Pentagonal Theory – A Report From Denver

In jest, and from Denver:

I know many of you didn’t attend the recent annual meeting. But you are lucky: I did.

Yes, I was able to spend a day at the Congress of North American Chemists where the orthodox pentagonal theory of chemistry, sometimes referred to as New Chemistry or Neoclassical Chemistry, is the dominant theme. There were spaces set aside for less orthodox topics, but they typically were ill lit and in the basement behind the food storage room. So for those of you who didn’t, or couldn’t, make the trip, here is my report:

My main reason for attendance was simple curiosity. I have been made well aware of the deficiencies of my own thinking. I am what is called a Real Chemist, and seek to understand real chemicals. Such notions are far from the great minds I found gathered in Denver, and it was this disconnect between real chemicals and the orthodox theory of New Chemistry I was eager to explore.

I very quickly discovered the reverence in which the grandfathers of orthodoxy are held. Whenever the name of Leon Walras was uttered the room fell into a hushed almost awed reverie as everyone mulled over his famous dictum that pure theory need not engage reality. What a relief that notion must have been when he made that magical statement. What bravery. What genius. What release from the terrible clinging and clutter that real chemicals had hitherto thrust as a weighty burden onto the minds of theorists. Until Walras opened the door to New Chemistry, theorists had been forced to deal with the murky stuff of things such oxygen and hydrogen. Now they could dispense with those clumpy phenomena and focus the much more invigorating enterprise of inventing their own chemicals. Pure chemicals. Weightless, free floating, uncombined, and entirely immune to environmental contact, these pure chemicals could be imagined and modeled as exemplars of what a true chemical would be were it not trapped on earth. Platonic bliss.

Walras was indeed a great man.

He opened the way for free thinking chemistry bereft of classes of chemicals, chemical interactions, spatial interruptions, institutional limits on chemistry, and all the other impurities that sometimes contribute to those notorious chemistry failures we observe around us. It was he who pointed the way towards positive chemistry.

But it was only much later, I learned, that positive chemistry was fully articulated. This was because, the Denver attendees explained, other less enlightened chemists fought hard to include some vestiges of real chemicals as worthy of study. This heresy took much time to eliminate from orthodoxy, although as some New Chemists lamented, it has never been fully eradicated. Uncertainty lingers on in distant corners of real chemistry. Oh horror!

One of the speakers I listened to was Milton Friedman who could not attend in person but whose recorded message we all absorbed dutifully. Apparently they play his message every year. He is after all a high priest of New Chemistry. Or at least he appears to have been, other much younger, more ardent, New Chemists have since corrected his many errors. Particularly his inappropriate views on the role expectations play in forming pure chemicals. Friedman’s heroism in the face of heresy is a legend, and his brilliant defense of pentagonal structure resonates to this day. Recall: it was he who defended the ludicrous assumptions of New Chemistry from the hysterical laughter of outsiders. He argued, successfully, that no matter how stupid the assumptions, if the output of the theory is correct, then they are justified. So New Chemistry theory bases itself upon the axiom of “pentagonality” which asserts all structure is pentagonal. It then rummages through a byzantine mathematical process that produces perfectly pentagonal pure chemicals, so pristine that they stun you with their elegance. Elegance in Denver was much appreciated. Thus, since the models of New Chemistry unerringly produce pentagonal chemicals, which Friedman asserted is the correct outcome of any chemical modeling, the preposterous input to those models is both justified and irrelevant. Just look at that perfection and admire the purity.

At this point, as I wandered within the crowd, I came upon one of the current greats of New Chemistry – Robert Lucas. Bob as his admirers call him. Professor Lucas is one of those who think Friedman derelict for not being extreme enough. His famous Critique of Chemistry is based upon his unique view that if something is not contained in a mathematical model then it is not theoretical. Not only is it suspect, it is ideological, and, therefore, considered not worthy of thought. At least by New Chemists. His approach, he told me, is that he loves to construct beautiful models, he called them parables, that can be perused from many angles. If one of these angles sheds light on real chemicals then so be it. But that is not the point of being a chemist. For Lucas and his followers the simple contemplation of their models is sufficient. Indeed I noticed that the Denver throngs cast many a longing gaze at mathematical models. Those with the greatest elegance – that vital concept again – won the most applause. Remember: elegance is more important than truth. Chemistry is not about truth, since that is hard to get at. It is about elegant models.

