Oxford Bibliographies Online - Philosophy of Chemistry

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BY WILLIAM MARK GOODWIN

INTRODUCTION
Certain episodes in the history of chemistry have been of recurring interest to philosophers. These include the
chemical revolution at the end of the 18th century and the gradual move toward atomism through the 19th and
early 20th centuries. Additionally and not surprisingly, given the historical turn in the philosophy of science, a
general interest and concern with the history of chemistry is evident in most philosophical work in this field. The
philosophy of chemistry as a distinct subdiscipline has, however, a relatively short history. Initially, interest in
this new field centered on issues of reduction and the unity of the sciencesin particular, on the relationship
between chemistry and physics. Subsequently, the range of issues explored by philosophers working in this field
expanded substantially. One avenue of expansion has been into issues surrounding the classification of
chemical substances and in particular the relationship between microscopic and macroscopic characterizations
of chemical kinds. These issues connect up with broader themes in the philosophy of language and metaphysics
where some have appealed to microstructure as constituting the essence of natural kind terms. Following
broader trends in the philosophy of science, there has been interest in both the distinctive nature of chemical
inquiry and the range of cognitive tools used within it. The pragmatic orientation of chemistry shows up in both
the aims of chemistsmanifest in the focus on synthesisand in the prominent role of empirical feedback in
theory development. Similarly, the complexity of chemistry (relative to standard philosophical models of
scientific inquiry) has led to the development of distinctive conceptual toolssuch as mechanisms and
molecular orbitalsdesigned to manage and unify the vast array of chemical knowledge. Lastly, nonlinguistic
representations, such as structural formulas and potential energy diagrams, are obviously a central part of
chemical discourse. Philosophers have begun to try to understand how the distinctive conceptual tools and
representations of chemists help them get a grip on the phenomena they study.

GENERAL RESOURCES
Two journals are devoted primarily to the philosophy of chemistry. Hyle is an online journal, while Foundations
of Chemistry is available in print as well as online. Both journals have useful websites. Weisberg and Needham
2010 is a review article on the philosophy of chemistry.
Foundations of Chemistry.
This website provides the tables of contents and abstracts for all volumes of Foundations of Chemistry.
Individual articles may be purchased or accessed through SpringerLink.

Hyle: International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry.

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This website provides access to the current issue as well as all back issues of Hyle, an online journal for the
philosophy of chemistry. There are also links to a searchable bibliography, book reviews, and an e-mail
list.

Weisberg, Michael, and Paul Needham. Matter, Structure, and Change: Philosophy of Chemistry
in the 21st Century. Philosophy Compass (2010).
A short, accessible survey article covering some of the central topics in the philosophy of chemistry.

HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
Given the broader trends in the philosophy of science, it is likely that anyone interested in the philosophy of
chemistry will want to familiarize himself or herself with at least some aspects of the history of chemistry. This
section includes general resources in the history of chemistry that can supply either a brief overview of historical
episodes of particular interest or references to more detailed historical accounts. Levere 2001 is a good place to
start for someone interested in a brief sketch of the development of chemistry. Brock 2000 provides more detail
as well as useful references for most of the major episodes in chemical history. For references to the chemical
literature and details about the research of particular historical figures, Partington 19621970 is valuable, but it
is not a readable history. Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers 1996 explores traditional historical concerns about
chemistry through a series of episodes; there is also a focus on practice and institutions. Russell and Roberts
2005 is very useful for references to more recent historical work, including work on more contemporary
chemistry, which does not get much attention in the general histories.
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette, and Isabelle Stengers. A History of Chemistry . Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996.
Rich in interpretation and rhetorical questions, this episodic history explores the identity of chemistry. It
focuses on how identity is forged through laboratory techniques, interactions with applied chemistry, and
institutional structures. The references are also useful, since they include works that may not come up in
Anglo-American histories.

Brock, William H. The Chemical Tree: A History of Chemistry . New York: Norton, 2000.
This is a reissue of The Fontana History of Chemistry, originally published in 1992. Brocks book includes
sixteen roughly chronological chapters that cover major episodes or developments in the history of
chemistry. Some chapters focus more on the institutions, instruments, and social structure of chemistry,
while others present the intellectual history of the subject. The book includes a useful bibliographical
essay.

Levere, Trevor. Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball .
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Designed for the nonspecialist, Leveres book provides a short, readable introduction to the history of
chemistry.

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Partington, J. R. A History of Chemistry . 4 vols. New York: St. Martins, 19621970.

Rich in facts and thin in interpretation, Partington offers a very detailed history of chemistry, beginning
with the ancient Greeks and tapering off in the early 20th century. See also A Short History of Chemistry
(New York: Dover, 1989) by the same author.

