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134 found
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  1. Identical or Distinct? The Paneth–Fajans Debate on the Nature of Isotopes.Pieter Thyssen - manuscript
  2. Electronegativity as a New Case for Emergence and a New Problem for Reductionism.Monte Cairns - forthcoming - Foundations of Chemistry.
    The potential reducibility of chemical entities to their physical bases is a matter of dispute between ontological reductionists on one hand, and emergentists on the other. However, relevant debates typically revolve around the reducibility of so-called ‘higher-level’ chemical entities, such as molecules. Perhaps surprisingly, even committed proponents of emergence for these higher-level chemical entities appear to accept that the ‘lowest-level’ chemical entities – atomic species – are reducible to their physical bases. In particular, the microstructural view of chemical elements, actively (...)
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  3. An interactive approach to the notion of chemical substance and the case of water.Marabel Riesmeier - forthcoming - Foundations of Chemistry:1-12.
    From organic synthesis to quantum chemical calculation, chemists interact with chemical substances in a wide variety of ways. But what even is a chemical substance? My aim is to propose a notion of chemical substance that is consistent with the way in which chemical substances are individuated in chemistry, addressing gaps in previous conceptions of chemical substance. Water is employed as a case study to develop the account, not only because it is a familiar example of a chemical substance, but (...)
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  4. Mendeleev’s Periodic Law and the 19th Century Debates on Atomism.Pieter Thyssen - forthcoming - In Martin Eisvogel & Klaus Ruthenberg (eds.), Wald, Positivism and Chemistry.
    The heated debates and severe conflicts between the atomists and the anti-atomists of the latter half of the nineteenth century are well known to the historian of science. The position of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev towards these nineteenth century debates on atomism will be studied in this paper. A first attempt will thus be offered to reconcile Mendeleev’s seemingly contradictory comments and ambiguous standpoints into one coherent view.
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  5. Co-authorship in chemistry at the turn of the twentieth century: the case of Theodore W. Richards.K. Brad Wray - 2024 - Foundations of Chemistry 26 (1):75-88.
    It is widely recognized that conceptual and theoretical innovations and the employment of new instruments and experimental techniques are important factors in explaining the growth of scientific knowledge in chemistry. This study examines another dimension of research in chemistry, collaboration and co-authorship. I focus specifically on Theodore Richards’ career and publications. During the period in which Richards worked, co-authorship was beginning to become more common than it had been previously. Richards was the first American chemist to be awarded a Nobel (...)
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  6. From the Atom to Living Systems: A Chemical and Philosophical Journey Into Modern and Contemporary Science.Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino & Giovanni Villani - 2023 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    The philosophical vision of the world and the consequent methodology behind the book are clarified. The perspective used is the systemic one, but since today this term has assumed a wide and diversified meaning in the literature, this introduction will clarify the specific meaning of our approach, starting from the meaning of the term "system". Our idea of system is based on three key assertions that may seem contradictory, but are necessary and complementary to its definition. In particular, we considered (...)
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  7. What Is A Chemical Element? A Collection of Essays by Chemists, Philosophers, Historians, and Educators. Edited by Eric Scerri and Elena Ghibaudi. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020, 312 pp. ISBN: 9780190933784, £65.00. [REVIEW]Pieter Thyssen - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science (3-4):1-4.
    Compared to its sister disciplines—philosophy of physics and philosophy of biology—philosophy of chemistry remains a relatively young field of philosophical endeavour. Having originated in the late...
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  8. Has the problem (or puzzle) of the element concept been solved?: Eric Scerri and Elena Ghibaudi (eds): What is a chemical element? A collection of essays by chemists, philosophers, historians, and educators. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, 296 pp, £65 HB. [REVIEW]Nicholas W. Best - 2022 - Metascience 31 (2):255-259.
  9. Atomic number and isotopy before nuclear structure: multiple standards and evolving collaboration of chemistry and physics.Jordi Cat & Nicholas W. Best - 2022 - Foundations of Chemistry 25 (1):67-99.
    We provide a detailed history of the concepts of atomic number and isotopy before the discovery of protons and neutrons that draws attention to the role of evolving interplays of multiple aims and criteria in chemical and physical research. Focusing on research by Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford, we show that, in the context of differentiating disciplinary projects, the adoption of a complex and shifting concept of elemental identity and the ordering role of the periodic table led to a relatively (...)
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  10. What happened when chemists came to classify elements by their atomic number?K. Brad Wray - 2022 - Foundations of Chemistry 24 (2):161-170.
