Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
In other words, if the theories of chemistry could be deduced from the “fundamental”
theories of physics, as some of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics believed
(see Dirac
1929
), ontological pluralismwould not apply to the case of the relationship
between chemistry and physics. But most of the work of the last decades in the
philosophy of chemistry has pointed precisely towards the opposite direction, by
stressing that the deductive links required by the traditional views of reduction
(Kemeny and Oppenheim
1956
;Nagel
1961
) cannot be established between the
two theoretical domains. Therefore, the ontological autonomy of the chemical
world can be legitimately argued for on the basis of ontological pluralism.
With respect to the first situation put forward by Manafu, it is true that two
different conceptual schemes may differ with respect to their “theoretical virtues”.
However, when the theories of chemistry and physics are compared, it is not clear at
all that, say, quantum mechanics is simpler, more systematized or that it has more
explanatory power than molecular chemistry. Moreover, considering
pragmatic
virtues
is even more interesting in the comparison of theories: some conceptual
schemes may lead to more successful theories with respect to what Ian Hacking
(
1983
) calls the
intervention
on reality. As this author claims, in the discussions
about the foundations of science we have paid too much attention to theoretical
considerations, forgetting the effective practice of science: it is in this pragmatic
context that the criterion for the existence of scientific entities has to be searched
for. According to Hacking, we accept the existence of unobservable entities when
we can “spray them”, that is, when we can use them for intervening in other aspects
of nature: “
We are completely convinced of the reality of electrons when we set out
to build
new kinds of devices that use
various well
-
understood causal properties of electrons to interfere in other more
hypothetical parts of nature
” (Hacking
1983
, p. 265). In other words, it is scientific
experimental practice, and not descriptive matters about theories, which gives us
the best support for our commitments about scientific reality.
This shift in perspective proposed by Hacking has been taken into account in the
context of ontological pluralism in recent works (Labarca and Lombardi
2010a
,
b
;
Lombardi and Labarca
2011
; Lombardi and P´rez Ransanz
2012
), by arguing that
the conclusions about the existence or non-existence of chemical entities are no
longer grounded exclusively on considerations about intertheoretic relationships.
From this pragmatic viewpoint, “
molecular chemistry holds the winning card
:
its
astonishing success in the manipulation of known substances and in the production
of new substances is the best reason for accepting the existence of the entities
populating its realm. In other words
,
we are entitled to admit the reality of
the molecular world
and often enough succeed in building
inhabited by
,
among others
,
chemical orbitals
,
bonding
,
chirality
,
molecular shapes
on the basis of the impressive fruitfulness of molec-
ular chemistry itself
,
independently of what physics has to say about that matter
.”
(Lombardi and Labarca
2011
, p. 74). As a consequence, not only the theoretical
virtues, but primarily the pragmatic virtues of chemistry are the facts that play a
decisive role in the arguments for the ontological autonomy of the domain of
