The philosophy of chemistry considers the
methodology
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for br ...
and underlying assumptions of the
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
of
chemistry. It is explored by philosophers, chemists, and philosopher-chemist teams. For much of its history,
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...
has been dominated by the
philosophy of physics
In philosophy, philosophy of physics deals with conceptual and interpretational issues in modern physics, many of which overlap with research done by certain kinds of theoretical physicists. Philosophy of physics can be broadly divided into thr ...
, but the
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
questions that arise from chemistry have received increasing attention since the latter part of the 20th century.
[Weisberg, M. (2001)]
Why not a philosophy of chemistry?
''American Scientist.'' Retrieved April 10, 2009.[Scerri, E.R., & McIntyre, L. (1997)]
The case for the philosophy of chemistry.
''Synthese'', 111: 213–232. Retrieved April 10, 2009 from http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000254/
Foundations of chemistry
Major philosophical questions arise as soon as one attempts to define chemistry and what it studies.
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, ...
s and
molecule
A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...
s are often assumed to be the fundamental units of chemical theory,
[Schummer, Joachim. (2006). Philosophy of science. In ''Encyclopedia of philosophy, second edition.'' New York, NY: Macmillan.] but traditional descriptions of molecular structure and
chemical bond
A chemical bond is a lasting attraction between atoms or ions that enables the formation of molecules and crystals. The bond may result from the electrostatic force between oppositely charged ions as in ionic bonds, or through the sharing of ...
ing fail to account for the properties of many substances, including
metals
A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typical ...
and
metal complexes[Ebbing, D., & Gammon, S. (2005). ''General chemistry.'' Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.] and
aromaticity
In chemistry, aromaticity is a chemical property of cyclic ( ring-shaped), ''typically'' planar (flat) molecular structures with pi bonds in resonance (those containing delocalized electrons) that gives increased stability compared to satur ...
.
[Pavia, D., Lampman, G., & Kriz, G. (2004). ''Organic chemistry, volume 1.'' Mason, OH: Cenage Learning.]
Additionally, chemists frequently use non-existent chemical entities like
resonance structures
In chemistry, resonance, also called mesomerism, is a way of describing bonding in certain molecules or polyatomic ions by the combination of several contributing structures (or ''forms'', also variously known as ''resonance structures'' or '' ...
to explain the structure and reactions of different substances; these explanatory tools use the language and graphical representations of molecules to describe the behavior of chemicals and chemical reactions that in reality do not behave as straightforward molecules.
Some chemists and philosophers of chemistry prefer to think of substances, rather than microstructures, as the fundamental units of study in chemistry. There is not always a one-to-one correspondence between the two methods of classifying substances.
For example, many rocks exist as mineral complexes composed of multiple ions that do not occur in fixed proportions or spatial relationships to one another.
A related philosophical problem is whether chemistry is the study of substances or reactions.
Atoms, even in a solid, are in perpetual motion and under the right conditions many chemicals react spontaneously to form new products. A variety of environmental variables contribute to a substance's properties, including temperature and pressure, proximity to other molecules and the presence of a magnetic field.
As Schummer puts it, "Substance philosophers define a chemical reaction by the change of certain substances, whereas process philosophers define a substance by its characteristic chemical reactions."
Philosophers of chemistry discuss issues of
symmetry and
chirality in nature.
Organic (i.e.,
carbon
Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...
-based)
molecule
A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioche ...
s are those most often chiral.
Amino acid
Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...
s,
nucleic acids and
sugars, all of which are found exclusively as a single
enantiomer in organisms, are the basic chemical units of
life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
.
Chemists
A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...
,
biochemists, and
biologists
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...
alike debate the origins of this
homochirality
Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness. Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their ow ...
. Philosophers debate facts regarding the origin of this phenomenon, namely whether it emerged contingently, amid a lifeless
racemic
In chemistry, a racemic mixture, or racemate (), is one that has equal amounts of left- and right-handed enantiomers of a chiral molecule or salt. Racemic mixtures are rare in nature, but many compounds are produced industrially as racemates. ...
environment or if other processes were at play. Some speculate that answers can only be found in comparison to
extraterrestrial life, if it is ever found. Other philosophers question whether there exists a bias toward assumptions of nature as symmetrical, thereby causing resistance to any evidence to the contrary.