    I respond to Scerri’s recent reply to my claim that there was a scientific revolution in chemistry in the early twentieth Century. I grant, as Scerri insists, that there are significant continuities through the change about which we are arguing. That is so in all scientific revolutions. But I argue that the changes were such that they constitute a Kuhnian revolution, not in the classic sense of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but in the sense of Kuhn’s mature theory, developed (...)
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  11. Theodore Richards and the discovery of isotopes.K. Brad Wray - 2022 - Foundations of Chemistry 25 (1):57-66.
    I challenge Gareth Eaton’s recent claim that Theodore Richards should be counted among the discoverers of isotopes. In evaluating Eaton’s claim, I draw on two influential theories of scientific discovery, one developed by Thomas Kuhn, and one developed by Augustine Brannigan. I argue that though Richards’ experimental work contributed to the discovery, his work does not warrant attributing the discovery to him. Richards’ reluctance to acknowledge isotopes is well documented. Further, the fact that he made no claim to having made (...)
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  12. (1 other version)What Can the Discovery of Boron Tell Us About the Scientific Realism Debate?Jonathon Hricko - 2021 - In Timothy D. Lyons & Peter Vickers (eds.), Contemporary Scientific Realism: The Challenge From the History of Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter examines the work in chemistry that led to the discovery of boron and explores the implications of this episode for the scientific realism debate. This episode begins with Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of acidity and his prediction that boracic acid contains oxygen and a hypothetical, combustible substance that he called the boracic radical. And it culminates in the work of Davy, Gay-Lussac, and Thénard, who used potassium to extract oxygen from boracic acid and thereby discovered boron. This episode constitutes (...)
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  13. Enzyme classification and the entanglement of values and epistemic standards.Stijn Conix - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 84:37-45.
    This paper investigates the case of enzyme classification to evaluate different ideals for regulating values in science. I show that epistemic and non-epistemic considerations are inevitably and untraceably entangled in enzyme classification, and argue that this has significant implications for the two main kinds of views on values in science, namely, Epistemic Priority Views and Joint Satisfaction Views. More precisely, I argue that the case of enzyme classification poses a problem for the usability and descriptive accuracy of these two views. (...)
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  14. Problem of the Direct Quantum-Information Transformation of Chemical Substance.Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Computational and Theoretical Chemistry eJournal (Elsevier: SSRN) 3 (26):1-15.
    Arthur Clark and Michael Kube–McDowell (“The Triger”, 2000) suggested the sci-fi idea about the direct transformation from a chemical substance to another by the action of a newly physical, “Trigger” field. Karl Brohier, a Nobel Prize winner, who is a dramatic persona in the novel, elaborates a new theory, re-reading and re-writing Pauling’s “The Nature of the Chemical Bond”; according to Brohier: “Information organizes and differentiates energy. It regularizes and stabilizes matter. Information propagates through matter-energy and mediates the interactions of (...)
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  15. Particular Symmetries: Group Theory of the Periodic System.Pieter Thyssen & Arnout Ceulemans - 2020 - Substantia 4 (1):7-22.
    To this day, a hundred and fifty years after Mendeleev's discovery, the overal structure of the periodic system remains unaccounted for in quantum-mechanical terms. Given this dire situation, a handful of scientists in the 1970s embarked on a quest for the symmetries that lie hidden in the periodic table. Their goal was to explain the table's structure in group-theoretical terms. We argue that this symmetry program required an important paradigm shift in the understanding of the nature of chemical elements. The (...)
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  16. From The Principle Of Least Action To The Conservation Of Quantum Information In Chemistry: Can One Generalize The Periodic Table?Vasil Penchev - 2019 - Chemistry: Bulgarian Journal of Science Education 28 (4):525-539.
    The success of a few theories in statistical thermodynamics can be correlated with their selectivity to reality. These are the theories of Boltzmann, Gibbs, end Einstein. The starting point is Carnot’s theory, which defines implicitly the general selection of reality relevant to thermodynamics. The three other theories share this selection, but specify it further in detail. Each of them separates a few main aspects within the scope of the implicit thermodynamic reality. Their success grounds on that selection. Those aspects can (...)
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  17. Reporting the discovery of new chemical elements: working in different worlds, only 25 years apart.K. Brad Wray & Line Edslev Andersen - 2019 - Foundations of Chemistry 22 (2):137-146.
    In his account of scientific revolutions, Thomas Kuhn suggests that after a revolutionary change of theory, it is as if scientists are working in a different world. In this paper, we aim to show that the notion of world change is insightful. We contrast the reporting of the discovery of neon in 1898 with the discovery of hafnium in 1923. The one discovery was made when elements were identified by their atomic weight; the other discovery was made after scientists came (...)
