“The role of analogy is to aid understanding rather than to provide justification.

”
To what extent do you agree with this statement?

AOK: Art, Natural science

WOK: language

RLS 1:  How does artistic approach taken in Molecular Chemistry assist in visualizing
molecular dimensions?  

RLS 2: To what extent do they justify the actual character of molecules in real life?

Natural science and art are often considered as two very contrasting subjects of study.
Natural Science is always factual and objective whereas art is almost always expressive
and subjective. Natural science has its limit but art extends as long as our imagination
boundary can be stretched to. So, whenever there exists a combination of these two in
order to create something useful to humanity, there are some areas that require a
proper analytical digging up. 

Language, art, scientific progress and time go together. They never stop changing. But
no matter how much we have progressed in the field of natural science, our language
(analogies, definitions, derivations, numerical, etc.) in this field has been untouched
since the inception of classical science. It is not some barrier that is stopping the
progress but because of the very nature of natural science. Natural science is always
steady and the knowledge we acquire is based on the evidence from real life
experiments.  Due to this reason there is not much requirement for a change. The
language has supported the understanding of everyone who is and wants to be involved
in this field. Like language, our understanding in the field of natural science is also ever
changing. Due to the engineering attainment of mankind, every now and then there
occurs a change in the understanding of a particular subject. This may change the way
we understand primary matter, for instance a particular theory, but other secondary
matter such as analogy remains unchanged because I strongly believe that the role of
analogy is to aid understanding rather than to provide justification. But how certain are
analogies in natural science or for that matter how certain are analogies in molecular
chemistry? To what extent do they justify the actual character of molecules in real life?

In language, analogy is a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the
purpose of explanation or clarification. Analogies are often generalization which assist in
an explanation of a situation to a person who is unaware about it.  For example, sly as a
fox and sweet as sugar are a few generalizations. These generalizations, as much as
they help in understanding, do not completely justify the situation. Justification is the
action of showing something to be right or reasonable. And this fact is applied with
regard to Natural science as well. Natural science makes use of several analogies,
relating knowledge from aspect to another, in order to aid our understanding and
building up our personal knowledge. One such aspect is Molecular chemistry. 
Analogies in natural science occurs from Nano level to Giga level. They assist in
narrowing down complex events which widens our understanding. This can later be
applied to other, but similar, situations. Analogies never give us the definite principle on
which a body of natural science functions but rather, it just designs the way something
works in terms of similar another thing. One very prominent example of an analogy in
nanoparticles is the molecular structure. Molecular structures are basically what
theoretical Chemistry consists of. I will not be going into the details of nomenclature and
terminology of the Chemistry subject but I will discuss a lot about the language of
Chemistry. Analogies also come under the language of Chemistry . Chemists spend their
whole lives researching on the relationships between various structures and how their
combinations help in occurrence of a new compound. But how strange is it that
something we study about our all lives is invincible, at least for our eyes. Yes, molecules
are not visible. And scientists, almost completely depend upon analogy for their
understanding and give themselves a justification. They have built a whole segment of
natural science (molecular chemistry) based upon the analogies that help them connect
one knowledge to another. 

Elaborating on this matter, I would like to explain an example regarding this. In

structural chemistry, there exists an idea of Lewis structure. Lewis structure diagram is
an arrangement of atoms of a molecule in a particular system. This system was
introduced by a scientist named Gilbert Newton Lewis. Here, atoms are visually drawn
in a sheet of paper and connected with one another through atoms end. They are
artistically represented with letters, dots and crosses. These dots and crosses visualize
the valence electrons of respective elements. The number of connections arising from
each atom depends on the number of valence electrons that particular atom has. These
structures basically look like Legos interconnected with each other. We can think that
each atom has its own unique Lego piece. And each Lego piece has its number of
spaces for interconnections which range from one to four. Example: Hydrogen(H),
Chlorine (Cl) have one space for connection whereas Oxygen(O), Nitrogen(N),
Carbon(C) have two, three and four space respectively. 

Now that I have talked about the analogy in the Lewis structure inside molecular
chemistry, there lies a problem which is parallel to the molecular chemistry and natural
science. Meaning, this problem equally hampers the use of analogies in understanding
of molecular chemistry and understanding of natural science. Emphasizing on the Lego
analogy, often times we try to connect as many Legos in however pattern we like just for
the sake of how it appears. We do not care about how many Legos is involved in that
connection or what pattern they form in that connection; our goal is to form a unique
illustration formed with Lego. However, considering the Lewis Dots as Lego pieces, we
cannot interconnect Lewis structures in indeterminate forms. Compounds, which is
interconnections of atoms, only form when a fixed number of Lewis Dots connect with
each other in a particular pattern. However, scientists also discovered the now known
compounds through hit and trial methods. Meaning, they arranged random number of
Lewis Dots, or Lego pieces, into random connections and they found compound which
have now been found. We can conclude that this analogy has provided an
understanding to a general person new to this subject but it fails to justify the nature of
science in the real world.  
To further explain on how this artistic approach taken in molecular chemistry does not
justify the general understanding of normal people, I take examples of isomers. By
definition, isomers are two or more compounds with the same formula but a different
arrangement of atoms in the molecule and different properties. This means that,
isomers have the same number of similar atoms but their Lewis structures are just
connected in two different ways. Connecting in two different ways changes everything.
By everything I mean, chemical and physical properties entirely. From our analogy, it
means that there are an equal number of similar Lego pieces with the same number of
points to be connected but when they are arranged in a two different ways they are
completely different in nature. This is naturally hard to comprehend. 

Based on this theory, there has been numerous discoveries and inventions in the field
of chemistry and natural science in general. 

Describing how analogies in molecular chemistry does not completely help in

understanding of chemical matter, I will take an example of a hydrocarbon.  During the
synthesis of hydrocarbon in organic chemistry, when ethanol i.e. is C H O, is 2 6

transformed into other hydrocarbons, according to our analogy on isomers it should

change the interconnections between the Legos and turn into any particular molecule.
But it changes to only one type of chemical compound when gone through a chemical
reaction. It changes into C H OH. It could have turned into C H + H O or any other such
2 5 2 4 2

product but it does not. Here, we can see how the analogies does not justify why one
hydrocarbon does not change into any hydrocarbon. This change occurs because of
stable energy labels on the reactant and the product. I do not want to go into details but
that is what occurs in every single reaction in chemistry. This is again related to the
conservation of energy on reactions. However, my discussion of analogy claim holds
truth here. Because we can see that the number of atoms in the molecule, or for this
instance, the number of legos in the connections is equal on each side of reaction which
is reactant side and the product side. So, also through this example, I could claim that
molecular chemistry helps in understanding but does not fully justify the occurrence of
the event.