Mechanism disciplinary

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Dynamics, namely, the mechanism of chemical reactivity, was not the only conceptual core to chemistry. We might focus as well on the concepts of chemical "species" and chemical "constitution," and indeed these concepts figure in the history that follows. However, the dynamics of matter was a kernel at the heart of chemistry, with varying paces of growth. It constituted both disputed and common territory for practitioners of chemical philosophy and natural philosophy. More recently, it provided a point of controversy and an area of compromise for practitioners of the disciplines of physics and chemistry. Thus, the dynamics of matter is a theme providing especially important insights into the relations between chemistry and physics as intellectual systems, at the same time that the social dynamics of individuals and groups also helps to explain disciplinary development.8... 

For the Paris and the London-Manchester schools, the local culture, educational tradition, laboratory research programs, theoretical systems, and personal networks that helped forge a school identity and a disciplinary identity are worked out in some detail. In addition to constructing an account of a new branch of theoretical chemistry, focused on organic reaction mechanisms, these chapters suggest important differences in national traditions within the disciplinary field of physical organic chemistry. 

The concerns of this chapter fit squarely within the framework of disciplinary identity discussed previously. Here we can see some of the mechanisms by which individuals and groups have created or reinforced distinctions and identities among themselves. I largely leave the conceptual aims, language, and strategies characteristic of nineteenth-century chemistry for discussion in chapters 3 and 4. This is not to say that the epistemological aims and technical content of chemistry are completely ignored in this chapter, but they are not emphasized. 

In its disciplinary development at the end of the nineteenth century, physical chemistry served as a bridge, not a wedge, between the mathematical abstractions of theoretical physics and the metaphorical descriptions of organic chemistry. Not only through novel theories but also through control of new instrumentation, much of it electrical and optical in nature, physical chemistry was to revitalize and transform techniques in the chemical laboratory and theories of chemical explanation. Notably for our concerns, speculations about reaction mechanisms in hydrocarbon chemistry were to begin to proliferate in the early 1900s. 

The aim of this chapter is to analyze aspects of late-nineteenth-century chemistry that led Lespieau to organize his own school of research in theoretical chemistry, to delineate the members and characteristics of this disciplinary school, and to assess its achievements over a period of some forty years. Particularly given the so-called positivist bias in French chemistry against the introduction of physical atomism and physical mechanisms into late-nineteenth-century chemical theory, the history of Lespieau s avowedly "theoretical" school of chemistry helps delineate styles and practices among specific, nationally distinct schools within the wider field of theoretical chemistry. 

Robert Lespieau s aim to establish a disciplinary specialization of "chemical theories" in France was partially realized in the work of some of his students, especially Dupont, Prevost, and Kirrmann. For the first time, a clearly defined research school in France practiced the art of "theoretical chemistry" in their study of organic structure and reaction mechanisms. They self-consciously employed physical methods and apparatus, and they stayed in contact with a small network of physicists who were teachers, friends of Lespieau, or immediate colleagues. They had a laboratory terrain that was the home meeting place, no matter what their current affiliation. They had a common history that could be traced back generation by generation in the Ecole Normale laboratory to Berthollet, the "father" of chemical mechanics. 

This is a history, like histories of other disciplinary identities, in which there were old traditions to be overcome, new ideas to promulgate, villains to subdue, and laurels for the victors. Our heroes and heroines set out to create a theoretical chemistry that would resolve the centuries-old challenge of creating a mechanical chemistry, a truly philosophical chemistry, based in principles of matter and motion that were acceptable both to chemistry and to physics. In this, there was considerable success by the mid-1930s, before the development of quantum chemistry, which only confirmed the approach of the London-Manchester school. 

However, by the 1920s, as we have seen, a self-conscious use of electron theory in a dynamical interpretation of the old static chemical molecule recovered dynamical theoretical foundations for organic chemists in what became the disciplinary specialization of physical organic chemistry. The theory of electron valency and organic reaction mechanisms, in particular, the theory of mesomerism, developed as a new theoretical chemistry, a little prior to wave mechanics, along a largely independent track. 

Applying this idea to our history, we remember that physical chemistry has employed disciplinary methods and aims taken from both physics and chemistry and that its practice has been one of striking epistemological pluralism. Laboratory investigations aimed at understanding chemical reaction mechanisms profited from the selection of mechanical and kinetic hypotheses from physics that transformed the static molecule of classical organic chemistry into the dynamic molecule of physical organic chemistry. 

Nevertheless, recent advances in research in this multi-disciplinary field have not yet been collected together. While there are plenty of reference books available on composite materials in general, few of them are devoted specifically to composite interface science and mechanics. It is hoped that this book adds to the research effort by bringing recent developments in the field together in one convenient single volume. It is intended to create a comprehensive reference work from both the materials science and mechanics perspectives. 

The mechanisms for carrying out the research required are not clear. These mechanisms must be cost-effective while involving as wide an array of talent as possible. It is evident from the meeting of experts which generated this report that cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional approaches to meeting these needs must be fomented. 

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