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  18. Guest Editor: Foundations of Chemistry (Special Issue).Marina P. Banchetti - 2017 - Foundations of Chemistry 19 (1).
  19. Determining Sameness of Substance.Paul Needham - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (4):953-979.
    ABSTRACT The idea that the extension of a chemical substance is fixed by determining what stands in the relation of being the same substance to a paradigm sample plays a substantial role in chemistry, and procedures of identification that don’t make direct use of the method can be traced back to ones that do. But paradigm samples are not typically selected by ostension, as in Putnam’s version of this procedure. The relevance of ostension is questioned after a discussion of the (...)
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  20. Research and Implementation of AI in Welding Process Design.Jianwei WeiYun - 2017 - CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS 62.
    Aiming at the conflict between access and storage due to the continuous accumulation of knowledge storage in the field of artificial intelligence in welding, the author uses RDF (Resource Description Framework) to represent the technological knowledge of CO2 gas shielded welding, designs and implements a knowledge base based on Web semantic and stores it in HDFS, which is used to solve the difficulties of mass data storage. By studying the mechanism and characteristics of spatter in CO2 gas shielded welding, aiming (...)
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  21. Philosophy of chemistry: unkempt jungle and fertile ground: Eric Scerri and Lee McIntyre : Philosophy of chemistry: Growth of a new discipline . Dordrecht: Springer, 2015. xii+233pp, $99 HB.Micah Newman - 2016 - Metascience 25 (3):473-477.
  22. Meta-Incommensurability between Theories of Meaning: Chemical Evidence.Nicholas W. Best - 2015 - Perspectives on Science 23 (3):361-378.
    Attempting to compare scientific theories requires a philosophical model of meaning. Yet different scientific theories have at times—particularly in early chemistry—pre-supposed disparate theories of meaning. When two theories of meaning are incommensurable, we must say that the scientific theories that rely upon them are meta-incommensurable. Meta- incommensurability is a more profound sceptical threat to science since, unlike first-order incommensurability, it implies complete incomparability.
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  23. The Chemical Revolution revisited.Hasok Chang - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:91-98.
  24. Scientific pluralism and the Chemical Revolution.Martin Kusch - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:69-79.
    In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment (...)
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  25. Natural Kind Essentialism Revisited.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2015 - Mind 124 (495):795-822.
    Recent work on Natural Kind Essentialism has taken a deflationary turn. The assumptions about the grounds of essentialist truths concerning natural kinds familiar from the Kripke-Putnam framework are now considered questionable. The source of the problem, however, has not been sufficiently explicated. The paper focuses on the Twin Earth scenario, and it will be demonstrated that the essentialist principle at its core (which I call IDENT)—that necessarily, a sample of a chemical substance, A, is of the same kind as another (...)
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  26. Paneth’s epistemology of chemical elements in light of Kant’s Opus postumum.Farzad Mahootian - 2013 - Foundations of Chemistry 15 (2):171-184.
    Friedrich Paneth’s conception of “chemical element” has functioned as the official definition adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry since 1923. Paneth maintains a distinction between empirical and “transcendental” concepts of element; furthermore, chemical science requires fluctuation between the two. The origin of the empirical-transcendental split is found in Immanuel Kant’s classic Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787). The present paper examines Paneth’s foundational concept of element in light of Kant’s attempt, late in life, to revoke key distinctions (...)
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  27. Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking in the Periodic Table: Towards a Group-Theoretical Classification of the Chemical Elements.Pieter Thyssen - 2013 - Dissertation, Ku Leuven
    At the heart of chemistry lies the periodic system of chemical elements. Despite being the cornerstone of modern chemistry, the overall structure of the periodic system has never been fully understood from an atomic physics point of view. Group-theoretical models have been proposed instead, but they suffer from several limitations. Among others, the identification of the correct symmetry group and its decomposition into subgroups has remained a problem to this day. In an effort to deepen our limited understanding of the (...)
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  28. Translating Textbooks: Russian, German, and the Language of Chemistry.Michael Gordin - 2012 - Isis 103 (1):88-98.
    Using the cases of three Russian chemistry textbooks from the 1860s—authored by Freidrich Beilstein, A. M. Butlerov, and D. I. Mendeleev—this essay analyzes their contemporary translation into German and the implications of their divergent histories for scholars' understanding of the processes of credit accrual and the choices of languages of science.
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  29. Natural Kind Thingamajigs.Paul Needham - 2012 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1):97 - 101.
