Abstract
By setting out the grammar of event causality, as developed by Hume and Mackie, in contrast to the grammar of agent causality in the natural sciences, a kind of hybrid hierarchical format for chemical explanations is sketched. From this starting point the history of agentive concepts in chemistry is displayed as a progression from Newton’s ‘forces’, through the nineteenth century concepts of ‘affinity’ and ‘valency’ to recent theories of molecular binding in terms of the migration of electrons and protons as powerful particulars. The final stage of this development is the rewriting of chemical theory in terms of energy.
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Notes
Admirable though Cheng approach is, there are some serious shortcomings, in particular in her understanding of the Kantian proposal of schematisms (Wittgenstein ‘hinges’). Close study of her paper shows that it deals with the conditions under which the attribution of a causal power is reasonable, but has nothing to say on what causal powers are!
Surely the thought that an event is a cause if it increases the probability of an expected effect is a consequence of believing that the event is a cause, and not an analysis of the causal concept itself (unless, of course, one were under the spell of neo-positivism!).
I am grateful to Gareth McGuire for instruction in these matters.
The expression ‘noble octet for the stable electron configuration derives from the determining role this structure has on the properties of the ‘noble’ gases, argon, neon etc.
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