Toward the Methodological Analysis of Scientific Discoveries

The discovery of spectrum analysis occupies an important place on the long and thorny path of the advance of human knowledge toward the atoms, the stars, and the mastery of their laws. This great discovery was made one hundred years ago (April, 1860). The decisive role in this achievement belongs by right to two outstanding German scientists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff. This discovery simultaneously opened the path into the atomic world, making it possible to judge the internal structure of atoms from their optical properties, and into the world of heavenly bodies, the chemical composition of whose substances was first determined by means of spectrum analysis. All this led to an unprecedented expansion of the field of scientific knowledge both in the direction of the investigation of microscopic objects in nature and in that of the study of macro-objects. But the most remarkable thing was that in their development both these trends in research proved to be interrelated. The penetration of science into the field of the macro-cosmos was a direct consequence of its more profound penetration into the field of the micro-cosmos. In a word, this was one of the boldest of scientific achievements, one that enabled human reason to penetrate into the depths of the substance of the earth and the cosmos, to know its properties, its composition, and its laws.