Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:10:49.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chemical “Substances” That Are Not “Chemical Substances”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Joseph E. Earley, Sr.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The main scientific problems of chemical bonding were solved half a century ago, but adequate philosophical understanding of chemical combination is yet to be achieved. Chemists routinely use important terms (“element,” “atom,” “molecule,” “substance”) with more than one meaning. This can lead to misunderstandings. Eliminativists claim that what seems to be a baseball breaking a window is merely the action of “atoms, acting in concert.” They argue that statues, baseballs, and similar macroscopic things “do not exist.” When macroscopic objects like baseballs move, exceedingly large numbers (∼1025) of microscopic components coordinate their activities. Understanding how this happens requires attention to the interactions that link parts into larger units. Eliminativists say that everything that truly exists has causal relationships in addition to those of its components—“nonredundant causality.” This paper holds that if a number of entities interact in such a way that the effect of that collection on test objects is different than it would have been in the absence of the interaction, then identification of that collection as a single composite agent is warranted, for purposes to which that difference is relevant. Ordinary “chemical substances” (both elementary materials such as dihydrogen and compounds such as water) fulfill this version of the requirement of nonredundant causality. Other sorts of chemical coherences, including chemical dissipative structures (e.g., flames), also fulfill that criterion. All these types of coherences qualify as “substances” (as that term is used in philosophy) even though they are not all “chemical substances.”

Type
Chemical Substances
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Miriam Solomon , December 2006 , pp. 841 - 852
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Armstrong, David M. (1997), A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, David M. (2004), Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchler, Justus (1990), Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. 2nd ed. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Da Costa, Newton, and French, Steven (2003), Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Modeling and Scientific Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (1993), “The Nature of Chemical Existence,” in Bogaard, Paul A. and Treash, Gordon (eds.), Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (2000), “Varieties of Chemical Closure,” in Jerry Chandler and Gertrudis Van De Vijver (eds.), Closure: Emergent Organizations and Their Dynamics. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 901, 122–131.Google ScholarPubMed
Earley, Joseph E. (2003a), “Constraints on the Origin of Coherence in Far-from-Equilibrium Chemical Systems,” in Eastman, Timothy E. and Keeton, Hank (eds.), Physics and Whitehead: Quantum, Process and Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press, 63–73.Google Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (2003b), “On the Relevance of Repetition, Recurrence, and Reiteration,” in Sobczynska, Danuta, Zeidler, Pawel and Zielonaka-Lis, Ewa (eds.), Chemistry in the Philosophical Melting Pot, Dia-Logos 5. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 171–186.Google Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (2003c), “How Dynamic Aggregates May Achieve Effective Integration,” Advances in Complex Systems 6:115–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (2005), “Why There Is No Salt in the Sea,” Foundations of Chemistry 7:85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earley, Joseph E. (2006), “Some Philosophical Implications of Chemical Symmetry,” in Baird, Davis and Scerri, Eric (eds.), Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Springer, 207–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Hud (2003), “Alexander’s Dicta and Merricks’ Dictum,” Topoi 22:173–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon (2005), Physicalism or Something Near Enough. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kondepudi, Dilip, and Prigogine, Ilya (1998), Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structure. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Merricks, Trenton (2001), Objects and Persons. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merricks, Trenton (2003) “Précis of Objects and Persons,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3): 700–703..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millikan, Ruth (2000), On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay on Substance Concepts. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Needham, Paul (2003), “Chemical Substances and Intensive Properties,” in Joseph E. Earley (ed.), Chemical Explanation: Characteristics, Development, Autonomy, Annals of the New York Academy of Science 988, 90–98.Google ScholarPubMed
Needham, Paul (2005), “Mixtures and Modality,” Foundations of Chemistry 7:85–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, D. E., Ihekwaba, A. E. C., Elliott, M., Johnson, J. R., Gibney, C. A., Foreman, B. E., Nelson, G., See, V., Horton, C. A., Spiller, D. G., Edwards, S. W., McDowell, H. P., Unitt, J. F., Sullivan, E., Grimley, R., Benson, N., Broomhead, D., Kell, D. B., and White, M. R. H. (2004), “Oscillations in NF-κB Signaling Control the Dynamics of Gene Expression,” Science 306:704–708.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Connor, Timothy (2003), “Groundwork for an Emergentist Account of the Mental,” Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design 2 (3.1): 1–14.Google Scholar
Paneth, Fritz (2003), “The Epistemological Status of the Concept of Element,” Foundations of Chemistry 5 (2): 111–145..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Herbert A. (1996), The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Simonian, Joseph (2005), “The Paradoxes of Chemical Classification: Why ‘Water Is H2O’ Is Not an Identity Statement,” Foundations of Chemistry 7:49–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Jared D., Cappa, Christopher D., Wilson, Kevin R., Messer, Benjamin M., Cohen, Ronald C., and Saykally, Richard J. (2004), “Energetics of Hydrogen Bond Network Rearrangements in Liquid Water,” Science 306:851–853.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Inwagen, Peter (1990), Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (2002), Metaphysics. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview. See 169–170.Google Scholar
van Brakel, Jaap (2005), “On the Inventors of XYZ,” Foundations of Chemistry 7:57–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villarreal, L. P. (2004), “Are Viruses Alive?” Scientific American 291 (6): 100–106..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimsatt, William C. (2000), “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence,” Foundations of Science 5:269–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969), On Certainty. Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. (eds.) Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar