Scientific Word Processing System

Dessy, R. A. "Scientific Word Processing". Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 1987,1, 309-319. 

To cover the specialized area of chemical structures in detail, authors could provide only cursory coverage of mathematical expressions and tabular material. Many of the scientific word processing packages that I mentioned and some software the book discusses in detail (especially ChemText from Molecular Design Limited) will handle scientific and graphics material other than chemical structures. This book does not cover well-known graphics systems that handle chemical structures or chemical reactions these systems are already well-documented (6, 7). 

Finally, in this Introduction, it is worthwhile to reproduce one of the several current definitions, in the Oxford English Dictionary, of the word simulate To imitate the conditions or behaviour of (a situation or process) by means of a model, especially for the purpose of study or training specifically, to produce a computer model of (a process) . The Dictionary quotes this early (1958) passage from a text on high-speed data processing A computer can simulate a warehouse, a factory, an oil refinery, or a river system, and if due regard is paid to detail the imitation can be very exact . Clearly, in 1958 the scientific uses of computer simulation were not yet thought worthy of mention, or perhaps the authors did not know about them. 

E.A. Kotomin, Dynamic Processes in Condensed Molecular Systems (Word Scientific, Singapore, 1990) p. 414. 

In the years following Berzelius, a number of further examples of catalytic action were discovered, but scientific appreciation of their mode of action had to await the arrival of experimental and theoretical techniques for the study of reaction rates. It then became possible for F.W. Ostwald to define a catalyst as a substance that increases the rate at which a chemical system approaches equilibrium, without being consumed in the process. This handy form of words encapsulates the essential truth of the catalytic effect, and has stood the test of time it carries with it a number of important implications that we should now explore. The first of these is that the position of equilibrium attained in a catalysed reaction is exactly the same as that which would ultimately be arrived at in its absence this must be so because the equilibrium constant K is determined by the Gibbs free energy of the process, and this in turn is fixed by the enthalpy and entropy changes, thus ... 

The next aspect (in terms of increasing complexity) is the selection and combination of individual words having a key role in individual clauses, like the subject-verb, subject-verb-object and adjective-noun combinations [25]. Errors in this regard imply incorrect expression of aspects associated both with the immediate content and with the scientific method confusion [25, 26] between systems and processes (4), use of verbs typical of events in relation to objects or to physical quantities, like to occur in relation to rate (5), use of verbs expressing something that the given subject cannot do (6-8), or omission of key words in pairs that need to be coupled to convey a meaning, e.g. the omission of the noun in adjective + noun pairs (state and spin are omitted in (9) and (10) respectively) ... 

More sophisticated number communication systems (as opposed to numbers themselves) are a cultural invention, such that in Western society, we think of numbers quite differently, and have developed a complex system for talking and describing them. Most scientifically and mathematically minded people believe that numbers and mathematics exist beyond our experience and that advancing mathematics is a process of discovery rather than invention. In other words, if we met an alien civilisation, we would find that they had calculus too, and it would work in exactly Ihe same way as ours. What is a cultural invention is our system of niunerical and mathematical notation. This is to some extent arbitrary while we can all easily imderstand the mathematics of classical Greece, this is usually only after their notational systems have been translated into Ihe modem system Pythagoras certainly never wrote + = z. Today, we have a single commonly... 

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