Russell, Colin A., and Gerrylynn K. Roberts. Chemical History: Reviews of the Recent Literature .
Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005.
Goes where general histories do notinto modern chemistry. Organized by field, this book consists of
essays describing the trends in historical scholarship as well as references to most work published in the
late 20th and early 21st centuries. An earlier edition includes work published before 1985.

The Chemical Revolution

The chemical revolution has been of interest to philosophers as an example of radical theoretical change in
science. Roughly speaking, the chemical revolution refers to the shift (in the late 18th century) from
phlogiston-based theories of combustion, respiration, and calcination to Antoine-Laurent Lavoisiers
oxygen-based theories of these same phenomena. Typically, Joseph Priestley is taken as the representative
advocate of the phlogiston theory, and discussion has centered on the differences between Priestleys and
Lavoisiers characterizations of the experimental results that led to the discovery of oxygen. Conant 1964 is an
influential and accessible introduction to the historical episode, while Musgrave 1976 presents these
developments from a Lakatosian perspective. The theoretical change in this case is regarded as radical for
several reasons. First, there are obvious ontological differences between the theories: phlogiston exists in one
but not the other. This creates the problem, discussed extensively in Kitcher 1978, of how to think about the
reference of theoretical terms in superseded scientific theories. Second, there are significant differences in the
basic concepts of the theories. These changes in the basic vocabularies of the theories make it challenging to
render the claims made by scientists on one side of this revolution in the terms of scientists on the other, and
this has led to questions about not only how it is possible to understand past scientists but also about how
scientists develop these new conceptual structures (see Thagard 1990). Third, as emphasized in Kuhn 1996,
standards for both successful explanation and significant results changed during this revolution. As a result, it is
difficult to understand how debates about which theoretical approach to adopt could be logically settled; these
approaches seem to be, as Thomas Kuhn says, incommensurable. There has been extensive discussion of how
to understand Kuhns claim and the extent to which it is supported by this historical episode: see Kitcher 1978,
Kuhn 1982, and Hoyningen-Huene 2008.
Conant, James. The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of
17751789. In Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science , Vol. 1. Edited by James Conant,
65117. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.
Focuses on the discovery of oxygen and the replacement of phlogiston theory by Antoine-Laurent
Lavoisiers new approach to chemistry. Conant lets the scientists speak for themselves by quoting from
both Joseph Priestley and Lavoisier, but he adds a helpful commentary allowing the reader to follow the
experimental reasoning. Conant also analyzes this shift in conceptual schemes, emphasizing the role of
both theory and luck in interpreting experimental results.

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Hoyningen-Huene, Paul. Thomas Kuhn and the Chemical Revolution. Foundations of Chemistry
10 (2008): 101115.
[DOI: 10.1007/s10698-008-9044-7]
Hoyningen-Huene argues that the chemical revolution fits Thomas Kuhns general account of scientific
development very well, but he then explains that this is because the general account was designed to
accommodate this case.

Kitcher, Philip. Theories, Theorists, and Theoretical Change. Philosophical Review 87 (October
1978): 519547.
[DOI: 10.2307/2184458]
Kitcher criticizes Thomas Kuhns claim that scientific theories on either side of a scientific revolution are
incommensurable with one another and proposes a modification of the causal theory of reference as the
appropriate tool for capturing the semantic aspects of major theoretical changes in the history of science.
The phlogiston theory and its potential reinterpretation in modern terms are the central cases considered.

Kuhn, Thomas. Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability. PSA: Proceedings of the

Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Symposia and Invited Papers 2
(1982): 669688.
This article, reprinted in James Conant and John Haugeland, eds., The Road since Structure (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000), is Kuhns last discussion of the chemical revolution. He responds to
Kitcher 1978 and recharacterizes the difficulties faced by historians in presenting out-of-date theories as
problems of interpretation rather than translation.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
The chemical revolution is one of Kuhns principal examples of a scientific revolution. Kuhn frequently
cites James Conants case study and appeals to this historical episode to support his accounts of
(unanticipated) scientific discovery, theoretical innovation, the incommensurability of paradigms, and the
changes in vision that accompany paradigm shifts.

Musgrave, Alan. Why Did Oxygen Supplant Phlogiston? Research Programmes in the Chemical
Revolution. In Method and Appraisal in the Physical Sciences: The Critical Background to

Modern Science, 18001905 . Edited by Colin Howson, 181210. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1976.
[DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511760013]
Musgrave argues that the rationality of the chemical revolution is revealed by interpreting it in terms of
Imre Lakatoss Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (1978). Though there was no direct
experimental way of deciding between them, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisiers oxygen theory was progressive
because of the series of novel predictions it supplied, while the phlogiston theory was degenerating

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because of its increasing reliance on ad hoc hypothesis.

