What is a chemical property?
Synthese 155 (3):293 - 305 (2007)
| Abstract | Despite the currently perceived urgent need among contemporary philosophers of chemistry for adjudicating between two rival metaphysical conceptual frameworks—is chemistry primarily a science of substances or processes?—this essay argues that neither provides us with what we need in our attempts to explain and comprehend chemical operations and phenomena. First, I show the concept of a chemical property can survive the abandoning of the metaphysical framework of substance. While this abandonment means that we will need to give up essential properties, contingent properties can give us all the stability we need to account for chemical continuity as well as change. I then go on to show that this attention to clusters of contingent properties does not force us into the arms of an alternative process metaphysical framework either. Finally, I sketch a view I call particularism with respect to chemical properties on analogy with moral particularism. I conclude by sketching some of the implications for the field of philosophy of chemistry of my proposal that we abandon our interest in the metaphysical question of what chemistry is primarily about in favor of a broadly scientific particularism with respect to kinds and properties. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,631 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesOlimpia Lombardi & Martín Labarca (2005). The Ontological Autonomy of the Chemical World. Foundations of Chemistry 7 (2).
Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino (2011). Ontological Tensions in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Chemistry: Between Mechanism and Vitalism. Foundations of Chemistry 13 (3):173-186.
Robin Le Poidevin (2005). Missing Elements and Missing Premises: A Combinatorial Argument for the Ontological Reduction of Chemistry. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (1):117 - 134.
S. H. Vollmer (2003). The Philosophy of Chemistry Reformulating Itself: Nalni Bhushan and Stuart Rosenfeld's of Minds and Molecules: New Philosophical Perspectives on Chemistry. Philosophy of Science 70 (2):383-390.
Pier Luigi Luisi (2002). Emergence in Chemistry: Chemistry as the Embodiment of Emergence. Foundations of Chemistry 4 (3):183-200.
Micah Newman (2008). Chemical Supervenience. Foundations of Chemistry 10 (1).
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads24 ( #51,534 of 548,969 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,438 of 548,969 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
