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Full text of ' Es n P O C savs hilosophy If hemistry Edited Er Sc by ic erri Grant isher www.ebook3000.com Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry Edited by eric scerri and grant fisher OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Since chemical reactions can neither create nor destroy matter, nor transmute one element into another, the amount of each element must be the same throughout the overall reaction. However, any reaction may be viewed as going in the reverse direction, and all the coefficients then change sign (as does the free energy). Microwave Field-Effect Transistors Theory, Design, and Applications. Microwave Field-Effect Transistors is a member of the Noble Publishing. Owing to the thermal agitation some electrons of the metal will have enough energy to cross the potential barrier into the semiconductor and vice versa.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Scerri, Eric R., editor. Fisher, Grant (Grant Andrew), editor. Title: Essays in the philosophy of chemistry / edited by Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher.

Description: Oxford: Oxford University Press, [2015] Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN ISBN 978-0-19-049459-9 Subjects: LCSH: Chemistry — Philosophy. Classification: LCC QD6.E87 2015 DDC 540.1 — dc23 LC record available at http: //lccn.loc.gov/ 987654321 Printed by Sheridan, USA www.ebook3000.com Eric Scerri would like to dedicate this volume to his late mother, Ines, who passed away in 2015 and who spent a good deal of her life in nurturing and encouraging his academic interests. Grant Fisher dedicates this volume to his late mother, Jeannette. The editors together also dedicate the volume to the Estonian philosopher of science, Rein Vihalemm, one of our contributors to this volume, who passed away in 2015. Www.ebook3000.com CONTENTS Contributors ix Introduction 3 PART ONE History and Philosophy of Chemistry CHAPTER I Alan Chalmers. Robert Boyle’s Corpuscular Chemistry: Atomism before its Time 15 CHAPTER 2 Nicholas W.

What Was Revolutionary about the Chemical Revolution? 37 CHAPTER 3 Kostas Gavroglu & Ana Simoes. Philosophical Issues in (Sub) Disciplinary Contexts.

The Case of Quantum Chemistry 60 PART TWO Reduction and Explanation CHAPTER 4 Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino & Jean- Pierre Noel Llored. Reality Without Reification: Philosophy of Chemistry’s Contribution to Philosophy of Mind 83 CHAPTER 5 Lee McIntyre. Who’s Afraid of Supervenient Laws?

In CHAPTER 6 Eric R. The Changing Views of a Philosopher of Chemistry on the Question of Reduction 125 CHAPTER 7 Noretta Koertge. Contingencies in Chemical Explanation 144 CHAPTER 8 PART THREE CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER IO CHAPTER II CHAPTER 12 PART FOUR CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 Richard M. Reaction Mechanisms 154 Metaphysical Issues Rom Harre. Causality in Chemistry: Regularities and Agencies 179 Joseph E. How Properties Hold Together in Substances 199 Hasolc Chang. Scientific Realism and Chemistry 234 Robin Findlay Hendry.

Natural Kinds in Chemistry 253 Theory and Practice Hinne Hettema. Chemistry and “The Theoretician’s Dilemma” 279 Grant Fisher.

Divergence, Diagnostics, and a Dichotomy of Methods 306 Guillermo Restrepo. Mathematical Chemistry, a New Discipline 332 Rein Vihalemm.

Science, qt-Science, and the Dual Character of Chemistry 352 Index 381 Contents www.ebook3000.com CONTRIBUTORS Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino, Department of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University. Best, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University. Alan Chalmers, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney.

Hasok Chang, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. Earley, Sr., Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University. Grant Fisher, Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Kostas Gavroglu, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Athens. Rom Harre, Department of Psychology, Georgetown University and Linacre College, University of Oxford. Robin Findlay Hendry, Department of Philosophy, Durham University. Download Pega Prpc Software As A Service.

Hinne Hettema, Department of Philosophy, The University of Auckland. Noretta Koertge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University. Jean-Pierre Noel Llored, Linacre College, University of Oxford and SPHERE, Paris Diderot University. Lee McIntyre, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University.

Pagni, Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee. Guillermo Restrepo, Laboratorio de Quimica Teorica, Universidad de Pamplona. Scerri, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles. Ana Simoes, Centro Interuniversitario de Historia das Ciencias e Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade de Lisboa.

Rein Vihalemm, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu. Www.ebook3000.com Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com Introduction ERIC SCERRI AND GRANT FISHER the philosophy of chemistry emerged in Europe during the 1990s — or to be more precise, in the year 1994. 1 Since that time, the field has grown in stature and importance, offering a unique perspective on chemistry and its place within the natural sciences. For example, the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) was formally established in 1997, following some earlier gatherings among the early enthusiasts of the field, and has held meetings every year since. The journal of the society, Foundations of Chemistry, began appearing in 1999 and is now in its sixteenth year of publication, with full recognition from the Science Citation Index. 2 But the emergence of the philosophy of chemistry has hardly been an easy process. As Joachim Schummer points out in his editorial for the journal Hyle, the other journal dedicated to the philosophy of chemistry, the philosophy of chemistry had been mostly ignored as a field, in contrast to that of physics and, later, biology.

3 This seems to have been due to a rather conservative, and at times implicitly reductionist, philosophy of physics whose voice seemed to speak for the gen- eral philosophy of science. It has taken an enormous effort by dedicated schol- ars around the globe to get beyond the idea that chemistry merely provides case studies for established metaphysical and epistemological doctrines in the philosophy of physics. These efforts have resulted in both definitive declara- tions of the philosophy of chemistry to be an autonomous field of inquiry and a number of edited volumes and monographs. 4 *A number of articles have examined the state and growth of the discipline, including Van Brakel, J., Vermeeren, H., “On the philosophy of chemistry,” Philosophy Research Archives, 7, 1405-56, 1981; Scerri, E.R.

