Geometric and Topological Thinking in Organic Chemistry

The beginning student of organic chemistry is often bewildered by what appears to be an enormous maze of random structural variations and reactions that can be mastered only by tedious memorization. To the organic chemist, however, the same subject is often a beautifully ordered discipline of elegant simplicity. An important value of learning organic chemistry is the mastering of “organic thinking,” an approach to intellectual processing whereby the “sameness” of many families of structures and reactions is revealed. This article offers the author's personal views of organic thinking and explores the intellectual and scientific foundations of organic chemistry and of the powerful methods that provide the field with a platform for making rapid conceptual and experimental advances. It is proposed that these methods involve a geometric and topological approach to scientific reasoning within the framework of scientific paradigms that guide experimental design and execution. The basis of this approach is considered in relation to day‐to‐day thinking, problem solving, and the psychological drive for intellectual closure. The power of the approach is illustrated by the analysis of several photochemical and chemiluminescent reactions.