Thagard, Paul. The Conceptual Structure of the Chemical Revolution. Philosophy of Science 57
(June 1990): 183209.
[DOI: 10.1086/289543]
Thagard uses Antoine-Laurent Lavoisiers conceptual development during the chemical revolution as a test
case for his theory of revolutionary conceptual change. Drawing on research in cognitive science and
artificial intelligence theory, he not only characterizes the conceptual structure of Lavoisiers ideas at
various stages in the chemical revolution but also attempts to articulate the mechanisms by which this
structure changes.

The Atomic Theory

The development of the atomic theory of matter by both chemists and physicists during the 19th and early 20th
centuries has been of interest to philosophers for three related reasons. First, the scientific developments
surrounding atomism have been used as a model of successful transdiction: this is a case where scientists found
a way to bring experimental results to bear on what had been a metaphysical hypothesis (see Rocke 1984, Nash
1964). Second, atomism and the scientific debates surrounding it have been used as both a source and a test
case for methodological and/or epistemological principles that purport to characterize when it is appropriate to
infer the existence of theoretical, or unobservable, entities (see Achinstein 2007, Glymour 1980). Third, the
methodological reflections of scientists inspired by the atomism debates have been used to investigate the
interplay between scientific and philosophical considerations in the support for scientific theories (see Chalmers
2009, Buchdahl 1959). Several scientific developments figure repeatedly in philosophical work on atomism.
First are the efforts of chemists, beginning with John Dalton and culminating with Stanislao Cannizzaro, to assign
relative atomic weights to the elements, thereby first establishing contact between the metaphysical hypothesis
of atomism and active science (see Nash 1964, Glymour 1980). Second are the developments in structural and
organic chemistry that led to accounts of valence, bonding, and isomerism; these are often regarded as
supporting a realistic interpretation of the atomic theory (see Rocke 1984, Needham 2008). Third are the
developments of thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases, which led not only to the new field of physical
chemistry but also to very different positions among scientists on the significance and viability of the atomic
hypothesis (see Rocke 1984, Achinstein 2007). Fourth are Jean-Baptiste Perrins experiments on Brownian
motion (Nye 1972), which seem to have put an end to scientific skepticism about atoms.
Achinstein, Peter. Atoms Empirical Eve: Methodological Disputes and How to Evaluate Them.

Perspectives on Science 15 (Fall 2007): 359390.

[DOI: 10.1162/posc.2007.15.3.359]
Achinstein formulates and evaluates the epistemological principles on the basis of which the physicists
and physical chemists Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, Pierre Duhem, and James Maxwell reached their various
positions on the existence of unobservable atoms. He argues that none of the proposed standards are
acceptable and that the diversity of proposed standards does not indicate that such standards are
subjective.

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Buchdahl, Gerd. Sources of Scepticism in Atomic Theory. British Journal for the Philosophy of

Science 10 (August 1959): 120134.

[DOI: 10.1093/bjps/X.38.120]
Buchdahl distinguishes between scientific and philosophical doubts about the existence of atoms. He
argues that though these sorts of doubts are logically independent, they have exerted considerable mutual
influence on each other, as can be seen in the case of 19th-century atomism.

Chalmers, Alan. The Scientists Atom and the Philosophers Stone: How Science Succeeded and

Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms . Boston Studies on the Philosophy of Science
Series 279. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2009.
Chalmers provides an epistemological history of atomism from the ancient Greeks to the early 20th
century, emphasizing the differences between metaphysical and scientific atomic theories. He claims,
controversially, that 19th-century chemistry was compatible with agnostic anti-atomism and the scientific
confirmation of the atomic hypothesis was the work of 20th-century physics.

Glymour, Clark. Theory and Evidence . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Glymour retells the evolution of chemical atomism from John Dalton to Stanislao Cannizzaro as a case of
the application of the bootstrap strategy. That is, various supplementary hypotheses, such as the law of
specific heats and the law of isomorphism, were used to determine atomic weights, and these general
hypotheses were tested against one another to establish their adequacy and accuracy as well as the
plausibility of the atomic hypothesis.

Nash, Leonard. The Atomic-Molecular Theory. In Harvard Case Histories in Experimental

Science , Vol. 1. Edited by James Conant, 215321. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1964.
Nash provides a readable account of the process by which chemists settled on the relative atomic weights
of the elements. He emphasizes how experimental developments gradually reduced the arbitrariness of
the assumptions connecting the atomic hypothesis to the experimental facts it was intended to explain.

