Analytical chemistry—seen in perspective

Abstract

The many faceted perspectives which can be constructed with analytical chemistry as baseline, information as horizon and truth as vanishing point illustrate the diversity of our scientific work.

We will only make a major step forward after we have learned to understand the perspectives of the role of the sample as the representative of the collective which we want to investigate, as the central object of pragmatic analysis, and as the Janus-headed ‘synholon’ of matter and information.

This still somewhat unusual alter-ego point of view forces us to quantify intensive and qualify extensive parameters, e. g. in the field of pattern recognition. This view, together with a radical change away from the adaption of the sample to the method (instead of the more logical way of adaption), and the right selection of the reagent matched to the sample, will in the future change the image of analytical chemistry to that of scientific analysis.

This is an attempt to illustrate the enormous importance of analytical chemistry as scientific analysis and in the perspective of the gain of information, without including the increasing importance of analytical chemistry in society, economy and technology.