From: Sengen Sun (sengensun$##$yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2006 - 15:30:24 EST
I sincerely welcome the comments and suggestions by
Yuehui and other two people. I'd like to address
Yuehui's for now as I am too busy to reply to every
one.
As I argued in two interenational sympossiums in 2005,
prediction and explanation are two different things
conceptually. Some theories do contain both of them,
but some others do not. Woodward-Hoffmann rules are a
very valuable predicting theory derived from a pattern
of mathematical operations. It is my strong opinion
that W-H rules are not equivalent to an explanation as
neither is FMO theory. Dewar called the W-H to have
"hypnotic effect", which I could not agree more. The
reality is that no one understands how "they explain".
The discussions via revolutionary internet
communications in CCL have led more and more
scientists to accept that "orbitals are a means to an
end", which I learned initially from Prof. Richard
Bader at McMaster University. How do you understand an
explanation that is based on something of no
understandable physical meaning?
I had tortured myself over and over again for years
before I convinced myself that I have made "a
breakthrough in mechanism of concerted
cycloadditions". Now I have the confidence to defend
such a statement. If you don't agree, I'd like to ask
you to calm down and to address the following
questions in concise languages without metaphors:
1. What is mechanism of chemical reactions?
2. Are mechanisms of chemical reactions important in
chemistry.
3. Was the mechanism of concerted cycloadditions well
established before at the theoretical level?
4. Do my computational data tell us some new knowledge
of electronic reorganization - the mechanism? (Please,
do not tell me to use your favored computational
approach unless you can use your approach to prove I
am wrong!)
My theory is about how electrons to move in a
concerted reaction. I don't agree with Yuehui that a
theory must be able to predict. "The earth revolves
around the sun" is a theory on paper but a fact in the
nature.
I could not publish my papers, and I don't need one. I
don't make a living from publications (as advised by
Einstein? -:). But the knowledge if correct will
benefit the human society one way or the other.
Thanks.
Sengen
--- Yuehui Zhou <yuehuizhou$##$hotmail.com> wrote:
---------------------------------
Another critieron for a theory is predicting the
outsome of the related reactions. You can do some
reactions based on your theory to test it and publish
the results. Without predictting power a theory is
just a theory on paper.
Also don't try to make your result a big deal. You may
think it is, but it's not the way to persuade
others. Try the online journals, Molecules, for
example. The editor is a Chinese fellow. Good lucky
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