The philosophical analysis of chemistry has advanced at such a pace during the last dozen years that the existence of philosophy of chemistry as an autonomous discipline cannot be doubted any more. The present paper will attempt to analyse the experience of philosophy of chemistry at the, so to say, meta-level. Philosophers of chemistry have especially stressed that all sciences need not be similar to physics. They have tried to argue for chemistry as its own type of science and for (...) a pluralistic understanding of science in general. However, when stressing the specific character of chemistry, philosophers do not always analyse the question ‘What is science?’ theoretically. It is obvious that a ‘monistic’ understanding of science should not be based simply on physics as the epitome of science, regarding it as a historical accident that physics has obtained this status. The author’s point is that the philosophical and methodological image of science should not be chosen arbitrarily; instead, it should be theoretically elaborated as an idealization (theoretical model) substantiated on the historical practice of science. It is argued that although physics has, in a sense, justifiably obtained the status of a paradigm of science, chemistry, which is not simply a physical science, but a discipline with a dual character, is also relevant for elaborating a theoretical model of science. The theoretical model of science is a good tool for examining various issues in philosophy of chemistry as well as in philosophy of science or science studies generally. (shrink)

I argue for an intentional conception of representation in science that requires bringing scientific agents and their intentions into the picture. So the formula is: Agents (1) intend; (2) to use model, M; (3) to represent a part of the world, W; (4) for some purpose, P. This conception legitimates using similarity as the basic relationship between models and the world. Moreover, since just about anything can be used to represent anything else, there can be no unified ontology of models. (...) This whole approach is further supported by a brief exposition of some recent work in cognitive, or usage-based, linguistics. Finally, with all the above as background, I criticize the recently much discussed idea that claims involving scientific models are really fictions. (shrink)

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

[Time, the fundamental dimension of our existence, has fascinated artists, philosophers, and scientists of every culture and every century. All of us can remember a moment as a child when time became a personal reality, when we realized what a "year" was, or asked ourselves when "now" happened. Common sense says time moves forward, never backward, from cradle to grave. Nevertheless, Einstein said that time is an illusion. Nature's laws, as he and Newton defined them, describe a timeless, deterministic universe (...) within which we can make predictions with complete certainty. In effect, these great physicists contended that time is reversible and thus meaningless. (shrink)

Whitehead’s and Prigogine’s philosophies of science are similar in this respect that they both areinterested in ontology built in the light of modern science. This kind of ontological approach, especially Whitehead’s metaphysical reasoning is usually regarded as speculative which should be avoidedin philosophy of science. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers appreciated, however, Whitehead’s metaphysics as cosmology in that being the most ambitious attempt to elaborate a philosophy of naturethat, although speculative, is not directed against science or towards separation of philosophy (...) fromthe actual science. Although Whitehead criticized the classical science, he did not identify it withscience in general and did not acknowledge the respective domains and tasks of science and philosophy as distinct of principle from each other. According to Prigogine and Stengers Whitehead’s philosophy was somewhat the forerunner of Prigogine’s non-classical science which gives a new content to thespeculations of Whitehead. Chemistry was a starting point of Prigogine’s non-classical physical theory.In the present paper Prigogine’s conception of non-classical science is examined from the point ofview of a theoretical conception of science elaborated in the context of philosophy of chemistry.Prigogine and Stengers, as well as Whitehead, have not really presented a theoretical conception ofscience. It is argued that the latter, however, offers a key for examining various issues in philosophy ofscience and understanding science in general, including Prigogine’s non-classical science. Appreciating Prigogine’s optimism concerning the chances of science that has liberated itself from the myth,the author still finds that this optimism can also be misleading as it can create a false impression thatthis new science does not deal with idealizations any more, that it is not a means of inquiry resultingfrom special requirements and aims, but will really understand the world “as it is” to the point thatthe problems of so called human world, including those of, e.g., ethics would be, in principle, scientifically understandable. In fact, however, if non-classical science manages rid itself from the myth ofclassical science, the only change will be that it does not equate the scientific picture of world andscientifically modelled reality with the real world “as it is”.Keywords: non-classical science, philosophy of chemistry, Prigogine’s scientific ontology, theoretical model of science, Whitehead’s metaphysical ontology. (shrink)