    I criticize the treatment of natural kinds as some sort of object, advocated in a recent paper by Alexander Bird. The arguments he gives for regimenting an illustrative statement featuring chemical kinds in his preferred manner are not conclusive, and his criticisms of an alternative strategy involving universally quantified sentences fail. This is important because of the widespread but poorly supported assumption that expressions of natural kinds should be treated as singular referring terms.
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  30. What Have We Learned from the Recent Historiography of Alchemy?William R. Newman - 2011 - Isis 102 (2):313-321.
    Over the last two decades a new scholarship on alchemy has emerged, leading to a fundamental reformulation of knowledge about alchemists and their activities. We now know that medieval and early modern alchemists employed experiment in concert with theory to demonstrate the existence of stable “chymical atoms,” which were thought to combine with one another according to a hierarchical theory of matter. Employing laboratory-based analysis and synthesis, alchemists were among the first explicitly to enunciate the principle of mass balance and (...)
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  31. The elements and conceptual change.Robin Hendry - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge.
  32. Entropy and Chemical Substance.Robin Findlay Hendry - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):921-932.
    In this essay I critically examine the role of entropy of mixing in articulating a macroscopic criterion for the sameness and difference of chemical substances. Consider three cases of mixing in which entropy change occurs: isotopic variants, spin isomers, and populations of atoms in different orthogonal quantum states. Using these cases I argue that entropy of mixing tracks differences between physical states, differences that may or may not correspond to a difference of substance. It does not provide a criterion for (...)
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  33. Elements of the third kind and the spin-dependent chemical force.R. Garth Kidd - 2010 - Foundations of Chemistry 13 (2):109-119.
    A lively philosophical debate has lately arisen over the nature of elementhood in chemistry. Two different senses in which the technical term ELEMENT is currently in use by chemists have been identified, leaving chemistry open to the logical fallacy of equivocation. This paper introduces a third, more elemental candidate: the high-enthalpy short-lived unbonded atom. An enthalpy index based on free-atoms-as-elements is established, whereby one can monitor the degree to which an atom’s spin-based attractive force is implemented exo-enthalpically when the atom (...)
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  34. A Mereological Interpretation of the Phase Rule.Paul Needham - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):900-910.
    Gibbs’s phase rule treats mixtures by relating the number of independent variables governing their state to the numbers of phases and independent substances. For the case of a single substance, it provides a criterion of purity. But where more substances are involved, the notion of independent substance is less readily understood. Textbook writers sometimes use algebraic terminology in ways that are suggestive but cannot be taken as literally accurate. I suggest that a mereological interpretation applies to these cases, as it (...)
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  35. Les Atomes: a landmark book in chemistry. [REVIEW]Gary D. Patterson - 2010 - Foundations of Chemistry 12 (3):223-233.
    There have been occasions when the publication of a particular book has had a singular impact on the conceptual world of the chemist. Sometimes the publication occurs near the beginning of a major change in discourse, and sometimes more near the end. Jean Perrin published Les Atomes in 1913 as the culmination of a century-long controversy over the size and physical reality of atoms and molecules. After its publication almost all chemists and physicists agreed that atoms and molecules of the (...)
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  36. How chemistry shifts horizons: element, substance, and the essential.Joseph E. Earley Sr - 2009 - Foundations of Chemistry 11 (2):65-77.
    In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical compromises made by (...)
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  37. Metals: Typical and less typical, transition and inner transition. [REVIEW]Fathi Habashi - 2009 - Foundations of Chemistry 12 (1):31-39.
    While most chemists agree on what is a metal and what is a non-metal there is a disagreement with respect to what is a metalloid and what is a transition metal. It is believed that this problem can be solved if two new terms are adopted: typical and less typical metals. These new terms will also help reconcile the European Periodic Table versus the North American regarding numbering of groups as well as the IUPAC numbering which could be as well (...)
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  38. Hasok Chang and Catherine Jackson , An Element of Controversy: The Life of Chlorine in Science, Medicine, Technology and War. BSHS Monograph Series, Vol. 13. London: British Society for the History of Science, 2007. Pp. ix+407. ISBN 978-0-906450-01-7. £15.00. [REVIEW]Ursula Klein - 2009 - British Journal for the History of Science 42 (1):128.
  39. The Solar Element: A Reconsideration of Helium's Early History.Helge Kragh - 2009 - Annals of Science 66 (2):157-182.
    Summary Apart from hydrogen, helium is the most abundant chemical element in the universe, and yet it was only discovered on the Earth in 1895. Its early history is unique because it encompasses astronomy as well as chemistry, two sciences which the spectroscope brought into contact during the second half of the nineteenth century. In the modest form of a yellow spectral line known as D3, ‘helium’ was sometimes supposed to exist in the Sun's atmosphere, an idea which is traditionally (...)
