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Linking chemistry with physics: a reply to Lombardi

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Abstract

In this paper I reply to Olimpia Lombardi’s comment on my recent book Reducing Chemistry to Physics: Limits, Models, Consequences.

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Notes

  1. As I outline in the book, the same has been argued by a number of other authors recently. As examples I mentioned Klein (2009), Fazekas (2009), Dizadji-Bahmani et al. (2010), and Riel (2011); something must have been in the air.

  2. This point is also made, from a general view on Nagelian reduction, in the paper by Dizadji-Bahmani et al. (2010) who carefully consider the three Nagelian alternatives.

  3. As she notes, internal realism is mentioned as a possible way out of the dilemma, but not developed further in the book.

  4. I believe Lombardi reads a part of my solution wrong when she states that I advocate causal powers for the noumenon. As a philosopher from the European continent ending up in an anglo-phone/australasian oriented department I have found that there is a tendency in anglophone philosophy to talk about causality without having a theory about it. This strikes me as surely wrong—causality is the end result of at least a story—perhaps further developed into a theory—about how things work. Common sense causality is precisely that: the end result of a perhaps implicit theory of how things work. Elevating it to a metaphysical force on its own is doomed to failure. But I don’t think this debate will ever get resolved.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Hinne Hettema

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  1. Hinne Hettema
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Hettema, H. Linking chemistry with physics: a reply to Lombardi. Found Chem 16, 193–200 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-014-9200-1

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