Abstract
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 grammarians in the late Roman Empire (particularly Priscian [fl. ~520 CE]). When the main features of the constitution of isotopes became clear in the first half of the twentieth century, the formal (IUPAC) definition of a “chemical element” was changed. The features that are “essential” to being an element had previously been “transcendental” (“beyond the sphere of consciousness”) but, by the mid-twentieth century the defining characteristics of elements, as such, had come to be understood in detail. This amounts to a shift in a “horizon of invisibility” brought about by progress in chemistry and related sciences. Similarly, chemical insight is relevant to currently-open philosophical problems, such as the status of “the bundle theory” of the coherence of properties in concrete individuals.
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Notes
The linguistic peculiarity (polysemy) that Paneth pointed out for chemists’ use of the word “element” is not an isolated case. Chemists have a general tendency to use one and the same word to designate two related but different types of items: on the one hand, an independently existing material “stuff”—and, on the other hand, something that is a part of another thing and does not have its own independent existence (for examples, please see Earley 2006).
Post anglicized his family name on relocating to England.
At King’s College of The University of London, H. R. Post was the mentor of the Ph.D. thesis of Eric Scerri, editor of this journal.
Buchler (2004) pointed out that the German term Stoff does not carry the same philosophic freight as the English word “substance” does.
I defer to others who may know whether or not such usage is widespread.
Buckminsterfullerene consists of quasi-spherical C60 molecules. Graphite consists of planar sheets of carbon centers arranged in a “chicken-wire” pattern.
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632–1677) took this requirement especially seriously. He concluded that—since all things are more or less connected to each other—there can be no more than one substance, properly speaking.
The categories are: substance, quantity, qualification, where, when, being-in-a-position, having, doing, being affected (Categories, Ib 25).
Aristotle occasionally also used the word ousia, as well as the words hypostasis (“what stands under”) and hypokeimenon (“what lies beneath”—translated as “substratum” in the quotation from Metaphysics VII (Z) given in the text) to designate “the objective reality” (as opposed to “the outer form”) of a thing—“the substance” as contrasted with “a substance.”
It now seems trivial to observe that one may know that a phoenix is a bird that can rise again from its own ashes without expecting that any individual that fills that description exists in fact. This distinction between “essence” and “existence” was much debated by the medievals—and was not nearly as clear to the ancients as it may be to us (Owens 2007, pp. 22–23).
This usage should not be taken to suggest that “elements” (as such) have independent existence. Our present intuition that “elements” have independent existence stems from the unfortunate custom of referring to stable materials such as yellow sulfur as “elements,” rather than as “elementary substances.”
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University. The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions, to Prof. Klaus Ruthenberg and to Dr. Martin Holzhaus for providing the German text of Paneth’s original paper, and to Prof. James J. O’Donnell for help with Latin philology.
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Earley, J.E. How chemistry shifts horizons: element, substance, and the essential. Found Chem 11, 65–77 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-008-9054-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-008-9054-5