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Image and Reality

Kekul, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination

Alan J Rocke author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:25th May '10

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Image and Reality cover

Chemists in the nineteenth century were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. In visualizing this microworld, these scientists were the first to move beyond high-level philosophical speculations regarding the unseen. In "Image and Reality", Alan J. Rocke focuses on the community of organic chemists in Germany to provide the basis for a fuller understanding of the nature of scientific creativity. Arguing that visual mental images assisted many of these scientists in thinking through old problems and new possibilities, Rocke uses a variety of sources, including private correspondence, diagrams and illustrations, scientific papers, and public statements to investigate their ability to not only imagine the invisibly tiny atoms and molecules upon which they operated daily, but to build detailed and empirically based pictures of them. These portrayals of 'chemical structures' gradually became an accepted part of science and are now regarded as one of the defining features of chemistry. In telling this fascinating story, Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields.

"Alan Rocke's Image and Reality does so many things vividly and convincingly: it shows how visual images led chemistry step by step to the reality of the microscopic world; how simple portrayals of the logic of substitution and combination were reified; brings to our attention the imaginative, neglected work of Williamson and Kopp; and takes a critical look at Kekule's daydream. And it beautifully delineates the essential place the imagination has in science. A rewarding, lively picture of chemistry in formation." - Roald Hoffmann, Nobel laureate in chemistry.

ISBN: 9780226723327

Dimensions: 23mm x 16mm x 3mm

Weight: 652g

416 pages