Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
comparable tools for explanations and predictions, but laws assume exclusive
explanatory power while models can explain only those aspects they have been
built to do so. Laws, if confronted with serious problems, have to be dropped
altogether, which results in discontinuities of science and makes previous research
appear useless, whereas models can be flexibly adjusted or supplemented by new
models. While laws are inherently reductionist in the sense of methodological
monism, models are developed in the vein of methodological pluralism.
The two methodological approaches, of laws and of models, are so diametrically
opposed to each other that any attempt to mix them or to extend the concept of laws
so as to include models runs into counterintuitive, if not absurd, results. Philoso-
phers would do better if they keep the two opposing methodologies strictly apart,
because the epistemological issues and their metaphysical implications of one
methodology are largely irrelevant for the other.
5.6 The Monist Assumption of Reductionism
From the pluralist perspective, also the debate on whether chemistry is reducible to
physics appears misleading. Terms like “chemistry” and “physics” nowadays refer
to mega-disciplines, which each comprises not only a single theory but a plurality of
conceptual and methodological knowledge traditions as well as the societal struc-
tures that bear the social identity of disciplines.
If we take, for brevity reasons, only the conceptual and methodological tradi-
tions that constitute the cognitive side of a mega-discipline, they are, in the case of
chemistry, split into hundreds of different research fields (see above). Since they
can today only be socially rather than cognitively united under the umbrella of a
mega-discipline, it is more than questionable that an entirely different discipline
could do better. On the level of sub-disciplines or research fields, there are differ-
ences regarding the conceptual apparatus, research aims, and methodological
values. It is usually easier to find corresponding agreements between research fields
of the same discipline than of different ones, with the exception of bordering areas
such as physical chemistry and chemical physics.
How then about the reduction of a single theory of one discipline or
subdiscipline through that of another? Nagel (
1961
, p. 351ff.) once raised the
issue with two theories taken from physics, nonchemical thermodynamics and the
kinetic theory of gases. In general, however, theories cannot be analyzed and
judged in isolation from their aims, which considerably differ between the disci-
plines. If both serve different (sets of) aims and thus have different areas of intended
applications, one cannot simply compare them or even judge one as superior
(reducing) over the other (reduced). The idea of reduction of theories makes
sense only if the area of intended applications of one is a subset of that of the
other. In that case, however, it is hard to see how philosophers can contribute. In
science, unlike in speculative philosophy, claims on the area of intended applica-
tions are to be made and judged by scientific arguments alone, which is the job of
