This Year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year went to three men who together pioneered cryo-electron microscopy. 

The explanation of their work by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences includes this: "Researchers can now freeze biomolecules mid-movement and visualize processes they have never previously seen, which is decisive for both the basic understanding of life’s chemistry and for the development of pharmaceuticals.”

Jacques Dubochet is Swiss, Joachim Frank is German born and a long time resident of the US, (thank God for our immigrants), Richard Henderson is a Scot.

In the "philosophy of chemistry" article in wikipedia (yeah, using wikipedia today), one finds the following quote from philosopher Joachim Schummer: "Substance philosophers define a chemical reaction by the change of certain substances, whereas process philosophers define a substance by its characteristic chemical reactions."

It's a nice line, and it is intended to convey the idea that the two philosophical approaches are symmetrical -- what can be said from one side can be re-described from the other. 

Yet in terms of deep seated human habits, they are not symmetrical. I suspect we have an innate tendency to prefer the substance view over the process view, to predicate reactions of molecules rather than predicating molecules of reactions. 

If so, the greater our ability to visualize those molecules, the stronger that prejudice. So perhaps we should be bittersweet about this achievement. 

But they've surely deserved their champagne! That's an image of Dubochet above, by the way.