Needham, Paul. Resisting Chemical Atomism: Duhems Argument. Philosophy of Science 75

(December 2008): 921931.
[DOI: 10.1086/594535]
Pierre Duhem was one of the developers of thermodynamics and a lifelong opponent of the atomic theory.
In this paper Needham reconstructs his arguments against atomism as well as his alternative interpretation
of structural formulas. Additionally, Needham considers some of the developments in late-19th-century
organic chemistry that might have caused difficulties for Duhems approach.

Nye, Mary Joe. Molecular Reality . New York: American Elsevier, 1972.

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Nye characterizes the atomic debates as Jean-Baptiste Perrin found them in the early 20th century and
then describes his experimental work on Brownian motion, which proved to be crucial in attaining broad
acceptance of molecular reality within the scientific community.

Rocke, Alan. Chemical Atomism in the Nineteenth Century: From Dalton to Cannizzaro .
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984.
Rocke distinguishes chemical atoms from physical atoms and argues that the existence of chemical
atoms was well established by the 1860s. He explicitly presents the establishment of chemical atoms as a
case of transdiction and emphasizes the roles of both the kinetic theory of gases and developments in
structural and organic chemistry in this process.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN A CHEMICAL CONTEXT

The following sections survey the central issues that have occupied philosophers of chemistry. Initially, the field
focused on reductionism or, more generally, on the relationships between chemistry and physics. While interest
in these relationships continues unabated, the field has also broadened out to include a variety of topics. Some
of these issues originated in more general metaphysical or semantic contexts, such as questions about chemical
classification and the status of chemical kinds. Others have grown out of the distinctive features of chemistry as
a science. These include attempts to understand the roles of mechanisms and synthesis in chemistry, the
distinctive character of the theoretical tools used by chemists, and the rich role of representations in chemical
discourse.
Reductionism: Bonds, Structure, and Periodicity
The relationship between chemistry and physics was the issue that launched the philosophy of chemistry as a
distinct subdiscipline. To many mainstream philosophers (and some physicists), chemistry has seemed to be a
discipline that is, in principle if not in practice, reducible to more fundamental physical theories, such as
quantum mechanics. Philosophers of chemistry have worked to clarify what is being claimed in the assertion that
chemistry is ultimately nothing but physics. For the most part, insofar as they have been able to make sense of
such claims, philosophers of chemistry have found them implausible, though they are quick to acknowledge the
importance of physical theory in chemistry. Scerri 2008 collects the papers of the most prominent philosopher
working to understand and evaluate these issues, and so it is a good place to start for the general issues of
reduction. Most of the work on the reduction of chemistry to physics has focused on three central chemical
concepts and questions about how those concepts can be accommodated in physics. The first is the periodicity
of the chemical elements, dramatically represented in the periodic table. Scerri 2007 provides a history of the
periodic table and an evaluation of claims that the periodic law has been explained by fundamental physics,
while Ostrovsky 2001 provides a physicists perspective on this issue. The second concept that has received a
lot of attention is that of molecular shape, or structure. Interestingly, this issue arose within the theoretical
chemistry community itself, as presented in Woolley 1978. Works by philosophers, such as Ramsey 1997 and
Hendry 2010, have taken some of the arguments originating from within the chemistry community and applied
them to philosophical issues of reduction. The last chemical concept that has become a center of attention is
that of the chemical bond. Bogaard 1978 explains why it is not straightforwardly obvious that chemical bonding

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has been accounted for by quantum mechanics. Hendry 2008 and Weisberg 2008 consider, from two different
points of view, what the implications of the uncertain relationship between the chemical bond and its underlying
physics might mean for the autonomy of chemistry.
Bogaard, Paul. The Limitations of Physics as a Chemical Reducing Agent. PSA: Proceedings of

the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Symposia and Invited Papers 2
(1978): 345356.
Bogaard provides an early but still useful and clear presentation of some of the problems encountered
regarding chemical bonding as being reducible to quantum mechanics.

Hendry, Robin. Two Conceptions of the Chemical Bond. Philosophy of Science 75 (2008):
909920.
[DOI: 10.1086/594534]
Hendry sets up the problem of how to think about the chemical bond given our current quantum
mechanical understanding of molecules. He distinguishes two broad possibilities in the work of some of
the foremost thinkers about chemical bonding: a structural conception and an energetic conception. The
pros and cons of these conceptions of bonding are then assessed.

Hendry, Robin. Ontological Reduction and Molecular Structure. Studies in History and

Philosophy of Modern Physics 41 (2010): 183191.

[DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsb.2010.03.005]
Hendry describes the impasse arrived at in arguments about the intertheoretic reduction of quantum
chemistry to quantum mechanics and then suggests a move to questions of ontological reduction as a way
forward. By appeal to the symmetry problem, he then argues for the ontological emergence of molecule
structure and defends this position against several common objections.

