The possibility of error is related to the existence a norm. Connections are spelled out to the notion of infallibility and to that of a modifying predicate, to traditional truth theories in connection with “truth of things”, as well as the primacy of the negative cases, for instance “ false friend”.

The pluralist sheds the more traditional ideas of truth and ontology. This is dangerous, because it threatens instability of the theory. To lend stability to his philosophy, the pluralist trades truth and ontology for rigour and other ‘fixtures’. Fixtures are the steady goal posts. They are the parts of a theory that stay fixed across a pair of theories, and allow us to make translations and comparisons. They can ultimately be moved, but we tend to keep them fixed temporarily. Apart (...) from considering rigour of proof as a fixture, I discuss fixed models, invariant notions and fixed information about objects across theories. There are other fixtures, but it is enough to start with these. (shrink)

This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution, early electrochemistry, and early atomic chemistry. In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the (...) central debates and therefore the consensus that was reached was unjustified or at least premature. This leads to a significant re-examination of the realism question in the philosophy of science and a unique new advocacy for pluralism in science. Each chapter contains three layers, allowing readers to follow various parts of the book at their chosen level of depth and detail. The second major study in "complementary science", this book offers a rare combination of philosophy, history and science in a bid to improve scientific knowledge through history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Chemistry builds on distinctions of substance, which presupposes that matter can be divided into substances and compared with other matter and itself on different occasions as being of the same substance. Even identifying a quantity of matter as comprising a single substance presupposes the same substance relation, it being a quantity all of whose spatial parts are the same substance. But criteria of purity have been important for isolating substances and investigating their characteristic properties, which can in turn be used (...) for establishing sameness of substance. With the development of chemistry into a theoretical science it became important that such criteria and characteristics should have a systematic theoretical basis. Thermodynamics was, perhaps, the first comprehensive theory to systematically divide the mass of the bodies with which it deals into distinct substances and offer general criteria governing the number of substances present. But the applicability of such macroscopic criteria is restricted to equilibrium conditions on a macroscopic time scale. They can be compared with microscopic conceptions of molecular structure, with which they have been complemented—some would say superseded. Since many substances are not molecular, however, the general formulation of a microscopic sameness of substance criterion remains unclear. (shrink)