& McIntyre, L. (1997) “The case for the philosophy of chemistry,” Synthese 111: 213-232, 1997; Van Brakel, J., “Philosophy of science and philosophy of chemistry,” Hyle, 20, u-57, 2014. Foundations of Chemistry, +of+science/journal/io698. 3 Schummer, J., Editorial for the Special Issue on ‘“General Lessons from the Philosophy of Chemistry’ on the Occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary of Hyle,” Hyle 20: 1-10, 2014. 4 We have gathered below what we hope is a complete bibliography on all monographs and edited collections on the philosophy of chemistry and closely related topics. Philosophy of chemistry, like any other field of inquiry, has a historical and social context.

But from a broad conceptual perspective, its birth pains seem difficult to reconcile with a rather obvious property of chemistry: Within the natural sciences, chemistry’s domain borders both physics and biology. In this regard, philosophy of chemistry is potentially unrivalled in its philosophical im- portance within the philosophy of natural sciences. Since it shares it boundaries with both physics and biology, no other discipline has the capacity to do more to edify the complex interactions between the life and physical sciences. Philosophy of chemistry is quite literally at the heart of the philosophies of natural sciences. It is for this reason, among numerous others, that the present volume collec- tively expresses issues, topics, and problems in a field that has its own voice, its own agenda, and its own projects. But engaging with philosophy of chemistry is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of chemistry and the natural sci- ences generally.

This volume explores the ways in which this might be achieved. The philosophy of chemistry is still a young field, yet it has rapidly estab- lished a recognized infrastructure for the dissemination of research through its journals, societies, and meetings. 5 This is a measure of both the interest in the field and a commitment to its long-term development. The current volume represent a stage in the development of the philosophy of chemistry, providing a repository for some of the best current thought in the field, and a guide for both the initiated and uninitiated. It serves to map out some of the distinctive features of the philosophy of chemistry, to establish recent developments in the field as chemistry evolves as a set of dynamic practices and conceptual frameworks. The boundaries that distinguish philosophy of chemistry from the philosophies of the other natural sciences are a matter of continuing evo- lution.

This is just as it should be. Philosophies of the natural sciences must continue to evolve along with the sciences constituting the object of inquiry. And internal developments do not happen in a vacuum.

As well as the histor- ical development of chemistry itself, there are developments in metaphysics, epistemology, and methodology that are both informed by and shape the phi- losophy of chemistry. Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry recognizes these connections and the importance of integrating history of chemistry with the philosophy of chemistry. And it demonstrates how some parts of contempo- rary philosophy are all the poorer for its neglect of chemistry. Philosophy of chemistry is notable in that working chemists of philosoph- ical caliber contribute to the field in addition to professional philosophers. As Kostas Gavroglu and Ana Simoes stress in their contribution to this volume (see chap. 3), chemists have been keen to engage in philosophical problems — unlike many of their contemporaries in physics, who may well have been aware of these problems but rarely intervened. This dynamic is crucial.

Not 5 A list of meetings and their locations, has been published in a recent editorial of Foundations of Chemistry. Scerri, Editorial 46, Foundations of Chemistry, 16, 1-2, 2014. Since that editorial appeared the 2014 meeting was held at the London School of Economics and the 2015 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 4 Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com only do chemists bring their expertise to the field, they can also identify its dis- tinctive projects.

Philosophy of chemistry is, in a sense, a “naturalized” phi- losophy of the natural sciences because taking account of actual scientific practice is not just an aim but a genuine achievement. Bringing the distinctive objects, practices, models, theories, technologies, experimental techniques and divisions of labor of chemistry to philosophical investigation has undercut some old objections to philosophy of chemistry.

For example, an argument against the possibility of a philosophy of chemistry was that, while physics had foundational metaphysical problems associated with quantum mechanics and general relativity, and biology had foundational projects concerning evo- lutionary theory, chemistry lacked comparable philosophical counterparts. However, the concept of molecular structure and the status of the periodic law are just two philosophical counterparts to foundational problems in physics and biology. The philosophical complexities and importance of these issues rival anything in the philosophies of physics and biology. One of the themes of this collection is how philosophy of chemistry can make a contribution to problems of philosophy more generally.

For example, can chemistry and quantum chemistry contribute to philosophy of mind? In chapter 4, Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino and Jean-Pierre Noel Llored argue that the “hard problem” of consciousness in the philosophy of mind (explain- ing the relationship between physical states like brain states and experience such as mental states) should be tackled in a manner that parallels philosophy of chemistry. They propose an extended mereology for philosophy of mind, drawing on the nonstandard mereology developed by Rom Harre and Llored 6 for quantum chemistry. Contributions to the philosophy of mind from the phi- losophy of chemistry arise because of the central place of reduction as a topic in both fields. It is not surprising, then, that attempts are being made to connect philosophy of chemistry with not only the philosophy of mind, but also with metaphysics and epistemology more broadly. Lee McIntyre points out the irony in philosophy of chemistry’s “discovery” of antireductionism, emergence, and supervenience (chap.

5), while philosophers of mind appear to be abandoning them. But McIntyre argues that news of supervenience’s demise is premature; not only can supervenience be defended in chemistry, if one can cash out the idea that chemical properties are supervenient then why not chemical laws?

