief that the value content of science or literary scholarship lies not in the subject matter alone, or even in greater part. It lies chiefly in the spirit and living tradition in which these disciplines are pursued. The spirit is almost always conditioned by the subject. It is hoped that this collection will convey the spirit of the Institute and hold the interest of novices and professional ice scientists. 

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