Introduction to General, Organic and Biochemistry (8th Edition)

Book Preface

Perceiving order in the nature of the world is an ontological—not just pedagogical—need. It is our primary aim to convey the relationship among facts and thereby present a totality of the scientific edifice built over the centuries. In this process we marvel at the unity of laws that govern everything in the ever-exploding dimensions: from photons to protons, from hydrogen to water, from carbon to DNA, from genome to intelligence, from our planet to the galaxy and to the known universe. Unity in all diversity.

In writing the preface of the eighth edition of our textbook, one cannot help but ponder the shift in paradigm that occurred during the last 30 years. From the slogan of the 1970s, “Better living through chemistry,” to today’s epitaph, “Life by chemistry,” one is able to sample the change in the focus. Chemistry helps not just to provide the amenities of good life but lies at the very core of our concept and preoccupation with life itself. This shift in emphasis demands that our textbook, which is designed primarily for the education of future practitioners of health sciences, should attempt to provide both the basics and the scope of the horizon within which chemistry touches our life.

The increasing use of our textbook made this new edition possible, and we wish to thank our colleagues who adopted the previous editions for their courses. Testimony from colleagues and students indicates that we managed to convey our enthusiasm for the subject to students, who find this book to be a great help in studying difficult concepts.

In the new edition, we strive further to present an easily readable and understandable text. At the same time, we emphasize the inclusion of new relevant concepts and examples in this fast-growing discipline, especially in the biochemistry chapters. We maintain an integrated view of chemistry. From the very beginning in the general chemistry part, we include organic compounds and biochemical substances to illustrate the critical principles. The progress is characterized by ascension from the simple to the complex. We urge our colleagues to advance to the chapters of biochemistry as fast as possible, because there lies most of the material that is relevant to the future professions of our students.

Dealing with such a giant field in one course—and possibly the only course in which our students get an exposure to chemistry—makes the selection of the material an overarching enterprise. Even though we tried to keep the book to a manageable size, we recognize that we included more topics than can be covered in a two-semester course. Our aim was to provide enough material from which each instructor can select the topics he or she deems important. We organized the sections so that each of them can stand independently. As a consequence, leaving out sections or even chapters will not create fundamental cracks in the total edifice.

We have increased the number of topics covered and provided a wealth of new problems, many of them challenging and thought-provoking