Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
changes of factors, the use of many statistical tools and tests, the continuous
modeling of results, and the use of normalization standards, do not cease to be at
the forefront of this workaday practice. We shall not enter into more details and a
lot of work remains to be done in the domain of the epistemology of chemical
metrology, in particular as regards the way statistical methods are intertwined
with chemical purposes for stabilizing domains of results which enable chemists
'
inferences. We cannot but be impressed by the hard and intensive work of
co-stabilization of the different elements of the whole complex achieved by chem-
ists. In the
Encyclop ´die m ´thodique
, the chemist Louis Bernard Guyton de
Morveau insisted on the
'
composure
'
and the
'
circumspection
'
that chemists must
demonstrate in order to develop their protocols of synthesis and to validate their
methods of analysis (Guyton de Morveau
1805
, p. 575). Current quality control
activities strengthen his statement.
14.4 Philosophical Conclusions
The situation we have previously described is somewhat different from the case of
an apparatus, for example a voltmeter, which only needs to be connected to any
electrical circuit provided, of course, that the voltage is measurable by the voltmeter
at hand. The stabilization of the complex, the reliability of this stabilization,
and the determination of the unknown quantity are at stake within the ongoing
process, they are precisely that which chemists must reach: They are not “given.”
The
ceteris paribus
clause gets a
pragmatic meaning
related to the result of an
analysis stemming from a prepared complex.
The clause ceases to be a premise or a metaprinciple which would be available
independently of the situation. Rather, it acquires the epistemological status of a
result of a long series of articulations and stabilizations; a result which, once
obtained, makes it possible for chemists to validate or not to validate the quantifi-
cation whenever all but the quantity of the body under investigation is channeled
by co-stabilization. The
ceteris paribus
clause thus gets a meaning in chemical
metrology, but this meaning is different from that used in logic or within the
framework of the deductive and nomological reasoning proposed by Hempel
(
1966
). It has been
transformed
and not simply
transposed
from a particular sphere
of scientific activity or human inference to another. The clause becomes a heuristic
tool for innovation and action that can be connected to ethical purposes in order,
for instance, to control and replace bad consequences of uses of chemicals by
sustainable ones.
The meaning of a clause or a premise can indeed be transformed depending on
the scientific
involved insofar as many principles, assumptions, theoretical
tools, complexes in the sense that we previously defined, and the axioms that it
encompasses, are themselves transformed, and take another semantic, operative,
and technological meaning. We should take the couple {scientific and technological
preparation-ontological assumptions associated to them} into account in order to
canton
'
'
