Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
6.9 Philosophy of Chemistry
Even though Charles S. Peirce was both a chemist and a significant philosopher,
only a few papers in philosophy of chemistry refer to his work. Charles Siebert
(2001) pointed out that Peirce
s juvenile adventures in a home chemistry laboratory
profoundly influenced his future development. Jaap van Brakel (
1994
) considered
Peirce
'
—the doctrine that “absolute chance is a factor in the universe”
(CP 6.201)—and concluded that Peirce
s
Tychism
'
'
'
s belief in chance was “limited” since he
held that: “Everyone knows that chance has laws and statistical results follow
therefrom” (CP 6.606). On this basis, Peirce
'
s Tychism anticipated recent interest
in the practical importance of highly-improbable events (Taleb
2010
).
15
Also, van
Brakel (
1998
) discussed Peirce
'
s concept of
natural kinds,
and decided that
'
“Pierce
s views are consistent with a form of pluralism in which the difference
between natural and non-natural classes disappears” (38-39) and that the “ultimate
end of inquiry” must be “pluralistic” (41). He also included incidental references to
Peirce in his topic on philosophy of chemistry (van Brakel
2000
).
Chemists switch easily and smoothly among several types of discourse. They
are comfortable dealing with materials in microgram quantities and also, on
occasion, with barge-loads: they deal conceptually with truly immense macro-
molecules and also with submicroscopic diatomic molecules and their much
smaller constituents—electrons and nuclei. Chemists determine which entities
they will consider depending on the question they are investigating. There is no
'
'
set up in advance of chemical investigation. Chemists
are quite content to postulate existence of some new entity (a complex, an
intermediate, an eximer, an excited state, a hybrid orbital,
universe of discourse
'
) if doing so
makes sense of data already in hand,
and also
suggests additional investigations
which might confirm or put into question the existence of the postulated entity.
There is no preset fundamental level of chemical discourse: the level of discourse
is chosen to facilitate achievement of the purpose of the investigation. Such
purposes include (but are by no means limited to): devising a new synthesis for
a natural product, discovering a drug to foster (or impede) a biological process,
determining the accuracy of a theoretical prediction, exploring the range of
conditions under which a new process occurs. Chemists shift among levels so
effortlessly and (generally) unconsciously that philosophers and other
non-chemists may fail to appreciate the consequences of this cultural feature.
Lee McIntyre (
2007
) expressed the widespread opinion that chemical discourse
mainly concerns
...
'
epistemological
'
description of how things appear, and rarely
if ever attains to the
description that is (presumably) characteristic
of more-fundamental sciences. This opinion seems to be characteristic of the
'
ontological
'
15
Van Brakel also refers incidentally to Peirce in his volume on philosophy of chemistry (van
Brakel
2000
).