One of the most topical issues is determining to what extent physics, specifically, quantum mechanics, explains chemical phenomena. Can chemistry, in fact, be reduced to physics as has been assumed by many, or are there inexplicable gaps? Some authors, for example,
Roald Hoffmann
Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran; July 18, 1937) is a Polish-American theoretical chemist who won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He has also published plays and poetry. He is the Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus, at ...
, have recently suggested that a number of difficulties exist in the reductionist program with concepts like aromaticity, pH, reactivity, nucleophilicity, for example.
Philosophers of chemistry
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (; 27 January 1775 – 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him ...
was among the first philosophers to use the term "philosophy of chemistry".
Several
philosophers
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and
scientists
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophica ...
have focused on the philosophy of chemistry in recent years, notably, the
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
philosopher Jaap van Brakel, who wrote ''The Philosophy of Chemistry'' in 2000, and the
Maltese-born philosopher-chemist
Eric Scerri
Eric R. Scerri is a chemist, writer and philosopher of science of Maltese origin. He is a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the founder and editor-in-chief of '' Foundations of Chemistry'', an international peer reviewed ...
, founder and editor of the journal ''Foundations of Chemistry''. Scerri is also the author of "Normative and Descriptive Philosophy of Science and the Role of Chemistry," published in ''Philosophy of Chemistry'' in 2004, among other articles, many of which are collected in ''Collected Papers on the Philosophy of Chemistry''. Scerri is especially interested in the philosophical foundations of the
periodic table, and how physics and chemistry intersect in relation to it, which he contends is not merely a matter for science, but for philosophy.
Although in other fields of science students of the method are generally not practitioners in the field, in chemistry (particularly in synthetic organic chemistry) intellectual method and philosophical foundations are often explored by investigators with active research programmes.
Elias James Corey
Elias James Corey (born July 12, 1928) is an American organic chemist. In 1990, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis", specifically retrosynthetic analysis. Regarded by many a ...
developed the concept of "
retrosynthesis" published a seminal work "The logic of chemical synthesis" which deconstructs these thought processes and speculates on computer-assisted synthesis. Other chemists such as
K. C. Nicolaou (co-author of ''Classics in Total Synthesis'') have followed in his lead.
See also
*
History of chemistry
*
The central science
Chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in connecting the physical sciences, which include chemistry, with the life sciences and applied sciences such as medicine and engineering. The nature of this relationship is one o ...
References
Further reading
Review articles
Philosophy of Chemistryarticle on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Journals
an international peer-reviewed journal for History and Philosophy of Chemistry as well as Chemical Education published by Springer.
an English-language peer-reviewed journal associated with the
University of Karlsruhe
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 w ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
.
Books
*
Philosophy of Chemistry', J. van Brakel, Leuven University Press, 2000.
*''Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline'', Davis Baird, Eric Scerri, Lee McIntyre (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2006.
*''The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance'', E.R. Scerri, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006.
*''Collected Papers on Philosophy of Chemistry'', E.R. Scerri, Imperial College Press, London, 2008.
''Of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry'' Nalini Bhushan
Nalini Bhushan is an American philosopher and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Smith College. Her work is on the philosophy of chemistry and Indian philosophy, among other subjects.
Lee C. McIntyre described Bhushan's edite ...
and Stuart Rosenfeld (eds.),
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 2000, Reviewed by Michael Weisberg
*''Philosophy of Chemistry : Growth of a New Discipline'', Eric Scerri, Lee McIntyre (eds.), Heidelberg: Springer, 2015.
External links
*
Reduction and Emergence in Chemistry ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
International Society for the Philosophy of ChemistryInternational Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry Summer symposium 2011International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry Summer symposium 2016Website for Eric Scerri, author and founder-editor of Foundations of Chemistry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Philosophy Of Chemistry
Philosophy of science
Chemistry