Ostrovsky, V. N. What and How Physics Contributes to Understanding the Periodic Law.

Foundations of Chemistry 3 (2001): 145182.

[DOI: 10.1023/A:1011476405933]
Ostrovsky argues that models and approximations are always required to explain the periodic properties
of complex systems. He describes some of the approaches used to explain the periodic law of the
elements and assimilates this project to other attempts to explain self-organization in complex systems.

Ramsey, J. Molecular Shape, Reduction, Explanation, and Approximate Concepts. Synthese 111
(1997): 233251.
[DOI: 10.1023/A:1004901931804]
While not denying that molecular shape is a concept with a limited range of application, Ramsey argues
that it is nonetheless an objective, but approximate, feature of the world.

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Scerri, Eric R. The Periodic Table . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Scerri presents an extended historical account of the development of the periodic table. Several later
chapters address philosophical issues of how and to what extent the periodic table is explicable in terms
of more fundamental theory, including quantum mechanics. The notes contain references to Scerris
extensive writings on these and related issues.

Scerri, Eric R. Collected Papers on Philosophy of Chemistry . London: Imperial College Press,
2008.
[DOI: 10.1142/9781848161382]
This book is a collection of twelve essays, about half of which deal with either the reduction of chemistry to
physics or realism about chemical models of bonding. Though his approach is nuanced, Scerri is generally
skeptical of reductionist claims and supportive of the epistemological and conceptual autonomy of
chemistry.

Weisberg, Michael. Challenges to the Structural Conception of Chemical Bonding. Philosophy of

Science 75 (2008): 932946.

[DOI: 10.1086/594536]
Subjects the structural conception of chemical bonds to robustness analysis, evaluating the extent to which
its central features appear in various quantum mechanical models of chemical bonding. Weisberg
concludes that central features of the structural conception are not robust and that there are reasons to be
skeptical about the reality of such bonds.

Woolley, R. Must a Molecule Have a Shape? Journal of the American Chemical Society 100
(1978): 10731078.
[DOI: 10.1021/ja00472a009]
Woolley argues that molecular structure is a concept that is only applicable in limited contexts and thus
that it is not an intrinsic feature of a molecule. It is only when nuclear and electronic motions can be
separated that it is appropriate for molecular scientists to talk in terms of chemical bonds and molecular
structure.

CHEMICAL CLASSIFICATION AND MICROPHYSICALISM

Chemistry has repeatedly entered the more general philosophical consciousness through the idea of natural
kinds. Chemical kinds are often taken as paradigmatic examples of natural kinds: collections of individuals
(atoms or molecules) that share certain natural properties (usually their microstructure), in virtue of which they
are the specific kinds of things that they are. Aside from more general metaphysical and semantic concerns,
several issues arising specifically from the appeals to chemical kinds have emerged. These include the
supposedly privileged role of microphysical properties in fixing the membership conditions of chemical kinds
as well as the role of pragmatic concerns or convention in chemical classification. Bird and Tobin 2008 provides

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a nice general introduction to philosophical debates about natural kinds and the role of chemical examples in
these debates. LaPorte 1996 emphasizes that even our chemical classifications are not so natural in that they
reflect human choices. Both Hendry 2006 and Harr 2005 are sympathetic to the idea that microstructure plays
a special role in chemical classification but characterize this role in historical and pragmatic terms. Van Brakel
2000 and Needham 2010 both emphasize the importance of macroscopic properties in the characterizations of
chemical substances. As a result, they dispute the idea that if chemical kinds have essences, those essences are
constituted by the microphysical properties of the members of the kind. Tobin 2010 considers
microphysicalism in chemistry and how it might be extended into protein classification.
Bird, Alexander, and Emily Tobin. Natural Kinds. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 2008.
Bird and Tobin provide a useful summary of the general issues and arguments that have motivated recent
work on essentialism and microphysicalism in chemistry. The entry also includes a section devoted to work
on natural kinds in chemistry.

Harr, Rom. Chemical Kinds and Essences Revisited. Foundations of Chemistry 7 (2005): 730.
[DOI: 10.1023/B:FOCH.0000042885.93975.69]
Harr uses the distinction between nominal and real essences to clarify the classificatory practices of
chemists. Chemists seek to rationalize and stabilize nominal classificatory schemes with hypothesis, now
largely in the form of molecular structures, about the real essences of such classifications.

Hendry, Robin. Elements, Compounds, and Other Chemical Kinds. Philosophy of Science 73
(2006): 864875.
[DOI: 10.1086/518745]
Hendry considers the thesis that the defining characteristics of chemical kinds are provided by their
microstructure. He finds this plausible when applied to the elements but more problematic when applied
to chemical compounds.

