Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:14:30.450Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elements, Compounds, and Other Chemical Kinds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Robin Findlay Hendry
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I assess the problems and prospects of a microstructural approach to chemical substances. Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam famously claimed that to be gold is to have atomic number 79 and to be water is to be H2O. I relate the first claim to the concept of element in the history of chemistry, arguing that the reference of element names is determined by atomic number. Compounds are more difficult: water is so complex and heterogeneous at the molecular level that `water is H2O’ seems false under some interpretations. I sketch a response to this problem.

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. 864 - 875
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.)

Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Joseph LaPorte and Paul Needham for their comments on previous versions of this article, and Valentin Ostrovsky for the nuclear reaction example in Section 3. I am also grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for leave during which I researched the article and the British Academy for funding my travel to the PSA meeting.

References

Belyaev, V. B., Motovilov, A. K., Miller, M. B., Sermyagin, A. V., Kuznetzov, I. V., Sobolev, Yu. G., Smolnikov, A. A., Klimenko, A. A., Osetrov, S. B., and Vasiliev, S. L. (2001), “Search for Nuclear Reactions in Water Molecules,” Physics Letters B 522:222–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beretta, Marco (1993), The Enlightenment of Matter: The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier. Canton, MA: Science History.Google Scholar
Dupré, John (1993), The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Franks, Felix, ed. (1972–1982), Water: A Comprehensive Treatise. vols. 1–7. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1983), Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hendry, Robin Findlay (2005), “Lavoisier and Mendeleev on the Elements,” Foundations of Chemistry 7:31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kragh, Helge (2000), “Conceptual Changes in Chemistry: The Notion of a Chemical Element, ca. 1900–1925,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics B 31:435–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaPorte, Joseph (2004), Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lavoisier, Antoine (1789), Traité Elémentaire de Chimie. Page references are to Robert Kerr, trans. (1790), The Elements of Chemistry. Edinburgh: William Creech. Reprint, D. M. Knight, ed. (1998), The Development of Chemistry. vol. 2. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Needham, Paul (2000), “What Is Water?” Analysis 60:13–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Needham, Paul (2002), “The Discovery That Water is H2O,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16:205–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paneth, F. A. (1962), “The Epistemological Status of the Chemical Concept of Element (II),” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13:144–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, John, and Caserio, Marjorie (1965), Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry. New York: Benjamin.Google Scholar
Stanford, P. Kyle, and Kitcher, Philip (2000), “Refining the Causal Theory of Reference for Natural Kind Terms,” Philosophical Studies 97:99–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Brakel, Jaap (2000), Philosophy of Chemistry. Leuven: Leuven University Press.Google Scholar