A word on chirality

I’d like to have a word on chirality.

First things first. There are several metrical attributes, which can be either symmetrical (like chirality and sclerality) or geometrical (like stereogenicity and chirotopicity). Albeit the relation from a symmetrical to a geometrical attribute is more or less straightforward —I’d like to comment on this later—, one thing I have clear:

Symmetry is fundamental, whereas geometry is accidental.

Second things second. Attributes other than metrical are topological. And that is something else.

Third things third. Chirality overcomes handedness. While the former is enganged only with rotosymmetry, the former —I’ll understand it as the sense of chirality— is a mirror-relatedness (in 3D). Prelog, Dunitz, and other savants all knew this.

I stop it there. Sometime soon I’ll write on the Cartan–Dieudonné theorem.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Ricardo Ruíz-Coronado

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading