Epistemology chemistry

It is hardly possible in chemistry to introduce a contrast between elements and simple bodies, as the definition of element since Lavoisier is based on the simple body. It seems to me to be even less apt simply to equate the terms element/atom and simple body/molecule, respectively for apart from the fact that there are simple bodies whose molecules are single atoms, molecules and atoms belong indubitably to one and the same group of scientific concepts, while the essential difference between element and simple body in the Men-deleeffian sense of the words, lies in their belonging to quite different spheres in epistemology ([33], p 57). 

Taber, K. S. (2003a). The atom in the chemistry curriculum fundamental concepL teaching model or epistemological obstacle Foundations of Chemistry, 5( 1), 43-84. 

The sub-micro level cannot easily be seen directly, and while its principles and components are currently accepted as tme and real, it depends on the atonuc theory of matter. The scientific definition of a theory can be emphasised here with the picture of the atom constantly being revised. As Silberberg (2006) points out, scientists are confident about the distribution of electrons but the interactions between protons and neutrons within the nucleus are still on the frontier of discovery (p. 54). This demorrstrates the dynamic and exciting nature of chemistry. Appreciating this overview of how scierrtific ideas are developing may help students to expand their epistemology of science. 

Vitalism occupied the epistemological gap in life science that began to close definitively only with the emergence in molecular genetics of a theory that finally clarified the mechanisms that sorted and ordered material elements into living organisms, that produced the invariant replication of species, and that enabled the retention of evolutionary variations as they randomly arose. The doctrine of the life force began with the reasonable idea that the new chemistry of its... 

I originally conceived this book as a study of epistemological questions about differences between chemistry and physics, namely, how chemists aims and methods in scientific explanation have been different from physicists and how these aims and methods have overlapped. This problem remains a principal focus of the book is there a way of seeing and describing the natural world that has been consistently "chemical" If so, how has it compared to a "physical" way of understanding the natural world Have chemistry and physics been commensurable or incommensurable sciences Answering these questions historically leads to sets of answers that are specific to time and place to distinct texts, individuals, schools, and traditions to disciplines and disciplinary histories. 

In what follows, I do not present a comprehensive survey of the history of chemistry, nor do I construct a systematic model of discipline formation. This is a historical narrative and analysis of aspects of the idea of chemistry, the idea of "theoretical" chemistry, and the institutional and intellectual processes that constructed disciplines in chemistry in their various historical forms. While considerable attention is paid to the ways in which chemists demarcated their domain against other domains, as well as to their statements of a chemical epistemology and their development of systems of chemical language and imagery, the overall study is guided by two premises. 

The concerns of this chapter fit squarely within the framework of disciplinary identity discussed previously. Here we can see some of the mechanisms by which individuals and groups have created or reinforced distinctions and identities among themselves. I largely leave the conceptual aims, language, and strategies characteristic of nineteenth-century chemistry for discussion in chapters 3 and 4. This is not to say that the epistemological aims and technical content of chemistry are completely ignored in this chapter, but they are not emphasized. 

Some of the founding documents of modern chemistry do explicitly address questions of epistemology. Where they are not explicit, we can reconstruct epistemological views by looking carefully at lectures, textbooks, and journal articles from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What we find is a plurality of methodologies in the practice of chemistry that belies simplistic stereotypes of a single chemical epistemology. Nineteenth-century chemists were not dyed-in-the-wool instrumentalists or radical skeptics, any more than they were naive empiricists or naive realists. And chemists have not all shared the same views about the aims and methods of their discipline. 

Applying this idea to our history, we remember that physical chemistry has employed disciplinary methods and aims taken from both physics and chemistry and that its practice has been one of striking epistemological pluralism. Laboratory investigations aimed at understanding chemical reaction mechanisms profited from the selection of mechanical and kinetic hypotheses from physics that transformed the static molecule of classical organic chemistry into the dynamic molecule of physical organic chemistry. 

We turn now to a review and analysis of the shared epistemological values and problems that have spurred the efforts of the philosophical and theoretical chemists. We ask in conclusion whether the achievements of theoretical chemistry by the mid-twentieth century led its practitioners to identify their discipline with the aims of mechanical natural philosophy and modern physics. 

Roald Hoffmann, personal correspondence, letter of October 16, 1990. Also, R. Hoffmann, "Nearly Circular Reasoning," American Scientist, 76 (1988) 182185. And see Kurt Mislow and Paul Bickart, "An Epistemological Note on Chirality," Israel Journal of Chemistry 15 (197677) 16 "Thus chiral and achiral are used with two different connotations When the terms are applied to a geometric model, they are sharply defined, whereas when used in conjunction with observables, they necessarily entail a certain fuzziness" (6). 

Mislow, Kurt, and Paul Bickart. "An Epistemological Note on Chirality." Israel Journal of Chemistry, 15 (19761977) 16. 

This study examined some unexplored aspects of conceptualization in organic chemistry. How are classificatory concepts created Can the value of a generalization be quantified Although here these questions are presented in relation to organic chemistry, they are in fact basic questions of epistemology and go beyond organic chemistry.(9)... 

The following chapters are rather technical, in contrast to most of the previous ones, which have been more discursive. As already mentioned, this reflects the dual nature of the field of the origin of life, which is based both on the software of epistemological concepts, and on the hardware of organic and physical chemistry. 

The multiple origins hypothesis is built upon the marvelous but not miraculous properties of chemistry which are engraved in the structure of atoms. All of the postulates of the Genomic Potential Hypothesis, which stay well within the epistemological framework of a scientific dissertation, provide a legitimate basis for experimental testing. 

There is a systematic study of the origins of structural theory in organic chemistry, where the emphasis is on the period from about 1830 to 1861.164 The same author has examined Kekule s attempt to account for valency in terms of the internal structure of polyvalent atoms.165 Robinson s work on strychnine has also been studied.166 Examples from structural chemistry have been used for illuminating a number of epistemological issues.167,168... 

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