Science, essence

John von Neuman, one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, believed that the sciences, in essence, do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret they mainly make models. By a model he meant a mathematical construct that, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. Stephen Hawking also believes that physical theories are just mathematical models we construct and that it is meaningless to ask whether they correspond to reality, just as it is to ask whether they predict observations. 

Natural Products. Various methods have been and continue to be employed to obtain useful materials from various parts of plants. Essences from plants are obtained by distillation (often with steam), direct expression (pressing), collection of exudates, enfleurage (extraction with fats or oils), and solvent extraction. Solvents used include typical chemical solvents such as alcohols and hydrocarbons. Liquid (supercritical) carbon dioxide has come into commercial use in the 1990s as an extractant to produce perfume materials. The principal forms of natural perfume ingredients are defined as follows the methods used to prepare them are described in somewhat general terms because they vary for each product and suppHer. This is a part of the industry that is governed as much by art as by science. 

Rosenhain (1917) published a book chapter entitled The modern science of metals, pure and applied , in which he makes much of the New Metallurgy (which invariably rates capital letters ). In essence, this is an eloquent plea for the importance of basic research on metals it is the diametric converse of the passage by Brearley which we met earlier. 

Thomas Kuhn, in an influential work on the history of science entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [knhntTO], used the phrase paradigm shift to describe the essence of what happens when one established way of looking at the world is - either suddenly, or over time - replaced by another. 

The essence of chemical science thus finds its full expression in the words of Leonardo da Vinci Where nature finishes producing its own species, man begins, using natural things and in harmony with this very nature, to create an infinity of species. J.-M. Lehn23... 

It graces the walls of lecture halls and laboratories of all types, from universities to industry. It is one of the most powerful icons of science. It captures the essence of chemistry in one elegant pattern. The periodic table provides a concise way of understanding how all known chemical elements react with one another and enter into chemical bonding, and it helps to explain the properties of each element that make it react in such a fashion. 

Quite naturally, novel techniques for manufacturing composite materials are in principal rare. The polymerization filling worked out at the Chemical Physics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences is an example of such techniques [49-51], The essence of the technique lies in that monomer polymerization takes place directly on the filler surface, i.e. a composite material is formed in the polymer forming stage which excludes the necessity of mixing constituents of a composite material. Practically, any material may be used as a filler the use of conducting fillers makes it possible to obtain a composite material having electrical conductance. The material thus obtained in the form of a powder can be processed by traditional methods, with polymers of many types (polyolefins, polyvinyl chloride, elastomers, etc.) used as a matrix. 

Nicolaou, K.C. Snyder, S.A. (2004) The Essence of Total Synthesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 11929-11936. 

Materials science and engineering is a vital field of endeavor for industry and defense and also with regard to its sheer intellectual content. This field is no longer a disparate collection of disciplines. Its unity and coherence can be seen in a tetrahedron this image captures the essence of the field. The four aspects to any materials-related activity are as follows ... 

Nietzsche is well known as a critic of Darwinism, but the essence of his critique is rarely examined. Indeed, Nietzsche s becoming is close to evolution, not an historical evolution or historicism to be sure, but an active evolution. This activism is suggested by the taskmaker who once bade himself, and not in vain Become what you are (Nietzsche, [1885] 1969, p. 252 also Nietzsche, 1989). For Nietzsche, science required antidotes to the stifling of life by the historical, by the malady of history (Nietzsche, [1874] 1983, p 121).7 One must remember, however, that Nietzsche also told his reader ... 

Though we believe that the priority of I.M. Lifshitz should be mentioned more often and expressly, Science itself cares not for such priority, and only the history of ideas is of essence. However, we cannot but come to the conclusion that the ideas I.M. Lifshitz developed in polymer physics had, generally, good fortune. They were really innovative, proven as true, and had left a clear trace. We think, I.M. Lifshitz would have been content. 

It has been well remarked of Ramsay that he stood to the outside world for an essentially British school of chemistry. To describe him as original would be like saying water is wet. He was of the essence of originality, and, during the time the writer knew him, entirely without any apparent sheet-anchor of fixed conviction or established belief in scientific doctrine, which at all times, in a science somewhat prone to let go sheet-anchors, made him a unique and almost incomprehensible personality. It is true that in his later years he suffered from the defects of these qualities, and he failed to criticize sufficiently his own ideas and experimental results before making them public. (Worthington 1916)... 

But to chemistry, the skies are wide open, for if it is a science, it is also an art. By the beauty of its objects, of course, but also in its very essence, by its ability to invent the future and to endlessly recreate itself. 

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