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  40. The Polonium Brief: A Hidden History of Cancer, Radiation, and the Tobacco Industry.Brianna Rego - 2009 - Isis 100 (3):453-484.
  41. Paneth, Kant, and the philosophy of chemistry.Klaus Ruthenberg - 2009 - Foundations of Chemistry 11 (2):79-91.
    Immanuel Kant has built up a dualistic epistemology that seems to fit to the peculiarities of chemistry quite well. Friedrich Paneth used Kant’s concept and characterised simple and basic substances which refer to the empirical and to the transcendental world, respectively. This paper takes account of the Kantian influences in Paneth’s philosophy of chemistry, and discusses pertinent topics, like observables, atomism and realism.
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  42. Accommodating the Rare Earths in the Periodic Table: A Historical Analysis.Pieter Thyssen - 2009 - Dissertation, Ku Leuven
    Since Mendeleev’s discovery in 1869, the periodic table has figured as the ultimate paper tool in chemical research. It has proved to be a vital research instrument in the arsenal of the chemical community. No chemistry textbook, lecture theatre or scientific laboratory is complete without a copy of the periodic table of the elements. -/- This however, should not necessarily imply that the periodic table has never had to contend with problems. In this thesis, the history of the accommodation of (...)
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  43. On books and chemical elements.Santiago Alvarez, Joaquim Sales & Miquel Seco - 2008 - Foundations of Chemistry 10 (2):79-100.
    The history of the classification of chemical elements is reviewed from the point of view of a bibliophile. The influence that relevant books had on the development of the periodic table and, conversely, how it was incorporated into textbooks, treatises and literary works, with an emphasis on the Spanish bibliography are analyzed in this paper. The reader will also find unexpected connections of the periodic table with the Bible or the architect Buckminster Fuller.
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  44. Atom and aether in nineteenth-century physical science.Alan F. Chalmers - 2008 - Foundations of Chemistry 10 (3):157-166.
    This paper suggests that the cases made for atoms and the aether in nineteenth-century physical science were analogous, with the implication that the case for the atom was less than compelling, since there is no aether. It is argued that atoms did not play a productive role in nineteenth-century chemistry any more than the aether did in physics. Atoms and molecules did eventually find an indispensable home in chemistry but by the time that they did so they were different kinds (...)
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  45. How chemistry shifts horizons: Element, substance, and the essential.Joseph E. Earley - 2008 - Foundations of Chemistry 11 (2):65-77.
    In 1931 eminent chemist Fritz Paneth maintained that the modern notion of “element” is closely related to (and as “metaphysical” as) the concept of element used by the ancients (e.g., Aristotle). On that basis, the element chlorine (properly so-called) is not the elementary substance dichlorine, but rather chlorine as it is in carbon tetrachloride. The fact that pure chemicals are called “substances” in English (and closely related words are so used in other European languages) derives from philosophical compromises made by (...)
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  46. Is water a mixure?: bridging the distinction between physical and chemical properties.Paul Needham - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (1):66-77.
    Two inter-linked theses are defended in this paper. One is the Duhemian theme that a rigid distinction between physical and chemical properties cannot be upheld. Duhem maintained this view not because the latter are reducible to the former, but because if physics is to remain consistent with chemistry it must prove possible to expand it to accommodate new features, and a rigid distinction would be a barrier to this process. The second theme is that naturally occurring isotopic variants of water (...)
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  47. The Chemical Revolution and its Chymical Antecedents.William Newman - 2008 - Early Science and Medicine 13 (2):171-191.
  48. (1 other version)Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology. [REVIEW]Lissa Roberts - 2008 - Isis 99:623-624.
  49. (1 other version)Discovering Water: James Watt, Henry Cavendish, and the Nineteenth‐Century “Water Controversy.”. [REVIEW]Ursula Klein - 2007 - Isis 98:653-654.
  50. Naming elements after scientists: An account of a controversy. [REVIEW]Geoff Rayner-Canham & Zheng Zheng - 2007 - Foundations of Chemistry 10 (1):13-18.
    Over the last two hundred years, there have been many occasions where the name of a newly-discovered element has provoked controversy and dissent but in modern times, the naming of elements after scientists has proved to be particularly contentious. Here we recount the threads of this story, predominantly through discourses in the popular scientific journals, the first major discussion on naming an element after a scientist ; the first definitive naming after a scientist ; and the first naming after a (...)
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