Yet, no sooner had I left the Lucasian table than I ran into a professor who claimed that every problem in the world could be explained by pentagonal theory. His best selling book, “Pentanomics” is in its third printing and seems to justify his claim. Or at least there are many people impressed with the extreme good fortune mankind has to be able to explain what might otherwise appear to be complex and difficult structures all within one extraordinarily simple theory. This professor is, I believe, a student of the great Gary Becker who taught us – how could we forget? – that even the family squabbles of the penguins of Antarctica can easily be viewed as pentagonality at work. Brilliant stuff.

I was then jolted by the gruff voice of a Professor Cass who, while apparently admiring Professor Lucas, was more than a little vexed by the latter’s partial attachment to reality. Cass was outspoken in is complete contempt for real chemicals and told me that there was no point in trying to take New Chemistry into contact with the impure form. It simply provided no value to New Chemists at all. Why waste their time with impurities, when they can spend so many wonderful hours contemplating purity? He has a an excellent point. How many of us has no been tempted to throw in the towel as we struggle with one of the more complicated real chemicals? Doesn’t that frustration sometimes boil over into a desire to think freely, unfettered by their dogged intractability? Why can’t the world just be simple? Or at least elegant.

Later, I noticed there were fewer adherents of Professor Prescott this year than in the past. I am not sure why this was. I have heard so much about his work, especially the variant of New Chemistry dubbed Really Pure Chemistry. This as you will recall is a theory based upon hours of detailed data collection from real chemicals. That data is then used as the basis for model building. The mathematical models so constructed mimic real chemicals without having any of the impurities. The result of this work has been the discovery that all impurities in real chemicals are the result of non-chemical interactions. Thus the old fashioned concept of valency is now viewed as “exogenous” and is usually the result of misguided government attempts to channel real chemicals into forms other than pentagons. If only governments would leave pentagons alone to do their work.

The last group I came upon were deep in discussion concerning the recent outbreak of real chemicals and the near total absence of pentagons amongst them. This absence of pentagonality had been the cause of derision from heterodox chemists and might well have put the New Chemists on the defensive. After all their structurally efficient crystals theory, or SECT, had been used by many unwitting people to eliminate the risk of decay crystal structures, and when vast swathes of crystals collapsed many of these good people cried that they had been duped. Undaunted, Professor Fama, a leader of this group, calmly explained to me that New Chemistry was still viable and that SECT, far from being disproved, had emerged strengthened by the recent crisis. That we found no pentagons, and that structures appeared deformed simply proves that SECT is correct. According to Fama’s explanation, those apparently deformed chemicals were so pure in their pentagonal structure that our measuring instruments failed to detect their purity. Thus, it was our inability to measure correctly, not SECT, that was the point of failure.

How can we argue with such logic?

There are three final observations I must make as I reflect on the assembled genius in Denver.

One is that dynamically rigid octagonal stochastic structure theory, or DROSS, still dominates macrochemistry. Although how this fits with the pentagonality of microchemistry no one seems quite sure. Since New Chemistry demands that any structure in its modelsat the macro level must conform with the micro level’s axiomatic base, this could be a cause for tension in future. Mercifully we heterodox chemists are free from this conundrum.

Second is the murmuring around ethics in Chemistry, especially in the wake of the recent crisis. I understand this ethical problem stems from the performative nature of Chemistry, especially New Chemistry which has formed the theoretical basis for adjusting real chemicals to conform with pentagonality. Many New Chemists have earned large wages helping bludgeon the world into pentagonal shape. New Chemists see no conflict of interest here, and are so convinced of the inherent superiority of their theory that see no need to adhere to specially devised ethical standards. They argue that the magic of chemistry will enforce a standard through the competitive process that invariably produces pentagonal structures in their pure chemicals. Those forces are sufficient. Of course those same forces failed to stop the crisis and the outbreak of real chemicals, but as Fama tells us that is not SECT’s fault. It is ours.

Third, and last, it is touching to see Deidre McCloskey pound away at her attempt to soften New Chemistry. Long an ardent advocate of orthodoxy, she has recently become convinced that cultural phenomena can influence chemistry after all. She is now pressing us all to appreciate what she calls Bourgeois Chemistry, whose mysteries are very similar to New Chemistry, but are also very different. Although why it is taking her six hefty volumes, rather than one, to describe these differences I am at a loss to explain. Still we all applaud the effort.

Well, there you have it. Just one correspondent’s view of the immense gathering of luminaries in Denver. New Chemistry is alive and well. Orthodoxy chugs along in rude health. There is no crisis in Chemistry. Such conflicts that do pop up are figments of the fevered minds of the heterodox.

Remember: there are no real chemicals. Just pure chemicals. Pentagonal Theory explains it all.