Dead Ends and Detours
读了 More Dead Ends and Detours: En Route to Successful Total Synthesis, 本篇算是一点笔记。。
杂论
Foreword
写的太棒了。
Not just Don Quixote, but we also live by our stories; narrative is the human condition.
We, the hunters of molecules, builders of astounding structures, are not as different from our ancestors as we imagine. True, in much of what we do, our proclivity to tell stories may have been beaten out of us. ‘‘That’s not science,
can’t you convert it into a mathematical expression?’’ Yet storytelling, plain and scientific, is natural. And in synthetic organic chemistry, it is innate.
the making of molecules is a very geometrical and descriptive undertaking
Note incidentally the simple, unidirectional arrows, the arrows of Paul Klee; chemists well aware of ubiquitous equilibrium, nevertheless desire a product. They know how to perturb any equilibrium so they get what they want.
Nowhere else in the world of stories or science is there such a repeated, direct emphasis on the path taken, the journey, as in synthetic organic chemistry.
The way is difficult; were it not so, others would have surely trodden it earlier.
Atoms too, like human beings, sometimes refuse to cooperate.
***The universe is made of stories, ***
not of atoms.
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
And it is the nature of journeys, all journeys, that wrong turns will be made, even by the cleverest of researchers.
Not everything is foreseen.
Mind you, no one will tell a synthetic tale with 10 detours. You would begin to doubt the intelligence of the designer, and in a profession where reason and design have been deified, that won’t do. But a couple of sheer cliffs climbed is good for the story. Overcoming the obstacles adds to the image one wants to convey, of the one whose mind was flexible, prepared to recognize chance.
Que quando una puerta se cierra otra suele abrir la fortuna.
Failings are human, but they are overridden by what makes us optimistic about humanity, the great truth of human creation. Especially the improvization that follows confrontation with adversity.
In surmounting obstacles, the organic chemist is a superb creator. ‘‘We shall overcome.’’ And we do, wonderfully crafting, no hype needed, the most beautiful stories of our time.
1 Introduction
Paralleling the synthesis of a complex natural product or a complex synthetic molecule with a good planned battle, we should remember that in the words of German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke ‘No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.’
Mistaken suppositions come back to bite you and the most brilliant plan may fail by the failure of a simple, seemingly innocuous, step.
A first-class theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids; and a third-class theory explains after the event.