Subject: somewhat obscure chemistry quote

From: David Konerding <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 09:57:45 -0800

I'm looking for the source of a somewhat obscure chemistry quote I once
came across but cannot find definitevly.  I think it was written by a 19th
century chemist who thought that math/computation in chemistry was wholly
inappropriate.  Does this ring a bell for anybody?

Thanks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Konerding   
Email: [email-masked]   
WWW: http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/dek
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From: "Osman F. Guner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:29:45 -0800

"Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical 
questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the 
spirit of chemistry.  If mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent 
place in chemistry --an aberration which is happily almost impossible-- it 
would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science."
A. Compte, 1798-1857

There are some positive quotes from the same time period as well:

"The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the 
domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all 
converge.  We may even judge the degree of perfection to which a science 
has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation."
A. Quetelet, 1796-1874

Unfortunately, I have misplaced the actual references.  Hope this helps...Osman

At 09:57 AM 12/12/2001, David Konerding wrote:

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Osman F. Güner, Ph.D.
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From: "Osman F. Guner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:39:07 -0800

My all time favorite quote is actually from Niels Bohr, I think:

"Prediction is very difficult... especially about the future."

At 10:29 AM 12/12/2001, Osman F. Guner wrote:
>NB: Unless you reset the To: line, your reply goes to the entire list
>---
>
>
>spirit of chemistry.  If mathematical analysis should ever hold a 
>prominent place in chemistry --an aberration which is happily almost 
>impossible-- it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that 
>science."
>A. Compte, 1798-1857
>
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>qsar_society mailing list
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Osman F. Güner, Ph.D.

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From: Christopher Cramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 15:43:45 -0600 (CST)

> has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation."

How nice to see something light in between the venting about Gaussian that
is keeping my delete button busy...

My personal favorite to add to the above hopper:

"The fact is, there has been a split of chemistry into two schools since 
the intrusion of the Arrhenic faith, rather it should be said, the addition of
a new class of worker into our profession--people without knowledge of
the laboratory arts and with sufficient mathematics at their command to be
led astray by curvilinear agreements; without the ability to criticise,
still less of giving any chemical interpretation. The fact is, the physical
chemists never use their eyes and are most lamentably lacking in chemical
culture. It is essential to cast out from our midst, root and branch, this
physical element and return to our laboratories.

	H. Armstrong, 1936

Armstrong is credited with defining the term "scientific method" and had a
massive impact on chemical pedagogy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He
can perhaps be forgiven for the above crotchetiness, which was uttered at
the age of 88.

Chris Cramer

-- 

Christopher J. Cramer
University of Minnesota
Department of Chemistry
207 Pleasant St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0431
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    of Computational Chemistry:  Theories and Models")

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From: David Konerding <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 10:43:42 -0800

>inappropriate.  Does this ring a bell for anybody?

Excellent, I have already received three messages that gave the quote.
This will make a great quote for my thesis, which of course, is about
using mathematics in chemistry :-)

Now, here's a harder one.  I also once came across a pair of quotes, about
the use of math in chemistry, where the first said somethign like
"We can compute anything" and the response was more or less "True, but
it will take a very long time".  Given that my simulations each took over
3 months to run (10ns of duplex RNA in a box of water using 4 cpus and AMBER6)
I thought this would also be appropriate.

Dave

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From: "Osman F. Guner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 15:16:55 -0800

Perhaps this one?

"The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a 
large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, 
and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads 
to equations much too complicated to be soluble."
P.A.M. Dirac

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Osman F. Güner, Ph.D.

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From: Wibke Sudholt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:09:36 -0800

Hi,

I do not know if you mean the Dirac quote (it is more about quantum
chemistry). If yes, please take a look at the summary of my question in
spring this year:

http://server.ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/message.cgi?2001+03+15+013

Hope that helps! Could you please summarize everything to the list?

Best regards,

Wibke Sudholt
San Diego Supercomputer Center
[email-masked]

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From: Guosheng Wu <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 21:15:16 -0600 (CST)

> >I thought this would also be appropriate.

Nothing is wrong with "we can compute anything"... the following may be a
better response to that:

The defination of "time" really depends on what kind of info you want
to get, then what kind of approach you need to use.

For example, if you use full-atomic simulation on DNA(10bp) melting(in ms)
by AMBER or other packages, I could not imagine how many years it will
take, and what kind of results you might get; however, use simple
thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, high quality results can be "Got
in 60 seconds"...

Guosheng Wu,