|
| A photo of Israeli chemical engineer Alec Groysman at the 2011 Generative Art Conference, Rome, discussing how chemical engineering based human chemistry should become a part of scientific education and the engineering curriculum of the 21st century. [1] |
“Dobereiner helped in refining Russian platinum, discovered catalysis, and reported his work to Goethe. The latter’s novella Elective Affinities, a work of art, gave impulse to a new scientific field named ‘human chemistry’ (Thims, 2007). In the exact sciences there are quantitative measures of estimation of each value: mass, length, force, energy. In the humanistic disciplines (history, philosophy, psychology) as well as art there are no quantitative criteria. This is similar to the question of how to measure beauty, love, friendship, democracy? The function named Gibbs energy defines ‘love’ between substances [and] people ... and is similar to Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be?’ of William Shakespeare.”In 2013, American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims, at the 5th University of Pitesti Econophysics and Sociophysics Workshop, Pitesti, Romania, in his “Econoengineering and Economic Behavior: Particle, Atom, Molecule, or Agent Models?”, gave an overview of the dos and don'ts of "human" modeling techniques as seen being used in the emerging fields of sociophysics, econophysics, econoengineering. [2]
In 2014, Brazilian chemical engineer Jaime Aguilar-Arias, at the 20th Brazilian Congress of Chemical Engineering, Florianopolis, Brazil, in his “Chemical Engineering and Complexity, an Undissipated Structure … Yet”, suggested that modern chemical engineering education curriculum begin to incorporate a "human chemical thermodynamics" themed type of teaching methodology in engineering schools:
“In contrast, other fields, such as biology, economics, health sciences, among other, have found practical applications of complexity in their disciplines. The purpose of this work is to show some possible applications of complexity, not necessarily in the traditional field of chemical engineering, but where clearly chemical engineers can uniquely contribute due to our formation and basic elements of thermodynamics, and processes analysis, compared to other disciplines, in matters of study that are not the classical chemical engineering applications, but where their application is necessary, even not being chemical processes.”
“A relevant anecdotic, is the strong debate including economic Nobel Prize winners such as Kenneth Arrow, 1972 winner, and Paul Krugman, 2008 winner, the first in favor and the last against the application of complexity in economics. This debate is agitated by the use of defiant expressions used by the authors, such as they have ‘changed economic thinking’, which generated comments like the other ‘has just invented…economics’. This work, by the way, doesn’t want to generate such comments, instead, its purpose is to reinforce arguments to the fields of action that chemical engineers can, and must be prepared to participate.”
Observations Through the Thermodynamic Lens of World History (lecture)” (reference to the EoHT website in the presentation) International Gebser Society Conference, Hofstra University, New York. Oct. 15. 
