CRYSTAL SYMMETRY. “Pasteur, with his work on tartrates, cemented this focus on arrangement by explaining optical activity as an asymmetry in the crystalline form. Historians have associated this move with the continuation of a vitalist position. But it is also possible to see it as a part of a tradition even older than vitalism, drawing upon a language of active principles whose malleability allowed it to shift between a description of its living properties and its effects on the human body.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2020.1867786
linkedin post 2022-06-29 05:12:48
Nigel Fleming
September 21, 2022