Supervenient chemical laws are epistemologically emergent yet materially de- pendent on physical relationships. Thereby supervenience can provide a sup- porting role for the autonomy of explanation in chemistry. On a contrasting note, Eric Scerri (chap. 6) offers an illuminatingly reflective account of his changing ideas on the reduction of chemistry to physics, from his past caution about claims of reduction to one of caution with respect to claims about the failure of reduction. Assessing the past successes and failures of the reduction of the periodic systems, it is now not so clearcut that the periodic system hasn’t 6 Harre, R., and Llored, J.-R “Mereologies as the grammars of chemical discourses,” Foundations of Chemistry 13, 63-76, 2011. INTRODUCTION 5 been reduced, and Scerri highlights how important it is to keep a close eye on scientific developments and to seek more accurate experimental data.

Other contributions shed light on old as well as enduring problems in the philosophy of science. Hinne Hettema argues in chapter 13 that engaging with chemistry can shed new light on the concept of a theoretical term. He tackles Hempel’s “theoretician’s dilemma”: Theoretical terms either serve a purpose in establishing definite connections between observables or they do not. If they serve their purpose they can be dispensed with, and if they don’t they should be dispensed with. While Hempel’s response was to argue that theoret- ical terms do more than provide links in derivational chains, motivating a re- alist constructive account of theoretical terms in chemistry is difficult because many of its theoretical terms are inconsistent with those having counterparts in physics.

Hettema illustrates these difficulties by drawing on Fukui’s frontier orbitals and Paneth’s classification of an element, offering a resolution to Hempel’s dilemma based on a specific proposal for the ontology of chemical objects based on existence and grounding claims. While Hettema resurrects an old and perhaps by now a somewhat neglected topic, Hasok Chang (chap, n) confronts one of the most central issues in con- temporary philosophy of science — scientific realism.

Chang describes how the debate about scientific realism is distinctive in chemistry and how that distinc- tiveness might inform the debate as it applies across the sciences. The history of chemistry reveals the complexity of epistemic attitudes to unobservable enti- ties like atoms in the nineteenth century. Chang argues that there was no re- alism tout court in chemistry. Realism is partial and selective. Empirical success confers warrant only on parts of theories. Empirical success can result from a very partial knowledge of the systems of interest, as in nineteenth- century structural chemistry. Chang goes on to critique preservative realism because success need not correlate with those parts of theories which get preserved in theory change.

He defends “conservationist pluralism,” a position which accepts that empirical and interventionist success has been achieved by many theoretical routes and that we should retain them and add new ones with their own specific domains of application. The contributions to this volume can enlighten the philosophies of the nat- ural sciences because the neglect of chemistry can often end up polarizing metaphysical debates. In chapter 9, “Causality in Chemistry: Regularities and Agencies,” Rom Harre surveys the intellectual terrain comprising the meta- physics of causation.

He highlights the neglect of the active, agentive powers of substances in the philosophies of the natural sciences. Causality in chem- istry, Harre argues, is of a hybrid structure, residing in the observable regulari- ties between events and powerful particulars capable of bringing about both chemical change and the maintenance of chemical stability. Conversely, it could hardly be claimed that “chemistry” is neglected in discussions con- cerning the status of natural kinds.

Gold and water, after all, have a central place in these debates. But Robin Hendry argues (chap.

12) that a priori require- ments for natural kinds are undermined by chemistry. There are various ways 6 Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com of individuating substances but Hendry argues this is done in chemistry at the level of microstructures. He defends this view on the grounds that it captures the interest-dependent classificatory practices of chemistry and because mac- roscopic individuation fails.

Hendry draws on a causal argument for micro- structural essentialism to support this claim and concludes that chemical kinds are natural kinds. The chapter by Joseph E. (chap, io) can only be described as a tour de force in every sense of the term. Earley’s writing, perhaps more than that of any other currently active author, displays a complete mastery of both the phil- osophical and the chemical literature. Nothing that could be said briefly here would do justice to his essay, which ranges across a diverse set of topics in- cluding the nature of substance, properties and relations, bundles, molecular properties, onticity, wholes and parts and much more.

The neglect of chemistry can diminish philosophical appreciation of cen- tral aspects of scientific practice barely touched on by philosophy of science. Pagni argues in chapter 8 that philosophical interest in reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry has been somewhat minimal and yet its richness should render it of significant import.

He outlines how philosoph- ical conceptions of mechanisms might apply to chemistry; how reaction mechanisms attain their explanatory power; their status as causal mecha- nisms; and how causation connects with explanatory power. But that does not mean chemists and philosophers of chemistry are, as it were, “off-the-hook” when it comes to neglecting issues of central philosophical importance, or that philosophers of chemistry couldn’t learn from other sciences. In “Contingencies in Chemical Explanation” (chap. 7) Noretta Koertge argues that chemists and philosophers of chemistry would benefit from learning about the importance of contingency in biology.

In spite of the coherence of chemistry’s explanatory structure based on the periodic table and quantum mechanics, some chemical materials confound chemists’ attempts at integra- tion. Materials such as allotropes, clathrates, and alloys depend on the contin- gent environmental conditions in which they are formed. Koertge considers the implications of these contingencies, especially for education in chemistry and philosophy of science. While this volume is dedicated to philosophy of chemistry, it appreciates the indispensability of history of chemistry to philosophical analysis. Without appreciating historical context there is little hope of understanding the cohe- siveness or dissent within and between communities of practitioners, the nature of their practices, or the development of their conceptual frameworks.

