Abstract
TWO tendencies are clearly visible in the chemistry of to-day, and are profoundly affecting our methods of study and instruction,, and also the direction of research. On one hand., chemistry, like every other science, is being split up into a number of distinct specialisms, and workers are tempted or even compelled to confine themselves to a narrow field; on the other, the boundaries between the several sciences are becoming less definite, through the development of border sciences, which themselves become new specialisms. In so far as it is possible to arrange the abstract sciences in a linear series, chemistry may be said to depend upon physics, as the biological sciences in their turn depend upon chemistry, the theoretical part of each being built up on the established laws of the preceding science as a basis. Physics has gone far to provide the required basis for chemistry, and each new advance in physics suggests new ideas in chemistry. Chemistry in its turn is providing a basis for biology, although more slowly than had been hoped. Great as have been the triumphs of organic synthesis and of investigations of the colloidal state, the chemical study of living organisms is still looking to chemistry for more help than it has yet received.
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DESCH, C. The Discipline of Chemistry1. Nature 116, 504–505 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116504a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116504a0