LaPorte, Joe. Chemical Kind Term Reference and the Discovery of Essence. Nos 30 (1996):
112132.
[DOI: 10.2307/2216306]
LaPorte argues, using isotopes and examples from mineralogy, that the microstructures associated with
chemical kind terms are not discovered but rather chosen. Often, macroscopic properties are used to
motivate such choices.

Needham, Paul. Microessentialism: What Is the Argument? Nos 45 (2010): 121.

[DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2010.00756.x]
Needham argues against the thesis that microscopic properties are essential for characterizing chemical
substances. Macroscopic properties are sufficient, he contends, to characterize chemical substances, and
they may even be necessary.

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Tobin, Emma. Microstructuralism and Macromolecules: The Case of Moonlighting Proteins.

Foundations of Chemistry 12 (2010): 4154.

[DOI: 10.1007/s10698-009-9078-5]
Tobin distinguishes a variety of ways that microphysicalism might be formulated. She then considers
objections that have been advanced against microphysicalism in chemistry, concluding that there are
reasonable prospects for overcoming these objections. Moonlighting proteins, however, provide a new sort
of challenge to attempts to extend microphysicalism to protein classification.

van Brakel, Jap. Philosophy of Chemistry . Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2000.
Though van Brakel touches on most of the major themes in the philosophy of chemistry in this book, two
chapters are devoted to the defining characteristics of chemical substances. Chemical substances, he
alleges, are characterized macroscopically, and insofar as they have microscopic properties, those
properties should not be metaphysically privileged over their macroscopic counterparts.

Mechanisms, Pathways, and Synthesis

Two of the most distinctive aims of chemists are to synthesize new substances and to characterize the
mechanisms or pathways by which chemical transformations occur. These aims are not independent, as the
synthesis of new compounds has both been facilitated by and contributed to the study of mechanisms. Because
mechanisms are a distinctive sort of theoretical construct, philosophers have been principally interested in
understanding both the role that mechanisms play in the chemical practice and how these mechanisms are
established. Thagard 2003 focuses on biochemistry and how pathways are applied. Ramsey 2008 discusses the
establishment of mechanisms in organic chemistry. Akeroyd 2000 describes the development of one of the
most important classification schemes for organic reaction mechanisms. The centrality of synthesis, Schummer
1997 argues, makes chemistry importantly different from standard philosophical models of science, because it
blurs the distinction between pure science and its application. Goodwin 2009 considers how the theory of
organic chemistry is used in the design of syntheses, while Bhushan and Rosenfeld 2000 speculate about some
of the other ways that synthesis is philosophically significant. Cornforth 1993 offers a chemists perspective on
the significance and difficulties of synthesis.
Akeroyd, F. M. The Foundations of Modern Organic Chemistry: The Rise of the Hughes and
Ingold Theory from 19301942. Foundations of Chemistry 2 (2000): 99125.
[DOI: 10.1023/A:1009942227721]
Akeroyd describes the development of the Ingold scheme for characterizing reaction mechanisms. He
considers not only the utility of the scheme and the sorts of evidence that were used to support it but also
some of the reasons that it was eventually superseded. Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and W. V. O. Quine are
invoked to provide perspective on this episode in the development of organic chemistry.

Bhushan, N., and S. Rosenfeld. Chemical Synthesis: Complexity, Similarity, Natural Kinds, and
the Evolution of a Logic. In Of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on

Chemistry . Edited by N. Bhushan and S. Rosenfeld, 187210. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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2000.
Bhushan and Rosenfeld survey a range of philosophical issues that arise about and within the practice of
chemical synthesis. They characterize synthesis, consider whether it has a logic, explain how the notions
of complexity and simplicity are used in it, and finally scrutinize how the concept of natural kind
might apply to its products.

Cornforth, J. W. The Trouble with Synthesis. Australian Journal of Chemistry 46 (1993):

157170.
[DOI: 10.1071/CH9930157]
Cornforth, a Nobel Prizewinning synthetic chemist, defines chemical synthesis as the intentional
construction of molecules by means of chemical reactions. He then examines the motives for and the
future of chemical synthesis.

Goodwin, William. Scientific Understanding and Synthetic Design. British Journal for the

Philosophy of Science 60 (2009): 271301.

[DOI: 10.1093/bjps/axp010]
Investigates how understanding the theory of organic chemistry facilitates the paradigmatic application of
organic chemistrytotal synthesis. The design of such synthesis, it is alleged, depends on a series of
heuristic principles underwritten by the contrastive and compositional theory of organic chemistry. E. J.
Coreys logic of chemical synthesis is used to support this interpretation.

Ramsey, Jeffry. Mechanisms and Their Explanatory Challenges in Organic Chemistry. Philosophy

of Science 75 (December 2008): 970982.

