Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 12
Radicals, Reactions, Realism
Klaus Ruthenberg
12.1 Motivation
The scientific search for the ultimate core of physical matter is still ongoing.
However, although elementary particle physics has made some breathtaking progress
during the last century, almost nothing of the achieved results can be of any service
for chemistry. Thus, if we may consider research in elementary particle physics -
together with other fields like quantum mechanics and relativity theory - to be an
enquiry into the nature of (what physicists sometimes call) matter, then chemistry
obviously is not about the latter. In the first place, chemistry is about stuff, not about
matter. And in order to find empirically adequate descriptions for stuff, its behaviour
and properties, it is not sufficient to only look for what physics has left behind on its
way to eternal matter (like the atomistic picture of the world or the energetic
structuralist concept of orbitals in quantum mechanics); rather, the “turn back” to
the manifest world is extremely promising when it comes to a fuller picture about
chemical processes. Although most chemical radicals cannot be described as proper
substances - which will be illustrated in the present study - they unequivocally count
as chemical species. This is what makes them an intriguing research topic not only
for chemistry, but also for the history and philosophy of chemistry. In order to give
this - “intermediate” - chemical concept an adequate epistemological position, an
attempt will be made here to describe one pertinent historical episode
1
in more
detail: the story of the so-called “Gomberg radical” which is the very first stable
1
I will call the period of empirical and preparative success which begins with Gomberg
s work the
synthetic
period, which came after the
speculative
period and was followed by the
electronic
period of radical chemistry.
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