Some of the contributions to this volume offer important contributions to the history and historiography of chemistry. 2) defends the revolutionary status of the Chemical Revolution and Lavoisier’s place within it. According to Best, the Chemical Revolution was a multifaceted scientific revo- lution encompassing theoretical, linguistic, and methodological change, and a shift in the philosophical theory of meaning. Best argues that a natural-kind — based theory of reference was tacitly introduced, encouraging the idea that INTRODUCTION 7 there had been a continuity of reference when the same chemical names were used in spite of profound theoretical upheavals. Alan Chalmers (chap, i) makes an important contribution to a lively debate about the impact of Robert Boyle’s version of the corpuscular theory on the rise of modern chemistry. Chalmers challenges the extent to which Robert Boyle’s attempts to wed chemistry and the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century advanced chemistry be- cause Boyle’s version of corpuscular theory was not sufficiently connected to observation and experiment.

Gavroglu and Simoes (chap. 3) discuss a number of philosophical themes in quantum chemistry. They present a historiographical proposal for writing the histories of “in-between” sciences such as quantum chemistry, among others. The role of theory in chemistry, especially the ontological status of theoretical entities, is considered alongside reductionism as it has been received by the practitioners of quantum chemistry. Gavroglu and Simoes argue that the re- ductionism debate depends on the perspectives of specific communities of practitioners, as do other issues in the philosophy of chemistry.

The histories of (sub)disciplines are crucial to the framing of the philosophical issues as well as specific demands and expectations practitioners have concerning the role of theory compared to those of practitioners within physics. Disciplinary identity, a theme closely connected with the Gavroglu and Simoes contribution, is pursued by Guillermo Restrepo in “Mathematical Chemistry, A New Discipline” (chap.

Restrepo explores the relationship between math- ematics and chemistry, and argues that mathematical chemistry satisfies Mary Jo Nye’s (1993) conditions of discipline formation. 7 One important implication of the forging of this new identity is that mathematical chemistry presents opportunities for historical and philosophical study in its own right. There is, of course, much to be said for analyses that contribute to our understanding of the science of chemistry at its most general level. Our understanding of disci- plinary identities can be forged in a number of ways, not only historically and socioculturally, but also philosophically. One crucial philosophical perspective is Rein Vihalemm’s longstanding contribution to the conception of chemistry as a science. In chapter 16 of this volume, Vihalemm builds on his idea of the dual character of chemistry.

Vihalemm argues that chemistry as a science should not be thought to possess a specific character; rather chemistry has a hybrid character: a constructive-hypothetico-deductive (“ who has argued that a crucial turning point lay in the introduction of the notions of chemical compound and chemical combination articulated with the aid of affinity tables, the first of which was published by Etienne-Frangois Geoffroy in 1718. Like pressure in Boyle’s hydrostatics and gravity in Newton’s physics, affinities were experimentally accessible causes and they were pecu- liar to a specific science (chemistry) and not general, ultimate causes of the kind that mechanical philosophers hoped to locate in the shapes, sizes and motions of corpuscles.

They conform to Boyle’s conception of intermediate causes, the details of which I address in the next section. 2 Boyle’s Distinction between Intermediate and Ultimate Causes The emergence of science in the seventeenth century can be instructively viewed from the point of view of a distinction, introduced by Boyle himself, between intermediate causes and explanations, on the one hand, and ultimate explanations and causes, on the other. Ultimate explanations appeal to ulti- mate causes, causes that are not themselves susceptible to, nor in need of, explanation at a deeper level.

Aristotelian elements, Paracelsian principles, and the atoms of mechanical philosophers were typically treated as ultimate causes. Ultimate causes serve to explain phenomena that can be observed and experimented on but are not themselves directly accessible to observation or experiment. Intermediate causes are like ultimate ones insofar as they are ex- planatory, but differ from ultimate ones, first insofar as they are susceptible to explanation at a deeper level and second insofar as they can be explored exper- imentally. Weight and elasticity are ready examples of intermediate causes. Boyle introduced a distinction between levels of causes early in his life as an “experimental philosopher.” He had taken up serious experimenting in the second half of the 1650s, while resident in Oxford. It was during the same period that he first articulated his version of the mechanical philoso- phy.

The latter philosophy traced all phenomena of the material world back to the shapes, sizes, arrangements and motions of atomic corpuscles that were understood to be the sole components of that material world. The atoms, each possessing an unchanging shape and size, were ultimate causes and characterized as such by Boyle. It was not until the early 1660s that Boyle’s experimental work and his articulation of the mechanical philosophy began to be published. The first publication was his “New experiments physico- mechanical touching the spring and weight of the air and its effect” containing a detailed account of his pneumatics, defended by experiments with the air pump (Boyle 2000 vol. The weight and spring of the air that Boyle invoked as causes of pneumatic phenomena were not ultimate, corpuscular causes. The status of the noncorpuscular causes figuring here and in Boyle’s experimental work generally was an issue that he explicitly took up in his next publication. ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR CHEMISTRY In 1661 Boyle (2000, vol.

2, 5-203) published “Certain physiological essays” containing accounts of his experimental work in areas other than pneumatics. Most of those essays were concerned with his experimental work in chemistry. The collection began with a “proemial essay” in which Boyle described and explained the character of the “experimental learning” in which he was en- gaged.

It was in this essay that Boyle introduced the notion of intermediate causes and explanations as distinct from those involving mechanical atoms. In a discussion that takes up four pages of his essay, Boyle (2000, 21-24) explic- itly makes the following points: There are degrees of explanation ranging from those that appeal to the “primitive affections,” the shapes, sizes and motions of atoms of universal matter, to those involving “more familiar” qualities such as weight and fluidity.

