Chemical Modeling

Abstract

Chemistry's modeling tradition began with physical models of atoms and molecules. The use of molecular models gained special prominence in the middle of the 19th century as the chemical significance of three-dimensional molecular shape became recognized. Physical models gave an immediacy and an ease of visualization. They also provided a framework in which certain theoretical concepts such as steric hindrance, tautomerism, conformational changes, and chirality could be explored. Chemistry's physical modeling tradition has not been the subject of a large philosophical literature. Perhaps this is because physical models seem to serve a heuristic role rather than a theoretical one. The continued reliance on such models, and on three-dimensional computer images of such structures, suggests that they play some epistemic role in chemical practice.