Abstract
For decades, the presuppositions of pioneer quantum mechanics have served as paradigms for theoretical chemistry. Numerical quantum chemistry has become the natural way of looking at problems for most theoretical chemists. As stressed by Ludwik Fleck (1935) and Thomas S. Kuhn (1962), a paradigm on the one hand acts as a method by means of which facts are observed, interpreted and organized. On the other hand every paradigm acts also like a blinder. The snag is that the rules imposed by a paradigm are implicit and not recognized as tentative working hypotheses. In contemporary chemistry, the rules of pioneer quantum mechanics operate automatically, and a good theoretical chemist has become a person who feels that he is doing the obvious thing when using pioneer quantum mechanics to solve a chemical problem.
Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is ineluctable.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1981 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Primas, H. (1981). A Framework for Theoretical Chemistry. In: Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism. Lecture Notes in Chemistry, vol 24. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-11314-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-11314-1_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-10696-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-11314-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive