In a world where the main keywords are money, power, visibility, updates, fast and quick – possibly with as low reasoning as possible – we wonder what kind of cultural background and interests should have a young researcher in science.
Just to clarify the point, let me observe that when we read the list of references at the bottom of a research paper we often instinctively check “how old” those references are: the more recent the better. Like in a perpetual rush.
A good antidote against this short memory syndrome is to take some time in reading about history and philosophy of science (in our case Chemistry). And maybe care about ethics as well.
In his editorial to the third issue of Substantia, Joachim Schummer points out the essential reasons why this is so important (1). It is not just the matter of impressing colleagues on a nice topic during the gala dinner at an international conference.
Instead it is a matter of being a real scientist, i.e. someone who is able to challenge well-set scientific (provisional) theories and beliefs.
Philosophy is necessary because it prompts the scientist to ask for uneasy questions, such as “what is the goal of my research”?
History of Chemistry is crucial to understand the flow of discoveries and theories, as nobody has ever got up from the bed to write down some strange equation, but research and discoveries are a slow and often painful process of trials, errors, deceptions and intuitions (2).
Ethics will hopefully help us understand what the consequences of a new chemical, or of a new process will be for our community.
By the way, science came out of philosophy. And the acronym PhD means Philosophiae doctor.
- Schummer, Substantia 2018, 2, 5.
- G. De Gennes, Substantia 2017, 1, 37.
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