Explanations that appeal to intermediate causes such as gravity are not ultimate explanations but they are explanations for all that. There is plenty of legitimate work to be done involving the identification and experimental investigation of intermediate causes that falls short of the identi- fication of ultimate causes. 2 The experimenter may “without ascending to the top of the series of causes, perform things of great moment.” Boyle’s distinction between intermediate and ultimate causes makes immediate sense of, and was presumably influenced by, Boyle’s pneumatics. In “New experiments physico-mechanical, touching the spring of the air and its effects,” Boyle experimentally identifies and explores the weight, pressure, and spring of the air and employs those notions to explain a range of phenomena, some of them familiar and others novel phenomena produced using the air pump.

Boyle is quite clear in this work and elsewhere, first that the weight and spring of the air, being intermediate causes, are in need of explanation at a deeper level and second that he, in common with his fellow mechanical philosophers, is unable to supply those deeper, ultimate or atomic, explanations. The characteristic of Boyle’s pneumatics that I have highlighted features even more clearly in his essay “Hydrostatical paradoxes made out by new experiments,” published in 1666, which involved an exposition and extension of Pascal’s hydrostatics. Much of the work is devoted to a detailed description of experiments devised and conducted by Boyle to illustrate and support the principles of hydrostatics.

Boyle (2000, vol. 5, 193-194) was concerned to defend this experimental work as a legitimate part of philosophy. Hydrostatics is a part of philosophy, which I confess I look upon as one of the inge- niousest [sic] doctrines that belong to it.

Theorems and problems of this art, being most of them pure and handsome productions of reason duly exercised on atten- tively considered subjects and making in them such discoveries as are not only pleasing but divers of them surprising, and such as would make one at first wonder by what ratiocination men came to attain the knowledge of such unobvious truths. Nor are the delightfulness and subtlety of the hydrostatics the only things for which 2 Boyle used phrases such as “the most general causes,” “first principles,” 'atomic principles,” and “the primitive affections of the smallest parts of matter” to refer to those fundamental causes not themselves in need of explanation. I have used the term “ultimate causes’ to encapsulate all of this. 18 History and Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com we may commend them: For there are many, as well as of the more familiar, as of the more abstruse phenomena of nature, that will never be thoroughly understood nor dearly explicated by those that are strangers to the hydrostatics. Boyle (2000, vol. 5, 207 and 236) insisted that in his hydrostatics he was intent on explaining why various propositions describing the phenomena are true as well as establishing that they are true, and this was to be done by identifying their “true causes” (Boyle 2000, vol. 5, 213 and 214).

For Boyle, then, hydrostatics developed with the aid of detailed experimen- tation was a legitimate branch of philosophy because it explained both familiar and novel (“unobvious”) phenomena by identifying their causes. But those causes were not the ultimate causes figuring in the mechanical philosophy. Boyle’s essay on hydrostatics makes no reference whatsoever to the shapes, sizes, and motions of corpuscles. Rather, the causes invoked by Boyle (as by Pascal before him) were weight and pressure. 3 For Boyle, hydrostatics and pneumatics were a legitimate part of “experimental learning,” and, indeed, of “philosophy” by virtue of the fact that they explained phenomena by identify- ing intermediate causes accessed by experiment. It should be noted here that appropriate notions of intermediate causes cannot simply be read off of nature, nor is experimental contact with them straightforward.

As Boyle notes in the passage cited above, the necessary notions are “pure and handsome productions of reason exercised on attentively consid- ered subjects.” Boyle could help himself to a concept of weight that already had a long history and could build on the work of Archimedes, Stevin, and Pascal to develop a conception of pressure. The notion of the spring of the air was largely of Boyle’s own devising, gradually fashioned in the course of his own experi- mental endeavors involving the integration of work with head and hand. This kind of work transcended that of a sooty empiric, drudge, or mere artisan. In the light of Boyle’s understanding of experimental knowledge as the iden- tification and exploration of intermediate causes, well and straightforwardly exemplified in his hydrostatics and pneumatics, we now turn our attention back to chemistry.

The discussion of this section suggests the following ques- tion: Did Boyle’s experimental chemistry involve and invoke intermediate causes on a par with the pressure and weight that informed his pneumatics? As is discussed in the following section, the answer is that it did not. 3 Boyle’s Experimental Chemistry and Its Relation to Philosophy I noted above that most of the works appearing in “Certain physiological essays” were concerned with chemistry. One of those essays was explicitly con- cerned with the relation between experimental chemistry and the corpuscular 3 The appeal to intermediate, rather than ultimate, causes in the hydrostatics of Pascal and Boyle is discussed in more detail in Chalmers (2012b).

ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR CHEMISTRY l 9 philosophy. In the opening paragraph of that essay, Boyle (2000, vol. 2, 85) took issue with the idea that experimental chemistry is appropriately practiced by illiterate, “sooty empiricks” but has no place in the deliberations of philoso- phers.

His defense of chemistry went beyond the recognition that its produc- tions are of use in various trades and especially in medicine. Boyle was intent on showing that experimental chemistry can be “very assistant even to the speculative naturalist of his contemplations and enquiries.” The details of Boyle’s discussion make it clear that, insofar as he wished to argue for a productive link between experimental chemistry and the contem- plations and enquiries of speculative naturalists, it is naturalists that advocate a version of the corpuscular philosophy that he has in mind. This is already apparent from the title of his essay, “Some specimens of an attempt to make chymical experiments useful to illustrate the notions of the corpuscular philoso- phy,” closely followed by Boyle’s advocacy of “the desirableness of a good intelli- gence between corpuscularian philosophers and the chymists.” 4 We do not need to speculate about what Boyle means by the “corpuscular philosophy” here because he spells out what he has in mind in the course of the essay.