[DOI: 10.1086/594539]
Ramsey explores how organic chemists use reaction mechanisms and argues that these mechanisms are a
form of causal explanation. He emphasizes the ways the mechanisms that organic chemists provide are
contingent not only because of the many pathways by which individual reactions can occur but also
because of the difficulties in establishing reaction mechanisms.

Schummer, Joachim. Challenging Standard Distinctions between Science and Technology: The
Case of Preparative Chemistry. Hyle 3 (1997): 8194.
Schummer argues for the centrality of synthesis in chemical practice, examines the aims of preparative
chemistry, and claims that synthesis creates difficulties for traditional philosophical accounts of the
difference between pure science and technology.

Thagard, Paul. Pathways to Biomedical Discovery. Philosophy of Science 70 (April 2003):

235254.
[DOI: 10.1086/375465]

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Thagard analyzes the notion of a pathway, prevalent in biochemistry and molecular biology. He explains
how pathways support explanations in biochemistry and medicine as well as how they can be used to
understand and devise treatments for diseases.

Models, Theories, and Explanations

Several features of chemistry distinguish it from the traditional philosophical paradigms of scientific inquiry
(most notably fundamental physics). These include the complexity of the phenomena it investigates and the
often practical orientation of those doing the investigating. Philosophical work on the models, theories, and
explanations of chemistry has focused on the ways these distinguishing features of chemical inquiry impact
theorizing in the field. Several overlapping themes have emerged in this work. First, theorizing in chemistry is
notably pragmatic, as described in Woody 2004 and Hofmann 1990; chemists theorize for many different
reasons, and they adapt their theoretical tools to the job at hand. Second, as argued in Weisberg 2004 and
Goodwin 2007, chemists have adopted underappreciated explanatory strategies to unify the complex
phenomena that they study. Third, there is a complex and layered interaction between theory and experiment in
chemistry. Stemwedel 2006 describes the interplay between theorizing and experimental measurement in a
contemporary case of theory testing, while Gavroglu 1997 examines the impact of practical concerns on a
historical case of theory development. Fourth, the aspirations of chemists to have practical theories that apply to
complex phenomena are often in tension with attempts to bring chemical phenomena within the scope of more
fundamental theories. Caldin 1959 and Berson 2008 both question the centrality of fundamental theory in
chemistry and emphasize instead the importance of empirical refinement in theory development.
Berson, Jerome. Fundamental Theories and Their Empirical Patches. Foundations of Chemistry
10 (2008): 147156.
[DOI: 10.1007/s10698-008-9046-5]
Berson describes some of the ways that ad hoc and empirical refinements are used in the development and
application of chemical theories. Both historical and contemporary cases of such refinements are used to
challenge traditional philosophical accounts of the role of fundamental theories in chemistry.

Caldin, E. F. Theories and the Development of Chemistry. British Journal for the Philosophy of

Science 10 (1959): 209222.

[DOI: 10.1093/bjps/X.39.209]
Presents model refinement, rather than hypothesis testing, as the principal role for observations in
experimental physical chemistry. Though this article is largely directed at claims about the importance of
falsification in scientific development, Caldin brings out the often underappreciated role of empirical input
in fixing the content and scope of chemical theories.

Gavroglu, Kostas. Philosophical Issues in the History of Chemistry. Synthese 111 (1997):
283304.
[DOI: 10.1023/A:1004906132712]
Gavroglu brings out the theoretical particularity of chemistry by considering several historical approaches

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to the development of chemical thermodynamics. He emphasizes the roles of visualizability and

connection to laboratory practice in the construction of what turn out to be complementary theoretical
approaches.

Goodwin, William. Scientific Understanding after the Ingold Revolution in Organic Chemistry.

Philosophy of Science 74 (2007): 386408.

[DOI: 10.1086/522358]
Describes the explanatory structure of organic chemistry and characterizes how the theory of organic
chemistry unifies the field, resulting in scientific understanding. Unification in organic chemistry is
contrasted with contemporary philosophical accounts of unification.

Hofmann, James. How the Models of Chemistry Vie. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of

the Philosophy of Science Association, Contributed Papers 1 (1990): 405419.

Hofmann characterizes the range of theoretical activities involved in solid state chemistry as well as the
role of models in the study of transition metal oxides. These models serve a dual role as both causal
descriptions of phenomena and as characterizations that facilitate the application of fundamental theory,
and they are judged accordingly.

Stemwedel, Janet. Getting More with Less: Experimental Constraints and Stringent Tests of
Model Mechanisms of Chemical Oscillators. Philosophy of Science 73 (2006): 743754.
[DOI: 10.1086/518629]
Stemwedel offers a case study in the dynamics of chemical modeling. She examines how simple models of
oscillatory chemical reactions are refined through theoretical advances, which in turn lead to new ways of
testing the models.

