Should chemical synthesis be held as a rematerialization?
It is customary to pit analysis and synthesis as the two sides of a coin, as activities complementary to one another and to some extent symmetrical. The former clearly enjoys historical priority. The latter can be dated, referring only to milestones, to Wöhler’s synthesis of urea in 1828, with the subsequent anti-vitalism slant that was given to it, and to the syntheses by Berthelot of prototypic molecules such as acetylene and benzene during the second half of the nineteenth century. The above description of analysis as a process of dematerialization might lead the reader to expect, as a contrast and by way of a satisfactory and expected resolution at the end of this paper, a presentation of synthesis as the indispensable rematerialization; which, of course, is true to some extent, but only in a rather naive and superficial approach. Each of the steps in the multi-stage synthesis of a complex natural product, such as those of quinine, strychnine or taxol, translates into access to an
