Bakerian Lecture - The more recent work on the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen

Abstract

It is not infrequently in the evolution of a scientific problem that the following course of events is observed. First, there is a preconceived notion about the way in which a certain phenomenon should occur. Next, this idea is rather rudely dispelled by experiments which reveal all sorts of unsuspected complexities. The subject seems to become more and more difficult and stimulates a good deal of effort and contributions from many sides. At this stage the clearest way of treating the matter is usually to approach it historically, or at any rate analytically, and even then expositions of it usually give the impression of being accessible only to specialists. Gradually, however, things clarify, the complexities seem in an increasing degree to assume the guise of details which can be derived as consequences from the general theory, and a synthetic treatment becomes possible. In the light of all the intervening work it almost appears as though everything could, from the start, have been deduced from first principles. Although this appearance may from one point of view be illusory, it is none the less a sign that the task is approaching completion. In the development of modern ideas on chemical kinetics the study of gaseous reactions has played an interesting part. Many unexpected and sometimes disconcerting observations have shown that the kind of relations which might have been assumed in the light of the earlier ideas do not exist, and yet one begins to see that the tangle of facts has after all a coherence of its own, though quite different from what was first imagined.