Introduction

Abstract

Chemistry is a scientific discipline with a particular subject matter and history of development, and these have endowed the science with a characteristic range of concepts, theories, and methods. Philosophy of chemistry is the systematic critical study of these concepts, theories, and methods, and of the interrelations between them. This involves reflection on the ways in which they are related to, and potentially distinct from, the concepts, theories, and methods of other sciences. Since the late eighteenth century, chemists have investigated the composition of chemical substances in terms of a growing list of elements, which constitute the building blocks of chemical composition. Philosophy of chemistry also includes investigations into the diverse methods of chemistry, especially those that derive from laboratory practice. The sophisticated methods of analytic chemistry, already evident in the precise techniques and specialized equipment of Lavoisier, have been joined in the twentieth century by powerful resources of spectroscopic instrumentation. Such reliance on sophisticated instrumentation raises a host of philosophical questions concerning the relations between data and theory in chemistry, and attendant issues concerning the role of observation and empiricism more generally. At the same time, the synthetic goals of chemistry, intertwined as they are with industrialization and Western capitalism, yield new methodological questions as chemists develop rational methods for producing new substances with specified properties, and explore automated search procedures to identify viable reaction pathways for chemical synthesis. Philosophy of chemistry encompasses all such issues.