He explains that he does not wish to align himself with the details of a specific version of the corpuscular philosophy, such as that spelled out by the ancient atomists or by Descartes. Rather, he is content with the assumption, shared by all corpuscularians, that the phenomena of nature are to be explained by appeal to “little bodies variously figured and moved” (Boyle 2000, vol. 2, 87), the bodies themselves differing “but in the magnitude, figure, motion or rest, and situation of their component particles” (Boyle 2000, vol. That is, by the “corpuscular philosophy” Boyle means the mechanical philosophy that he articulated repeatedly and in detail in a number of works. Phenomena are to be explained by appeal to the motions and arrangements of corpuscles rather than “inexplicable forms, real qualities, the four peripatetic elements or so much as the three chymical principles” (Boyle, 2000, vol. Toward the end of the essay outlining his “attempt to make chymical experi- ments useful to illustrate the notions of the corpuscular philosophy,” Boyle reiterates the nature of the project he is advocating. He stresses that he is keen to overcome, on the one hand, the view that experimental chemistry is the work of illiterate practitioners which at best has practical benefits but is of no relevance to the deliberations of an advocate of the corpuscular philosophy and, on the other hand, the view that the corpuscular philosophy is too general and speculative to be of use to an experimental chemist.

Boyle (2000, vol. 2, 92) concludes his essay by insisting, on the contrary, that “as many chymical experiments may be happily explicated by corpuscular notions, so many of the ‘Newman and Principe (1998) advocate the adoption of Boyle’s term “chymistry’ to refer to the practice he was engaged in to distinguish it from modem chemistry. While allowing Boyle his own spelling I have used “chemistry” to apply to both Boyle’s practice and the modern version. In doing so I do not, of course, wish to deny key differences in the two practices; rather, I wish to identify and explore them.

20 History and Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com corpuscular notions may be commodiously either illustrated or confirmed by chymical experiments.” The extent to which Boyle’s contributions to the corpuscular philosophy and chemistry can be seen as helping to fulfil these ambitions is an issue that will be dealt with later. Here I wish to stress a contrast between the way in which Boyle strove to capture a philosophical dimension of chemistry, on the one hand, and of pneumatics and hydrostatics on the other. Both were considered to be philosophical insofar as they were explanatory. But the causes involved were of different kinds. While Boyle attempted to trace chemical phenomena to corpuscular causes, he was content with the intermediate causes of weight, pressure and elasticity in pneumatics and hydrostatics. Boyle’s discussion of the philosophical credentials of chemistry presupposes a contrast between em- pirical knowledge of artisans that is non- explanatory and philosophical knowledge that explains by way of the identification of corpuscular causes. Intermediate causes that served Boyle so well in his characterization of pneumatics and hydrostatics do not figure in his chemistry.

Boyle’s stand on the philosophical credentials of chemistry that I have high- lighted is well brought out by the experiment involving the decomposition and recomposition of saltpeter or niter, an experiment that Boyle regarded as pro- viding particularly strong support for his views. 5 An account of it was included by Boyle in “Certain physiological essays” and was repeatedly invoked there- after in his chemical and philosophical texts. Boyle appeals to this experiment to cast doubt on some assumptions about the role of substantial forms and principles that he attributes to Aristotelians and Paracelsians, respectively. He contrasts the problems faced by his opponents with a demonstration of the compatibility of the experimental results with the corpuscular philosophy.

It is the mechanical or corpuscular explanation of the experiment that makes Boyle’s account “philosophical” rather than merely empirical, in Boyle’s view. In his experiment, Boyle first purified some saltpeter by dissolving it in water, allowing it to crystallize and then filtering off the crystals. These crystals were then fused in a crucible and burning coals added, one by one, until the result- ing fulmination ceased. Heating the crucible continued for a further quarter of an hour to ensure that none of the volatile substance driven off in the process remained. A substance bearing the properties of saltpeter, and weighing only a little less than the saltpeter with which the experiment began, could now be reconstituted by adding “spirit of nitre” to the “fixed nitre” in the crucible. Boyle’s experiment runs counter to the idea that naturally occurring sub- stances (such as saltpeter), as opposed to artefacts, owe their nature to the possession of a substantial form, which, in Boyle’s derogatory terminology “gives it its being and denomination and from whence all its qualities are in the vulgar philosophy, by I know not what inexplicable ways, supposed to flow” 5 The substance Boyle refers to as “saltpeter” in the title of his publication is referred to as “salt- peter” or “nitre” more or less interchangeably in the body of the text.

From a modern point of view they are both potassium nitrate. ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR CHEMISTRY 21 (Boyle 2000, vol. The reconstituted niter bears all the properties of the original saltpeter and is yet clearly an artefact arising from the addition of spirit of niter to fixed niter. Boyle stresses the extent to which the properties of the reconstituted niter differs from the properties of the spirit of niter and the fixed niter from which it is prepared and uses this to argue against those “chymists” who attribute the properties of substances to the presence of some principle or other responsible for them. For instance, saltpeter is “not only inflammable, but burns very fiercely and violently,” whereas neither fixed niter nor spirit of niter are inflam- mable, the former “having already suffered the loss of all that fire could deprive it of” and the latter “being observed to be more apt to quench than foment fire” (Boyle 2000, vol. Boyle complements his use of the redintegration of niter to criticize his opponents with his own explanation of the phenomenon.

