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Emergence and quantum chemistry

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Abstract

This paper first queries what type of concept of emergence, if any, could be connected with the different chemical activities subsumed under the label ‘quantum chemistry’. In line with Roald Hoffmann, we propose a ‘rotation to research laboratory’ in order to point out how practitioners hold a molecular whole, its parts, and the surroundings together within their various methods when exploring chemical transformation. We then identify some requisite contents that a concept of emergence must incorporate in order to be coherent from the standpoint of the scientific practices involved. In this respect, we finally propose a relational form of emergence which pays attention to the constitutive role of the modes of intervention and to the co-definition of the levels of organization. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a plurality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization but, on the contrary, are considered to be active elements on which the constitution of those patterns depends. What is at stake in this paper is therefore not an ontological form of emergence but an agnostic one which fits what chemists do in their daily work.

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Notes

  1. I will not enter into the debate as whether or not we should use the term laws instead of that of regularities within this paper.

  2. An optical property related to its structure.

  3. Ramsay’s emphasis.

  4. Michel Bitbol puts emphasis on the words relative, context, cognitive relation, and being by using italics.

  5. My translation of the French sentence : « Dès qu’il est question d’émergence, le tout et les parties doivent donc s’entre-définir, négocier entre eux ce que signifie une explication de l’un par les autres ».

  6. My translation of the French sentence: “C’est en apparence seulement que telle ou telle propriété se trouve alors rattachée à l’atome comme à son « support » absolu, au sein d’un ensemble qui paraît asservir et figer le tout de la relation”.

  7. My translation of the French sentences: “Le bénéfice positif que la connaissance chimique y gagne consiste dans l’articulation systématique des rapports eux-mêmes. Les faits d’abord dispersés, commencent désormais à être organisés ; au lieu de coexister dans l’indifférence, ils s’ordonnent autour d’un centre de référence précis” (p. 243). Il est clair toutefois que ce « sujet »  n’a pas pour seule valeur logique de pourvoir après coup à la description et à la convergence des expériences enregistrées. L’unification ainsi instituée joue un rôle immédiatement productif ; elle met en place un schéma global applicable aux observations futures et leur assigne une direction déterminée (pp. 242–243).

  8. Michel Bitbol’s emphasis.

  9. The word is to be understood in its Wittgensteinian extent.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Gilles Ohanessian, director of the laboratory DCMR, and all his kind team for welcoming him into their laboratory during a two-month internship in June and July 2010. I specially thank the researchers Gilles Frison and Carine Clavaguéra, and also Stephane Bouchonnet—a research engineer—for our discussions about quantum methods and the emergence/reduction debate. He thanks Roald Hoffmann for fruitful discussions about the Variation Principle. The author also thanks his PhD supervisor, Michel Bitbol, and the director of his Ph.D. laboratory—the CREA, the French Research Center in Applied Epistemology if translated into English, Paul Bourgine, for accepting to grant this study. The author eventually thanks Eric Scerri and Rom Harré for giving him the chance to propose a lecture within the annual symposium of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry at the University College of Oxford in August 2010. This lecture gave rise to this paper.

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  1. Ecole Polytechnique, CREA, Paris, France

    Jean-Pierre Llored

  2. ULB, Brussels, Belgium

    Jean-Pierre Llored

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Llored, JP. Emergence and quantum chemistry. Found Chem 14, 245–274 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-012-9163-z

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