Philosophy of science

It is perhaps appropriate that the old premises of the Department of Colloid Science are now occupied by the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been another department of colloid science anywhere in the academic world. 

The facilities of the Science Periodicals Library of Cambridge University, an unequalled source of information recent and ancient, and its helpful staff, together with those of the Whipple Library of the History and Philosophy of Science and the Library of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, have been an indispensable resource. 

Alter 1827 Ampere s scientific work declined sharply with failing health and family concerns, he turned to completing his essay on the philosophy of science. In 1836 Ampere died alone in Marseilles during a tour of inspection. 

The second paper first appeared in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. The emphasis here is naturally more philosophical and considers such questions as the... 

E. R. Scerri, Normative and Descriptive Philosophy of Science and the Role of Chemistry, in Philosophy of Chemistry, the Synthesis of a New Discipline, D. Baird, E. R. Scerri, L. McIntyre (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 242, pp. 119-128, 2005 E. R. Scerri, Philosophy of Chemistry — A New Interdisciplinary Field Journal of Chemical Education 77 522-526, 2000. 

E. Barnes, On Mendeleev s Predictions Comment on Scerri and Worrall, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 36 801-812, 2005 S. Schindler, Use-novel predictions and Mendeleev s Periodic Table Response to Scerri and Worrall, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 39 265-269, 2008 D. Harker, On the Predilections for Predictions, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 59 429—453, 2008 E. R. Scerri, Response to Barnes Critique of Scerri and Worrall, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 36 813-816, 2005. 

This is actually the pessimistic meta-induction associated with Larry Laudan among other philosophers. L. Laudan, A Confutation of Convergent Realism, Philosophy of Science, 48 1-49, 1981. 

History and Philosophy of Science Department, King s College, London University, Manresa Road, London SW3 6LX... 

Copyright 1991 The British Society for the Philosophy of Science by permission of Oxford University Press. 

Feyerabend, P. [1962] Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism , in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds). Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis. 

Eric Scerri studied chemistry at the Universities of London, Cambridge and Southampton, and obtained a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from King s College, London on the question of "The Reduction of Chemistry to Quantum Mechanics," He has been a research felloiu in the history and philosophy of science at the London School of Economics and at the California Institute of Technology. He is currently an assistant professor of chemistry at Bradley University, where he also teaches histoiy and philosophy of chemistry, which are also his main research interests. He is editor of the new journal Foundations of Chemistry. Address Department of Chemistry, Bradley University, Peoria, IL 61625. Internet scerri bradley.edu. 

Scerri, E. R. 1991. Electronic configurations, quantum mechanics and reduction. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 309-325. 

Worrall, J. (1985a) The Background to the Forefront , in P, Asquith and P, Kitcher (eds), PSA 1984 (East Lansing Philosophy of Science Association). 

By adopting a perspective from the philosophy of science I will attempt to cross levels of complexity from the most elementary chemical explanations based on electron shells to those based on ab initio methods. Such a juxtaposition is seldom contemplated in the chemical literature. Textbooks provide elementary explanations which necessarily distort the full details but allow for a more conceptual or qualitative grasp of the main ideas. Meanwhile the research literature focuses on the minute details of particular methods or particular chemical systems and does not typically examine the kind of explanation that is being provided. To give a satisfactory discussion of explanation in the context of the periodic table we need to consider both elementary and deeper explanations within a common framework. 

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