Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
reductionism, and realism. As much as mainstream debates, with their focus on
mathematical physics, have presupposed methodological monism, so much will
their concepts and views be useless, even obstructive, for the philosophical under-
standing of chemistry. As any approach that seeks understanding, also philosophy
of science cannot evade the inevitability of pluralism and must develop distinctive
approaches for the understanding of each discipline.
5.5 Models Versus Laws of Nature
The notion of laws of nature plays an eminent role both in the philosophy and popular
representations of science, suggesting that their discovery is the primary task of
scientists (for details on the following, see Schummer
2014b
). However, at least for
the past hundred years, it is hard to find a single law that has been formulated and
called so in chemistry, and similarly in physics. Without strict terminological
distinctions, chemists call their theoretical findings theories, equations, or, most
frequently, models, for good reasons as will be seen below. Moreover, the many
so-called laws from the nineteenth century do not meet the rigorous philosophical
requirements such as universality and validity without exceptions that are usually
associated with that notion. Even worse, all the so-called limiting laws of physical
chemistry (such as the ideal gas law, Rault
s law, and so on) are strictly
valid only for the ideal case of zero concentration, i.e. for no single real case, which
makes standard procedures impossible to fix the universality by limiting the validity
through so-called ceteris paribus conditions. Philosophers of chemistry (Christie
1994
; Christie and Christie
2000
), considering all that a deficiency, have suggested
a more liberal concept of laws of nature so as to cover chemistry by the conceptual
apparatus of philosophy of science. However, the problem is not chemistry, but the
philosophical misconception of science, according to which all disciplines would
have to meet the standards set by philosophers of mathematical physics.
Historically the core of the experimental tradition of science, chemistry has
developed its own pluralist methodology of models that radically differs from the
monist mathematical tradition, out of which the notion of laws emerged (for the two
tradition, see Kuhn
1976
). Laws, on the one hand, are formulated with universal
claims of truth, which can at best later be reduced by ceteris paribus conditions or
extended by the reduction of other laws. Models, on the other, are developed on the
approximate description of exemplary cases, which can be carefully extended only by
modification and sophistication that include parameters to cover their particularities.
While a law is the better the more universal it is, a model is improved by precisely
calculating, testing, and limiting its area of intended applications with error estimates.
There can be no two laws of nature competing with each other for long, because there
is only one nature which any law tries to describe truthfully and completely. Different
models for the same field of application can peacefully coexist and usefully comple-
ment each other, because they might employ different approximations or put different
emphasis on different kinds of questions and aspects. Both laws and models are
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