Playing with molecular models

Hyle

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 85-97

  Laszlo, Pierre ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE   (Belgium)

Author keywords

Molecular models; Play; Tinkering; Toys; Transitional object

Indexed keywords

EID: 40449089100     PISSN: 14335158     EISSN: 14335158     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. Hoffmann, R. and Laszlo, P.: 1989, 'Representation in Chemistry', Diogenes, 147, 23-50;
2. Hoffmann, R. and Laszlo, P.: 1991, 'Representation in Chemistry', Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English, 30, 1-16.
3. Laszlo, P. and Hoffmann, R.: 2000, 'Ferrocene Story', Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English, 39, 123-124.
4. Hoffmann, R. and Laszlo, P.: 1998, 'The Say of Things', Social Research, 65, 653-693.
5. A colleague has taken issue with a remark of mine on the limitations of the sociological approach to the history of science, for which I gave concrete examples. He denigrates, instead of considering the point made and attempting to answer it constructively: Brakel, J. v.: 1999, 'Book review of The Autonomy of Chemistry, ed. by P. Janich and N. Psarros', HYLE, 5, 166-168.
6. Berne, E.: 1964, Games People Play. The Psychology of Human Relationships, Grove Press, New York.
7. Huizinga, J.: 1951, Homo ludens. Essai sur lafonction sociale dujeu, Gallimard, Paris.
8. Caillois, R.: 1967, Lesjeux et les hommes, Gallimard, Paris.
9. With a notable exception, that of automata such as Vaucanson's, see Cardy, M.: 1986, 'Technology as play: The case of Vaucanson', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 241, 109-123.
10. Derrida, J.: 1967, 'La Structure, le signe et le jeu', in: L'Ecriture et la différence, Le Seuil, Paris.
11. Borel, E.: 1937, 'Eloge dujeu', Mercure de France, 275, 290-301.
12. Brown, K. D.: 1990, 'The Children's Toy Industry in Nineteenth-Century Britain', Business History, 32, 180-197;
13. Burton, A.: 1997, 'Design History and the History of Toys: Defining a Discipline for the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood', Journal of Design History, 10, 1-21.
14. Formanek-Brunell, M.: 1993, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930, Yale University Press, New Haven.
15. LEGO: 1994, LEGO Facts & Figures, 18th, LEGO Group, DK-7190 Billund, Denmark.
16. Céline, L.-F.: 1932, Voyage au bout de la nuit, Denoël et Steele, Paris.
17. Sacks, O.: 1995, 'To See and Not See', in: An Anthropologist on Mars, ed. by A.A. Knopf, New York.
18. Replete with hidden assumptions so that some authors will triumphantly point to the superb agreement of such calculations with observations when they had loaded the dice to the extent that their conclusions merely mirror their starting axioms: see for instance Delville, A.: 1994, 'Monte Carlo simulations of the mechanical properties of charged colloids', Langmuir, 10, 395-402. See also for a critical and insightful description of Monte-Carlo methods,
19. Galison, P.L.: 1997, Image and Logic: The Material Culture of Microphysics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
20. Watkins, C. and Marenka, S.: 1994, Taking Flight: History, Fundamentals and Applications of Flight Simulation, N&T Books, New York;
21. Shater, M.F.: 1993, Tn-Flight Simulation at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility', AAHS Journal, 38, 260-277.
22. Jacobs, M.: 1995, D.W. Winnicott, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA;
23. th century chemistry, makes the same point: a molecular model fulfills, to the professional chemist, a function closely similar to Winnicott's transitional object.
24. Winnicott, D.W.W.: 1942, 'Pourquoi les enfants jouent-ils?', in: Uenfant et le monde extérieur, Payot, 1957, Paris, pp. 123-128;
25. Winnicott, D.W.W.: 1951-1953, 'Objets transitionnels et phénomènes transitionnels', in: De la pédiatrie à lapsychanalyse, Payot, Paris.
26. Brosterman, N.: 1997, Inventing Kindergarten, New York.
27. Fröbel, F.: 1851, 'Anleitung zum rechten Gebrauche der dritten Gabe', in: Friedrich Fröbel, Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. by H. Heiland, Düsseldorf, Munchen 1974, pp.121-161.
