Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known. Less well known, however, is that over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Hoffmann has thought and written extensively about a wide variety of other topics, such as chemistry's relationship to philosophy, literature, and the arts, including the nature of chemical reasoning, the role of symbolism and writing in science, and the relationship between art and craft and science. In Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry, Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg bring together twenty-eight of Hoffmann's most important essays. Gathered here are Hoffmann's most philosophically significant and interesting essays and lectures, many of which are not widely accessible. In essays such as "Why Buy That Theory," "Nearly Circular Reasoning," "How Should Chemists Think," "The Metaphor, Unchained," "Art in Science," and "Molecular Beauty," we find the mature reflections of one of America's leading scientists. Organized under the general headings of Chemical Reasoning and Explanation, Writing and Communicating, Art and Science, Education, and Ethics, these stimulating essays provide invaluable insight into the teaching and practice of science.

Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known. Less well known, however, is that over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Hoffmann has thought and written extensively about a wide variety of other topics, such as chemistry's relationship to philosophy, literature, and the arts, including the nature of chemical reasoning, the role of symbolism and writing in science, and the relationship between art and craft and science. In Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry, Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg bring together twenty-eight of Hoffmann's most important essays. Gathered here are Hoffmann's most philosophically significant and interesting essays and lectures, many of which are not widely accessible. In essays such as "Why Buy That Theory," "Nearly Circular Reasoning," "How Should Chemists Think," "The Metaphor, Unchained," "Art in Science," and "Molecular Beauty," we find the mature reflections of one of America's leading scientists. Organized under the general headings of Chemical Reasoning and Explanation, Writing and Communicating, Art and Science, Education, and Ethics, these stimulating essays provide invaluable insight into the teaching and practice of science.

Beautifully produced. Intended for non-scientists. The focus in this melding of science and art is on the social, cultural, literary, and psychological context of chemistry. Hoffman (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1981) provides essays, personal commentary, and poems; artist Torrence has prepared intriguing collages to accompany the text. Alas, no index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This study confronts some of the major ethical controversies in chemistry today, taking on such touchy subjects as the use of thalidomide, a tranquillizer once given to pregnant women and later found to cause serious birth defects

Throughout its long history, and not just as the key aesthetic category for the Romantic Movement, the sublime has created the necessary link between aesthetic and moral judgment, offering the prospect of transcending the limits of measurement, even imagination. The best of science makes genuine claims to the sublime. For in science, as in art, every day brings the entirely new, the extreme, and the unrepresentable. How does one depict negative mass, for example, or the folding of a protein that is contagious? Can one capture emergent phenomena as they emerge? Science is continually faced with describing that which is beyond. This book, through contributions from nine prominent scholars, tackles that challenge. The explorations within Beyond the Finite range from the images taken by the Hubble Telescope to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, from Kant and Burke to a "downward spiraling infinity" of the 21st century sublime, all lucid yet transcendent. Squarely positioned at the interface between science and art, this volume's chapters capture a remarkable variety of perspectives, with neuroscience, chemistry, astronomy, physics, film, painting and music discussed in relation to the sublime experience, topics surely to peak the interest of academics and students studying the sublime in various disciplines.

These essays - written by specialists of different periods and various disciplines - reveal that the division between nature and art has been continually challenged and reassesed in Western thought. Nature and art, the essays suggest, are mutually constructed, defining and redifining themselves.

'The peacock's tail makes me sick!' said Charles Darwin. That's because the theory of evolution as adaptation can't explain why nature is so beautiful. It took the concept of sexual selection for Darwin to explain that, a process that has more to do with aesthetic taste than adaptive fitness. Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have an innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.

This book is an introduction to professional ethics in chemistry. After a brief overview of ethical theory, it provides a detailed discussion of professional ethic for chemists based on the view that the specific codes of conduct derive from a moral ideal. The moral ideal presented here has three parts. The first refers to the practice of science, the second to relationships within the scientific community and the third to the relationship between science and society, particularly the uses of science. The question of why a scientist should obey the professional code is discussed in terms of the virtue of reverence, after which the ethical issues unique to chemistry are identified. A method for approaching ethical problems is presented. Finally, there is a large collection of specific ethical problems, or cases, each followed by a commentary where the issues raised by that case are discussed.

Old Wine, New Flasks is a unique and provocative look at how science and religion - too often considered at odds with one another - are actually parallel ways of trying to make sense of the same material world, each a voice intertwining with the other to help shape true human understanding. With great humor and wit, the authors - one a Nobel laureate and the other an Israeli-American writer and student of religion - show how daily experience and seemingly innocuous questions such as "What is this mixture?" "How do I tell right from left?" and "How can one make the bitter sweet?" can lead to deeper philosophical issues concerning religion, art, and science. Old Wine, New Flasks discusses how authority is conferred and contested, what it means to be impure, whether humans have a right to dominate the environment, and the difference between the natural and the unnatural. Exploring these and other topics, the authors reveal how science and Jewish religious tradition, although different in many ways, nevertheless share the conviction that the world is a very real place, that the actions of beings matter, and that there is an underlying order to the universe.

Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature. Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscrutable things; it is the process that makes flowers and galaxies. We rely on it for bread-baking, vegetable-growing, and producing the materials of daily life. In stunning images and illuminating text, this book captures chemistry as it unfolds. Using such techniques as microphotography, time-lapse photography, and infrared thermal imaging, The Beauty of Chemistry shows us how chemistry underpins the formation of snowflakes, the science of champagne, the colors of flowers, and other wonders of nature and technology. We see the marvelous configurations of chemical gardens; the amazing transformations of evaporation, distillation, and precipitation; heat made visible; and more.