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Uncertainty in chemistry

Nature Chemistry volume 2, pages 698–700 (2010)Cite this article

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It might come as a disappointment to some chemists, but just as there are uncertainties in physics and mathematics, there are some chemistry questions we may never know the answer to either, suggests Fredric M. Menger.

For two hundred years following the late-seventeenth century, the physical sciences dealt with 'simple' problems in nature where two variables were examined while keeping all other parameters constant. Laws of motion and causality dominated scientific thinking. For example, acceleration could be determined from the mass of an object and the force placed upon it. Meanwhile, biology was largely engaged in the preliminary stages of a science involving non-quantitative collection, description and classification. Developments in the late 1800s, spurred on by pioneers such as Josiah Willard Gibbs, led to an entirely different approach to the physical sciences. The idea was not to study two variables but to confront 'billions' of variables with the powerful tools of probability theory and statistical mechanics. Although individual variables might be erratic — or not even known — a system collectively possesses a certain order and analysable average properties. Warren Weaver labelled such systems 'disorganized complexity,' and in a 1948 paper illustrated the concept using a billiard table1.

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References

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  1. Fredric M. Menger is in the Department of Chemistry at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA. menger@emory.edu

    Fredric M. Menger

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  1. Fredric M. Menger
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Menger, F. Uncertainty in chemistry. Nature Chem 2, 698–700 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.799

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.799

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