Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

arch and feasibility studies to an industrial application. This approach is convenient because it unites forms of scientific activity both in cognitive and social aspects. By using what has been said above, we can analyze constructions of Karl Popper (a falsification of a hypothesis, for example) and real institutions of other social structures. This scheme provides an opportunity for us to develop some typological constructions. Such constructions are very convenient for describing social structures. In 1973, we used this construction to study the system of scientific institutions and the process of institutionalization of biological chemistry in our new program. Another fundamental question in our study was the principle underlying the collection of material. We call this principle as «principie of totality". It consists of analyzing the cognitive structure of a certain branch in chemistry, for example, biochemistry or organic chemistry. We collected a whole massif of handbooks, monographs and articles in the field selected. At the same time, we identified the competent research institute or laboratory. We tried this method during the study on the evolution of the structure of biological chemistry, particularly on chemistry of protein and biochemistry in Russia. Besides, this method proved to be the most interesting in studying structural evolution of organic chemistry. The analysis of the whole massif of articles revealed that the structure of organic chemistry before the creation of the Kekule and Butlerov theories highly differed from the structure of ..classical examples" given in books by C. Graebe, P. Walden, G. Bykov and al. After A. Lavoisier's works not more than 4 percents of articles were concerned with the theoretical aspects of the structure of organic chemistry. During thirties of the 19th century the main elements of cognitive structure of organic chemistry were the empirical investigations of organic substances (mainly analytical and preparative ones). We called this structure ..naturalistic" by analogy with the mineralogy as well as descriptive and taxonomic natural history. We are citing these data for a better understanding of the formation and redistribution of communications between separate elements of the knowledge. This process is comparable with that seen in the formation and redistribution of real communications in social (institutional) structures. We want to underline the role of this principal proposition, because the reconstruction of the logical connection does not permit us to compare the cognitive structure with the social one. Logical order of the cognitive structure disagrees with logical order of social and institutional structure. A few years ago, the application of the proposed method was restricted. Total massives could be used during the analysis of above-mentioned fields. During the period from 1960 to 1980, we collected the complete bibliography of biochemistry. For each article the corresponding laboratory on institute was found. This bibliography was a base for studying both the cognitive and social structure. The roll of authors renders possible to elaborate the ..atomic" social structure (the „atom" in such a structure is an investigator), while the list of institutions yields the ..molecular", institutional structure. In many countries, this bibliography is also used to creating the data-bank