基本説明
Every scientist will sooner or later start to think about the justification of his work and what constitutes progress in science. It takes the reader across the gap between theory and practice and attempts to reconcile diverging opinions on science and scientific conduct.
Description
(Text)
Wodurch wird eine interessante Beobachtung zur wissenschaftlichen Entdeckung und wer kann den Ruhm des Entdeckers zweifelsfrei für sich beanspruchen? Jeder verantwortungsbewusste Forscher wird sich diese Fragen früher oder später stellen. Antworten zu geben und damit eine Brücke zwischen der Theorie des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts und der alltäglichen Detailarbeit zu schlagen, versuchen Wissenschaftstheoretiker. Jerome Berson fasst ihre Ansätze zusammen, vergleicht und prüft sie. Dabei schöpft er aus einem Erfahrungsschatz, den er in über 50 Praxisjahren als Chemiker ansammeln konnte. Ein Buch, das Naturwissenschaftlern ebenso wie interessierten Nichtfachleuten überraschende Einsichten eröffnet!
(Review)
(Short description)
What turns a new observation into a true scientific discovery and who may claim the credit? One of the greatest chemists of our times, Jerome Berson, presents a highly readable and highly survey of how discoveries in science, especially chemistry, are made and how this process has been perceived by its main protagonists, the scientists themselves.
(Text)
What is it that turns a new observation into a true scientific discovery? And who may claim the credit? Theoreticians of science, the foremost thinkers of their times among them, have tried to answer these fundamental questions about the nature of scientific progress and discovery.With clear insight and the chemical as well as philosophical wisdom gained from over fifty years as a practising chemist, Jerome Berson puts their theories to the test. The development of chemistry into a "modern" science during the last two centuries provides him with ample cases to illustrate the way scientific progress really happens.Kekulé's struggle to arrive at a structure for benzene, the paradigm change that was necessary to accept the reality of molecular rearrangements, and other episodes are retold here from the philosopher's as well as from the practitioner's perspective, shedding light on the way scientists think and act.Berson's account of the rather unphilosophical way in which scientificdiscoveries are made includes the realization that even a false hypothesis, such as Woodward's ideas about the biosynthesis of strychnine, may help rather than hinder scientific progress.Scientists of all ages, as well as many non-scientists, will find this a highly readable and unusual book.
