Logic, Psychology, and Serendipity of Scientific Discoveries - An Interlude

Dans le champ des observations, le hasard ne esprits prepares. (In the field of observations, only the prepared mind.) 

In Section 8.3 the mechanism of heterolytic dediazoniation of arenediazonium ions was discussed, and it was shown that the hypothesis of Crossley et al. (1940) that the aryl cation is the characteristic metastable intermediate in those reactions was not consistent with some experimental facts found in 1952 by Lewis and Hinds. Nevertheless, these facts did not have significant influence on the scientific community, which continued to accept the original and apparently convincing hypothesis of the rate-limiting formation of an aryl cation as an intermediate as correct . The incom-patabilities of various mechanistic hypotheses with experimental facts were, however, discussed in some detail only two decades later (Zollinger, 1973 a). Another year passed before I performed a crucial experiment that refuted a number of hypotheses (Bergstrom et al., 1974, 1976).  

Diazo Chemistry I Aromatic and Heteroaromatic Compounds. By Heinrich Zollinger Copyright 1994 VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH ISBN 3-527-29213-6 

9 Logic, Psychology, and Serendipity of Scientific Discoveries - An Interlude 

Popper s theory has been criticized by Thomas Kuhn (1962, 1969), who asserts that the development of science proceeds in revolutions hypotheses and theories are not refuted and replaced by new ones instead the scientific community will accept a new, more convincing, or better presented hypothesis without the old one having been disproved. 

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Logic, Psychology and Serendipity of Scientific Discoveries — An Interlude... 

This book contains what I call an interlude on the logic, the psychology, and the serendipity of scientific discoveries. Readers may wonder what the correlation is between that short Chapter 9 and diazo chemistry. The specific reason for including it was to elucidate the dediazoniation mechanism of aromatic diazonium ions, but I expanded this mechanistic discussion (Sec. 8.3) in the interlude by including general aspects originating in the philosophy of science as developed by Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn, ideas which, in my opinion, should be better known by all scientists working in chemical research. 

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