CAREER: The Formation and Support of Chemists and Chemistry

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

SES 99-84106 - Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University) "CAREER: The Formation and Support of Chemists and Chemistry" This CAREER Award supports the development of the Principal Investigator's integrated interdisciplinary science-humanities career in both teach-ing and research, specifically in regard to chemistry and its historical development. Its teaching and research components both relate to fundamental questions about the nature, methodology, practice, and disciplinary identity of chemistry and the formation of chemists. Its research component focuses on the early 18th-century Paris Academy and its members, a chief locus for chemistry during a critical period. In spite of growing interest in the era, there remains no com-prehensive, integrated study of chemistry and chemists at the Academy-their formation, work, teaching, and interactions. Wilhelm Homberg, the Academy's chief chemist provides an organizing theme for the project. The project emphasizes Homberg's ideas and his interactions with his teachers, students, and colleagues. Homberg was formed as a chemist by a decade of apprenticeship with important figures (including von Guericke, Lemery, Boyle, and Kunckel). He wrote a text-book that broke completely from the 17th-century cours de chymie tradition, centering instead on methodology and a new identity for chemistry. As researcher and teacher, Homberg played a key role in shaping the emergent "new chemistry," promoting its importance and (re)forming the disciplinary identity and culture of chemistry at the institution that later included Macquer, Four-croy, and Lavoisier. Preliminary study also indicates Homberg's hitherto unknown devotion to the "old chemistry"-transmutational alchemy-traceable to Boyle, Becher, and others. This feature promises to shed further light on the vexed question of the continuity of alchemy/chemistry. The project showcases critical issues beyond the history of chemistry, including the role of instruments (the Academy's burning lens), disputes in science, patronage and court culture, experimentalism and "tacit" knowledge. The project's teaching component continues the emphasis on the nature and methodology of chemistry by using these subjects as a newly focus for introductory organic chemistry. Current teaching of organic chemistry does not reflect the reality or process of science as a human activity, and fails to teach how chemists work and think about the world. Methodology and independent thought are replaced with rote memorization and authoritarian claims. Using the insights of history and philosophy of science, the PI plans to reorient the course radically along a backbone of scientific methodology in order to give students a more accurate understanding of the "nature of chemistry." The goal is to produce students who can think scientifically about chemical issues rather than only regurgitate facts. Content materials (e.g. reactions, mechanisms, etc.) are to be shown as developments from scientific inquiry-a sharp departure from standard presentations using 19th-century taxonomies. This class has wide influence, affecting more than 50 percent of Johns Hopkins students and all pre-med and many engineering students nationwide, and so is a key place to provide a more authentic and deeper understanding of science as it is practiced. This project features the participation of a chemical education specialist, training classes for graduate students to improve teaching skills, and the creation of a Website as an adjunct to textbooks used elsewhere. A new history of science class on scientific formation (deploying results of the research section) is also proposed.