Nineteenth-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are 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 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 regularly 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 how all of the atoms in complicated molecules were interconnected. These portrayals of "chemical structures", both as mental images and as paper tools, gradually became an accepted part of science during these years and are now regarded as one of the central defining features of chemistry. In telling this fascinating story in a manner accessible to the lay reader, Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields.
About the Author
Alan Rocke is the Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University and the author of several books, including, most recently, "Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry".
Reviews
"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
"The realm of atoms and molecules has long been a battlefield among scientists: what role should mental images and visual tools play in charting the unseen? In this richly textured and closely argued study, Alan Rocke brings the nineteenth-century debates alive. From August Kekule's famous dream-like visions of molecular structures to Hermann Kopp's fanciful depictions of travels within the molecular world, Rocke argues for the importance of mental imagery in nudging cutting-edge science along" – David J. Kaiser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Alan Rocke's scholarship has fashioned our historical view of the development of chemistry in the nineteenth century. In 'Image and Reality', he turns to that century's most significant achievement in chemical theory, the determination of atomic and molecular arrangement. The great challenge facing chemists in this endeavor was the conundrum of moving from the world of laboratory chemical materials and reactions to the microworld of chemical atomic and molecular reality. Rocke painstakingly depicts how chemists grappled with and overcame this challenge through the creative use of their visual imaginations. Deploying great historical erudition and sensitivity, philosophical sophistication, and immense scientific and technical knowledge, Rocke has produced the authoritative account of this great achievement and an exciting, path breaking study of the creative imagination in science" – Seymour Mauskopf, Duke University
"'Image and Reality' is a masterful and authoritative study by one of the profession's most distinguished historians of chemistry. Alan Rocke draws on his earlier work and on new sources to demonstrate the role of mental images in the thought processes that created structural chemistry in the nineteenth century. His analysis of chemists' wit, imagination, and 'Eureka' moments of discovery richly informs this detailed history which extends from Alexander Williamson to August Kekule and Hermann Kopp" – Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University
"In 'Image and Reality', Rocke covers Kekule's work, varied life and personality, and locates the chemist's thinking in the context of developing ideas about chemical bonding and molecular structure... Rocke's thesis is that 'human minds work far more visually, and less purely linguistically, than we realize'. At every turning point, he suggests, early chemists used their imagination to visualize the constitution of the micro-world, leading the way in visual thinking... Such visualization of the micro-world is now commonplace. Yet the role of visual thinking in the scientific mind is not universally accepted. 'For scientists, mental images may seem downright embarrassing', suggests Rocke. But for Kekule, as this subtle and penetrating study shows, dream images translated into chemical reality" – Andrew Robinson, Nature
"Exciting and wide-ranging. The writing is so easy and natural that even a non-specialist can read it with delight and understanding. It inspired me" – Oliver Sacks
"A masterful account of how chemists crafted a unique visual language of the microworld... 'Image and Reality' offers an impressive discussion of how chemistry relies on such visual thinking as well as how visual imagery contributes to the creative process in science" – Peter J. Ramberg, Science
"A compact and accessible history of the emergence of the theory of chemical structure as scientists sought to determine the arrangement of atoms and molecules. [Rocke's] account encapsulates the high points of more than 30 years of research on 19th-century chemistry... and provides a persuasive argument that imagination is a likely factor in scientific creativity, one that we ignore at the risk of a sanitized and sterile view of scientific research" – Jeremiah James, American Scientist
"Highly recommended" – Choice
"Rocke has produced a striking reinterpretation of the development of structure theory centered on the work of August Kekule" – Michael D. Gordin, Chemical Heritage