That explanation appealed to the shapes, sizes, and motions of corpuscles. The status and role of Boyle’s corpuscular explanations of chemical phenomena, both here and in his chemistry generally, is an issue that is discussed in detail below.

4 Boyle’s Mode of Defense of the Corpuscular Philosophy Boyle articulated and defended his version of the corpuscular or mechanical philosophy in detail and on numerous occasions. There were two key ways in which Boyle argued for the fundamental matter theory that was involved. One way appealed to the “intelligibility” of the mechanical philosophy. The other appealed to the extent to which phenomena known through observation and ex- periment were compatible with that philosophy. A clarification of what those two modes of support for the mechanical philosophy involved, from Boyle’s point of view, will set the scene for a discussion of how chemistry contributed to it. When Boyle insisted that the mechanical philosophy was intelligible and those of his Aristotelian and “chymical” opponents unintelligible he meant something quite specific.

In both of the central texts in which Boyle articulated and defended the mechanical philosophy. The Origin of Forms and Qualities and The Excellency and Grounds for the Mechanical Philosophy, intelligibility is discussed in the context of the ultimate nature of material reality and the prop- erties that can intelligibly be attributed to matter at that ultimate level. Boyle insisted that a portion of matter must of necessity possess some definitive shape and size and relative orientation, together with some degree of motion or rest, by virtue of being such. In The Excellency of the Mechanical Philosophy, Boyle (2000, vol. 8, 105-106) insisted that “men do easily understand one another’s meaning” when they characterize matter in this way, and such char- acterizations are “simple” in the sense that they are not “resolvable into any things, whereof it may be truly, or so much as tolerably, said to be compounded” In Origin of Forms (2000, vol. 5, 309) Boyle raised the question of the status of the forms and principles that he saw his opponents as introducing as 22 History and Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com ontological primitives. “Nor could I ever find it intelligibly made out what these real qualities may be that they [the scholastics] deny to be either matter, or modes of matter, or immaterial substances.” Boyle’s talk of intelligibility was concerned with the properties that can be attributed to material reality ulti- mately or primitively.

A portion of matter must possess some shape, size, rel- ative orientation, and degree of motion or rest by virtue of being such and it is perfectly clear what is involved in such characterizations. By contrast, the status of Aristotelian forms or Paracelsian principles is unclear from an onto- logical point of view, insofar as such entities are presumed to qualify matter and be other than matter. The recognition that Boyle’s notion of intelligibility applies only at the ulti- mate ontological level is important lest his own appeal to intermediate causes be branded as unintelligible. As was stressed above, Boyle’s hydrostatics and pneumatics involved ascribing weight, pressure, and elasticity to portions of fluids. Since those notions are not included among those Boyle lists as being intelligibly ascribable to matter, it might appear that his hydrostatics and pneumatics must be classified as unintelligible.

But this would be a mistake. Secondary causes, such as weight, pressure, and elasticity, are used by Boyle to characterize fluids, but in doing so, he does not imply that fluids possess such properties primitively. On the contrary, Boyle insists that such notions are, in principle, reducible to the motions and arrangements of portions of matter possessing shape and size only.

Let us now turn to the second way in which Boyle sought to defend his me- chanical philosophy, involving its compatibility with the phenomena. When it comes to the question of empirical support for his various knowledge claims, it is not difficult to identify tensions, if not contradictions, in Boyle’s utterances. For instance, Boyle (2000, vol. 8, 166) criticizes the appeal by “chymists” to their principles, mercury, salt, and sulfur, and insists that his criticism would hold even if the explanations of his opponents were “to come home to the phenom- ena.” This is because explanations by appeal to the three principles “are not primary, and, if I may so speak, fontal enough.” Yet, as we have seen, this criti- cism can be applied to Boyle’s own pneumatics, since the explanations he offers there involve appeal to weight, pressure and spring of the air that are not primitive or fontal. Driverpack Solution 16 Iso Free Download Utorrent For Pc. When, in The Excellency of the Mechanical Philosophy, Boyle (2000, vol. 8, 114) claimed empirical support for the mechanical philosophy, he listed hydrostatics as one area in which that philosophy had been successfully ap- plied, notwithstanding the fact that elsewhere, and repeatedly, he insisted that hydrostatics did not provide explanations that were fontal in the sense required by the mechanical philosophy because of its appeal to weight and pressure.

Elsewhere I have attempted to resolve these tensions in Boyle’s writings to the best of my ability. 6 Here I summarize my case, which involves a distinction between confirmation by empirical evidence and a weaker notion, accommo- dation to such evidence. Knowledge of intermediate causes is amenable to 6 See, especially, Chalmers (2009, 110-114). ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR CHEMISTRY 2 3 empirical confirmation whereas fundamental matter theories like the mechan- ical philosophy, involving ultimate causes, are supportable only by accommo- dating them to the evidence. Boyle did not explicitly make this distinction in as many words, but it is implicit in much of what he did and wrote. Boyle’s essay on hydrostatics provides as good an example as any of knowl- edge of intermediate causes confirmed by experiment.

A fluid presses on a surface to a degree that is proportional to the area of the surface and by an amount that is determined by the depth below the fluid surface. Pressure, so understood, when added to weight, can be appealed to in order to straightfor- wardly explain a wide range of experimental evidence, to some extent involving previously known phenomena but also novel, or what Boyle called unobvious, phenomena.

