Some Philosophical Observations

A useful method for developing this sort of feeling for the relationship between structures and actual compounds is to check your perception of particular substances with their properties as given in a chemical handbook. 

Times have changed. Extensive thermochemical data are now available, the procedures are well understood, and the results both useful and interesting. We shall make considerable use of thermodynamics in our exposition of organic chemistry. We believe it will greatly improve your understanding of why some reactions go and others do not. 

Finally, you should recognize that you almost surely will have some problems with the following chapters in making decisions as to how much time and emphasis you should put on the various concepts, principles, facts, and so on, that we will present for you. As best we can, we try to help you by pointing out that this idea, fact, and so on, is especially important, or words to that effect. Also, we have tried to underscore important information by indicating the breadth of its application to other scientific disciplines as well as to technology. In addition, we have caused considerable material to be set in smaller type and indented. Such material includes extensions of basic ideas and departments of fuller explanation. In many places, the exposition is more complete than it needs to be for you at the particular location in the book. However, you will have need for the extra material later and it will be easier to locate and easier to refresh your memory on what came before, if it is in one place. We will try to indicate clearly what you should learn immediately and what you will want to come back for later. 

Our text contains many exercises. You will encounter some in the middle of the chapters arranged to be closely allied to the subject at hand. Others will be in the form of supplementary exercises at the end of the chapters. Many of the exercises will be drill many others will extend and enlarge upon the text. The more difficult problems are marked with a star ( ). 

Sienko and R. A Plane, Chemical Principles and Properties, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1974. 

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The literature of science is replete with models. This variety enables one to make some interesting observations. Thus, for example, one rarely regards models as unique or absolute, although, through the choice of a specific one (e.g., a differential equation), unique solutions to problems may be obtained. A model is formulated to serve a specific purpose. Some models may be suitable for generalization, others may not be. These generalizations are more profitably made as extrapolations for scientific purposes, and occasionally as useful philosophical observations. A model must be flexible to absorb new information, and, hence, stochastic processes have broader and richer applicability than deterministic models. 

Henshaw, Thomas. "Some practical observations on May Dew. From the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (British Museum MSS. Slone [sic ]... 

Needham, J.T. (1743) Concerning certain chalky concretions, called malm with some microscopical observations on the farina of Red Lilly, and worms discovered in Smuthy Corn. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 42, 634. 

Although they did not develop any prac tical cures, there were some careful observers of plant diseases among the ancients. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and naturalist in the third century bc, recorded which plants were most susceptible to diseases as well as the influence of soil and weather on disease. 

Six isotopes of element 106 are now known (see Table 31.8) of which the most recent has a half-life in the range 10-30 s, encouraging the hope that some chemistry of this fugitive species might someday be revealed. This heaviest isotope was synthsised by the reaction Cm( Ne,4n) 106 and the present uncertainty in the half-life is due to the very few atoms which have so far been observed. Indeed, one of the fascinating aspects of work in this area is the development of philosophical and mathematical techniques to define and deal with the statistics of a small number of random events or even of a single event. 

As a general observation, we can say that the philosophical community was slow to understand the ethical and conceptual challenges posed by the advent of computers. Although computers had existed for some time, the Philosopher s Index, which classifies and catalogs philosophical literature, had no entries under the heading of computer ethics until 1985. In the five years from 1985 to 1989, only three articles, monographs, or books were classified and listed under computer ethics. There were only two such items listed between 1990 and 1994. However, 19 items were listed between 1995 and 1999 and 18 items were listed between 2000 and 2004. 

This research attempts to identify clear, observable facts which are precursors of accidents. From these precursors possible causal factors which enable accidents to occur will be derived. The findings can be generalized by analysing several cases and eventually verified by some practical examples. This results in the philosophical positioning of this research as positivistic. 

Davy, H. (1815). Some experiments and observations on the colours used in painting by the ancients. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 105 97-124. 

Some 100 years after Cavendish s discovery of hydrogen, and only 3 years after it was realized that hydrogen sorbed from chemical or electrochemical sources causes blistering and embrittlement to steel vessels, Graham [29] observed the ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen and wrote in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ... 

If one substance can be transformed to another substance, might that be because they are, at root, merely different forms of the same substance The idea of elements surely arose not because philosophers were engaged on some ancient version of the physicists quest for a unified theory but because they wanted to understand the transformations that they observed daily in the world. 

Before considering instrumentation in some detail in later chapters, it will be helpful to outline the kinds of experiments that we wish to implement electronically. It is useful to characterize electroanalytical techniques as either static or dynamic. Static methods are philosophically akin to the passive observation mentioned earlier. They entail measurements of potential difference at zero current such that the system defined by the solid-solution interphase is not disturbed and Nernstian equilibrium is maintained. Although such potentiometric measurements (e.g., pH, pM) are of great practical importance, our focus here will be on the dynamic techniques, in which a system is intentionally disturbed from equilibrium by excitation signals consisting of a wide variety of potential and current programs. 

The early statement that corruption is the mother of vegetation doubtless arose from the observation that manures, composts, dead animal bodies, and parts thereof such as blood, hair, hoofs, and so on, increased plant growth. John Woodward (cited by Russell, 1973), in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Vol. 21, p. 382), observed that the falloff in yields of crops grown in successive years on unmanured land could be rectified when supplied with a new fund of matter, of like sort with that it first contained which supply is made in several ways, either by the ground s being fallow some time, until the rain has poured down a fresh stock upon it or by tiller s care in manuring it. He considered that the best... 

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