28. Noschka, A. and Knerr, G.: 1986, Bauklötze staunen: Zweihundert Jahre Geschichte der Baukästen, München.
29. Meinel, C: 1998, 'Modelling a Visual Language for Chemistry, 1860-1875' (lecture presented at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine and the Science Museum, London 1998).
30. Babini, V.P.: 1995, Intersezioni, A15, 171-174;
31. Pollard, M.: 1990, Maria Montessori, Gareth Stevens Children's Books, Milwaukee WI.
32. Jarrell, R.H.: 1998, 'Play and Its Influence on the Development of Young Children's Mathematical Thinking', in: Play From Birth to Twelve and Beyond. Contexts, Perspectives and Meanings, ed. by D.P. Fromberg and D. Bergen, Garland Publishing, New York.
33. Fisher, D. C: 1965, Montessori For Parents, New Editions / Robert Bentley, Cambridge, MA.
34. See inter alia: Piaget, J.: 1952, The child's conception of number, Humanities Press, New York;
35. François, F.: 1978, La psychologie de Jean Piaget et l'analyse de l'acquisition du langage par l'enfant, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg;
36. Bringuier, J.-C: 1977, Conversations libres avec Jean Piaget, Robert Laffont, Paris;
37. Good, R.; Mellon, E.K. and Kromhout, R.A.: 1978, 'The Work of Jean Piaget', Journal of Chemical Education, 55, 688-693.
38. Piaget, J.: 1973, To understand is to invent, Grossman, New York;
39. Piaget, J. and Garcia, R.: 1983, Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences, Flammarion, Paris;
40. Messerly, J.G.: 1996, 'Psychogenesis and the history of science: Piaget and the problem of scientific change', Modern Schoolman, 73, 295-307.
41. Corey, E.J.; Ohno, M.; Vatakencherry, P.A. and Mitra, R. B.: 1961, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 83, 1251.
42. Laszlo, P.: 1999, La découverte scientifique, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.
43. Nye, M. J.: 'Paper Tools and Molecular Archictecture in the Chemistry of Linus Pauling', in: Proceedings of the conference on Paper Tools and Traditions of Representation in the History of Chemistry, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2-4 December 1999, ed. by U. Klein, forthcoming.
44. Catchpool, J.F.: 1968, 'The Pauling Theory of General Anesthesia', in: Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biology, ed. by A. Rich and N. Davidson, Freeman, San Francisco, pp. 343-355.
45. Gardner, M.: 1996, The universe in a handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's mathematical recreations, games, puzzles, and word plays, Copernicus, New York.
46. Gamow, G., Stannard, R. and Edwards, M.: 1999, The New World of Mr. Tompkins: George Gamow's Classic Mr. Tompkins in Paperback, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
47. Feynman, R. P.: 1985, Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman, Bantam, New York.
48. Usually, the scientist relies on a model-maker, often from the machine shop. One wishes to know more about such interaction, it is quite important. See for some closely related examples Hughes, T.P.: 1988, 'Model Builders and Instrument Makers', Science in Context, 2, 59-75.
49. Francoeur, E.: 1997, 'The Forgotten Tool: The Design and Use of Molecular Models', Social Studies of Science, 27, 7-40.
50. André-Marie Ampère in his 1814 paper on representative shapes of molecules, a key paper in the history of chemistry, was prophetic also in his insistence on the importance of congruent shapes for molecular assembly: Ampere, A.-M.: 1814, 'Lettre de M. Ampère à M. le comte Berthollet, sur la détermination des proportions dans lesquelles les corps se combinent d'après le nombre et les dispositions respectives des molecules dont leurs parties intégrantes sont composées', Annales de Chimie et de Physique, XC, 43.
51. "A model is something to be admired or emulated, a pattern, a case in point, a type, a prototype, a specimen, a mock-up, a mathematical description - almost anything from a naked blonde to a quadratic equation - and may bear to what it models almost any relation of symbolization." N. Goodman, Languages of Art. An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, 1976, p. 171.