In would be a remarkable coincidence if the principles of hydro- statics could naturally explain such a wide range of phenomena and be false nevertheless, just as one can be confident that one has found the correct cipher to a code if that cipher straightforwardly yields readable messages in a wide variety of cases including novel ones. 7 Accommodation of claims to the evidence is a mode of support distinct from, and less demanding than, confirmation. The mechanical or corpuscular philosophy can be accommodated to the phenomena by devising corpuscular mechanisms capable of reproducing those phenomena.

For instance, the me- chanical philosophy can be accommodated to the fact that observable materials differ in density by attributing that density to the degree to which corpuscles of universal matter are closely packed. Accommodation differs from confirma- tion insofar as the accommodations are adapted to phenomena otherwise known and there is no independent evidence to support the claim that the con- trived explanation is the correct one. The argument from coincidence illus- trated by the code analogy does not apply to accommodation insofar as the accommodations are contrived on a case-by-case basis in light of the phe- nomena to be accommodated. It is no coincidence that the mechanical philos- ophy can be accommodated to a wide range of phenomena if there are no constraints on one’s freedom to devise a fresh mechanism for each phenom- enon to be accommodated. The extent to which the mechanical philosophy could be accommodated to the phenomena was invoked by Boyle in response to the charge that a world composed only of particles possessing shape, size, and motion is much too stark to account for the vast range of properties and happenings in it. That re- sponse invoked the degree to which variety could be traced back to the vast numbers of shapes, sizes, and motions capable of being possessed by corpus- cles and the great number of relations they could bear to one another. 8 The 7 Boyle (2000, vol.

8, 115) himself employed the analogy with code cracking, but his application of it in the context of support for the mechanical philosophy was unwarranted, for reasons that will become apparent. 8 Boyle repeatedly stressed this flexibility of the corpuscular philosophy.

Two key passages in which it is discussed at length are in “A history of particular qualities” (Boyle 2000, vol. 6, 276 — 277) and in “The excellency of the mechanical hypothesis' (Boyle, 2000, vol. 24 History and Philosophy of Chemistry www.ebook3000.com variety of phenomena exhibited in the world results from the motions and arrangements of corpuscles of various shapes and sizes just as works of litera- ture arise from arrangements of letters of the alphabet.

On account of this va- riety, the mechanical philosophy is “so general and pregnant that among things corporeal there is nothing real — that may not be derived from, or brought to a subordination to, such comprehensive principles” (Boyle, 2000, vol. This point did constitute a response to a key objection of his opponents and so did constitute an argument for the general philosophy. However, it involved accommodation to rather than confirmation by, the phenomena, and was a much weaker kind of support than that involved in the new experimental sci- ence, including some of Boyle’s own contributions to it.

5 Boyle’s Chemistry and Support for the Mechanical Philosophy There is no doubt that Boyle looked to chemistry for the strongest support for the corpuscular philosophy. In “Certain physiological essays” Boyle (2000, vol. 2, 91) declared that “there are scarce any experiments that may better accommo- date the [corpuscular philosophy] than those that may be borrowed from the laboratories of the chymists.” He went on to explain why: A study of chemistry promises to reveal information about the deep structure of matter insofar as it involves significant qualitative changes in matter that take place fairly rapidly. The experimental chemist can practically intervene to simplify the situations in which such changes take place and shield them from extraneous influences.

“Bodies employed by the chymists being for the most part active ones, the progress of nature in an experiment, and the series of successive alterations through which the matter passes from first to last, is wont to be made more nimbly, and consequently becomes the more easy to take notice of and com- prehend” (Boyle 2000, vol. In the first of the quotations from Boyle in the preceding paragraph Boyle himself describes his goal as that of “accommodating” the corpuscular philos- ophy to chemistry rather than anything stronger. However, I wish to maintain that Boyle had only limited success at contributing to that goal. In crucial places Boyle does not provide the corpuscular mechanisms that his accommo- dations require and in others he devises mechanisms that are highly contrived and not fully up to the task of reproducing the phenomena they are devised to accommodate. Let me substantiate this negative assessment. The experiment on saltpeter that figured so prominently in Boyle’s corpus- cular treatment of chemistry is a case where Boyle simply does not specify the corpuscular mechanisms that he invokes, and which he declares to lie behind and be responsible for the change from saltpeter to salt of tartar and back again.

Spinoza, in an interchange with Boyle conducted via Oldenburg as interme- diary, criticized Boyle for not providing a corpuscular account of the changes involved and attempted to repair the deficiency. In response, Boyle declined to ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR CHEMISTRY 2 5 specify a corpuscular mechanism. Rather, he retreated to an insistence on the negative point that his experiment undermined an understanding of chemical change by appeal to substantial forms, a reply that did not impress Spinoza since he took the rejection of substantial forms for granted. 9 Boyle’s most direct attempt to supply corpuscular mechanisms for chemical changes occurs in his essay “The mechanical origin of qualities.” There he devises mechanisms for explaining such things as the action of acids and pre- cipitation. As a sample of what he has to offer, I quote at length his account of the transformation of highly corrosive sublimate (mercuric oxide) into mild- tasting mercuris dolds (mercurous oxide) by adding additional mercury to the former and subliming the mixture. For most part of the salts, that made the sublimate so corrosive, abide in the mercuris dulcis; but by being compounded with more quicksilver they are diluted by it, and (which is more considerable) acquire a new texture, which renders them unfit to operate, as they did before, when the fretting salts were not joined with a sufficient quantity of the mercury to inhibit their corrosive activity.