Weisberg, Michael. Qualitative Theory and Chemical Explanation. Philosophy of Science 71

(2004): 10711081.
[DOI: 10.1086/428011]
Weisberg investigates why qualitative models play an important role in understanding chemistry. He
argues that there is typically a trade-off between the precision and the generality of models, and since
generality leads to increased explanatory power, highly idealized qualitative models can have an important
role in chemical explanation.

Woody, Andrea. Telltale Signs: What Common Explanatory Strategies in Chemistry Reveal about
Explanation Itself. Foundations of Chemistry 6 (2004): 1343.
[DOI: 10.1023/B:FOCH.0000020993.09368.b6]
Woody explores the sources of the explanatory power of several theories (or models) in chemistry to
understand what makes explanatory theories valuable to scientists. She argues that judgments of

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explanatory adequacy are contextual and that they are best understood relative to the aims of the
particular scientific practice in which they occur.

Chemical Representation
Chemistry, and in particular organic chemistry, is notable for the prominent role played by nonlinguistic
representations in the discourse of the field. A casual glance at almost any journal in the field will reveal articles
replete with a wide range of different representations of molecules and their interactions. Philosophers,
chemists, and historians have begun to try to understand the roles played by these representations in the
practice of chemistry. Hoffman and Laszlo 1991 is a reflective survey by prominent chemists on the range and
importance of representation in chemistry. Hoffman 1995 expands on these reflections and situates them within
more general concerns about chemical practice. Klein 2003 characterizes the central roles played by Berzelian
chemical formulas in the developing culture of organic chemistry in the 19th century, while Weininger 2000
focuses on the origins and limitations of structural formulas. Goodwin 2009 characterizes the roles of structural
formulas in the discourse of organic chemistry, and Vollmer 2006 discusses how chemical diagrams represent
the spatial relationships between atoms in a molecule. Woody 2000 argues that molecular orbital diagrams play
roles in chemical reasoning for which quantum mechanical wave functions are unsuited.
Goodwin, William. Visual Representation in Science. Philosophy of Science 76 (2009): 372390.
[DOI: 10.1086/649812]
Goodwin argues that structural formulas play two distinct roles in chemical discourse but that in neither
case should they be regarded as bearing truth. Instead, they act as descriptive names and as models.
Conformational analysis is used to explore the role of structural formulas as models.

Hoffman, Roald. The Same and Not the Same . New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Hoffman, a Nobel Prize winner, reflects on many different aspects of chemistry, including the development
of structural formulas, their role in chemical articles, and their relationship to reality.

Hoffman, Roald, and P. Laszlo. Representation in Chemistry. Angewandte Chemie International

Edition in English 30 (1991): 116.

[DOI: 10.1002/anie.199100013]
Hoffman and Laszlo explore the range of representations of molecular structure, how these
representations manage to communicate information, and the extent to which these representations may
be understood to constitute a language or a form of art.

Klein, Ursula. Experiments, Models, Paper Tools . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Klein characterizes the transformation of organic chemistry from plant and animal chemistry to synthetic
carbon chemistry in the first half of the 19th century. The role of Berzelian formulas as paper tools
facilitating the classification and modeling of as well as the experimentation on the newly synthesized
research objects is a central theme.

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Vollmer, Sarah. Space in Molecular Representation; or, How Pictures Represent Objects. In

Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline . Edited by D. Baird, E. Scerr, and L.

McIntyre, 293308. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006.
Vollmer characterizes John Daltons system for representing the spatial relations within molecules as
pictorial and then considers the ways this system was extended into three dimensions. She argues that
while some of these extensions were pictorial as well, others were conventionalized to overcome some of
the difficulties of projecting into two dimensions.

Weininger, Stephen. Butlerovs Vision: The Timeless, the Transient, and the Representation of
Chemical Structure. In Of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry .
Edited by N. Bhushan and S. Rosenfeld, 143161. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Weininger distinguishes two aspects of chemical structurethe energetic and the temporaland then
explains why energetic considerations have dominated chemistry thus far. He considers ways dynamics
and time are integrated into chemistry and the implications of this integration for conceptions of chemical
structure.

Woody, Andrea. Putting Quantum Mechanics to Work in Chemistry: The Power of Diagrammatic
Representation. Philosophy of Science , supp., 67 (2000): S612S627.
Woody describes and contrasts two kinds of representations of molecules: quantum mechanical wave
functions and molecular orbital diagrams. She argues that wave functions are limited in their capacity to
support traditional chemical reasoning but that some of these limitations have been overcome in
molecular orbital diagrams.

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