The Growth of a Crystal: Being the eighteenth Robert Boyle lecture — John Shaqi
The Growth of a Crystal: Being the eighteenth Robert Boyle lectureMiers, Henry Alex
Science
The Growth of a Crystal: Being the eighteenth Robert Boyle lecture
Miers, Henry Alex
Crystallography
One other suggestion. If the growth of a crystal is really the coming
together of vibrating particles which cohere because they are in tune
with one another and so enter into a partnership like that of the
dancers or the figure skaters, then is it not possible that we may be
able to communicate these vibrations to a supersaturated solution, which
is so densely crowded that it is ready to crystallize, by some other
means than by inoculating it with the appropriate crystal? I think that
the time has come when we may be able to get some knowledge of the
manner of these movements by experimental methods; perhaps by studying
the sort of shock or movement, if there be any such, which starts
crystallization in a supersaturated solution; perhaps by finding other
substances, whose movements we understand, which are able to start the
crystallization when they are introduced into certain solutions.
I have said that the frontier problems in science are interesting; and
that this is true not only of the events that take place when different
bodies meet, but in another and more general sense. The most interesting
and fruitful problems are those which deal with the borderland between
two sciences, when the difficulties of the one are enlightened by the
experience of the other, or when the same problem is looked at from two
different sides. Let me only quote as an illustration the work connected
with osmosis, which attracted first the botanists and then the physical
chemists, and remind you of the enormous importance which it has assumed
by their combined efforts. I think it will be found that these problems
of crystal growth are of this borderland nature. And such problems can
only be satisfactorily attacked by those who are more than mere
specialists and can be led by the experience or the analogies of other
sciences.
I said that I should like to regard this lecture as an attempt to
justify the value of analogy. We poor specialists grope within the
confines of our own science, and what little advance we make is made in
part by the light we borrow from the other sciences. In these days of
increasing specialization what we need is to interest in our own
problems, not only those who are tilling the same fields with ourselves,
but even more, those who live on the other side of the fence which
surrounds us: to call to them across the frontier, to seek their advice
and assistance and the benefit of their experience.
This is one of the great advantages of a University, that workers and
thinkers in different subjects are brought together and can make their
difficulties known to each other. The connecting links between them are
the analogies which they perceive and which excite an interest that they
would not otherwise feel in each other’s work.
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