Quantum Chemistry Notes Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal the rest is poetry, imagination. 4th Century BC Early example of the danger of purely theoretical chemistry. Aristotle advocates Empedocles's four element model, which dominates chemical theory until the 18th century.
Opinions differ on the value of computational chemistry.
The more progress physical sciences make, the more they tend to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a kind of centre to which they all converge. We may even judge the degree of perfection to which a science has arrived by the facility with which it may be submitted to calculation. Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry. Publication of the Hartree-Fock equations. Boy's introduces the use of Gaussian-type basis functions in quantum chemistry programs.