On The Philosophy of Chemistry

Some Aspects of the Metaphysics of Chemistry and the Nature of the Elements

“…Various philosophers of chemistry have already examined metaphysical aspects of chemistry and in particular the question of the elements as natural kinds (Schummer 1996, Bensaude-Vincent 1998, van Brakel 2000, Cahn 2002, Harré 2005, Lombardi & LaBarca 2005.…”

“…For example, van Brakel espouses a radical antireductionism in which he favors the 'manifest image' over micro-reduction. His writings have included a thoroughgoing critique of Kripke's and Putnam's theory and a review of all other critiques that have been made in the context of chemical kinds (van Brakel 2000). Similarly, Needham takes an anti-reductionist approach and prefers to define substances through the Gibbs phase rule (Needham 2005).…”

Is Organic Chemistry Science - and does this question make any sense at all?

“…The integrative role that Pauling envisaged for chemistry allocates the field a central and fundamental place among the sciences, which seems difficult to combine with a status of chemistry as applied science or technology. In the philosophy of science the question what kind of enterprise chemistry is, is increasingly coming into focus these days, in part due to the fact that over the past one or two decades the philosophy of chemistry has increasingly established itself as a clearly visible area of investigation [1,2,8]. In addition, this interest is linked to the rapidly emerging molecular bio-and life sciences and their impact on our societies and on the individual.…”

“…Among the most visible protagonists were the representatives of the Vienna and Berlin Circles, such as Moritz Schlick , Rudolf Carnap (1891Carnap ( -1970, and Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), as well as Karl Popper (1902Popper ( -1994. Despite the fact that these times of philosophical discussion were also golden ones for chemistry and its largest field, organic chemistry, chemistry was hardly addressed in these debates [1,2]. To some extent this had to do with the focus of these philosophers on physics as the paradigmatic example of science, i.e., a role model for what science is (for example: thoroughly mathematical and centered on laws of nature).…”

“…Note, though, that the qualification of chemistry as a systematic art was not meant as a disqualifier: Systematic arts for Kant were experimental doctrines, that is, the empirical investigation of natural phenomena guided by reason "where we begin by the observable large-scale properties of matter and then attempt to determine its internal structure "from the outside in"" [5]. While this is what today we would call empirical science [6] or applied or practical science [2], the important point is that such investigations do not yield (certain, necessary, a priori) laws of nature, but "merely" empirical descriptions of the phenomena that, according to Kant, to constitute scientific knowledge must be embedded in the system of a priori laws of nature that the proper sciences could yield [2,6].…”