Introduction

Abstract

Chemistry is a substantial science by the measures of industry, economics, and politics. As an academic discipline, it underlies the vibrant growth of molecular biology, materials science, and medical technology. Although not the youngest of sciences, its frontiers continue to expand in remarkable ways. And although it shares boundaries with every other field of science, it has an autonomy, both methodologically and conceptually; this autonomy, however, continues to be unappreciated by most philosophers of science. Why is there no philosophy of chemistry? Although there have been philosophical writings on chemistry, increasingly so during recent years, curiously enough, no coherent discipline analogous to the philosophy of physics, biology, or mathematics has emerged. Indeed, some would argue that there is no subject matter here to begin with because chemistry is in the end reducible to physics and therefore without a distinct methodology or conceptual repertoire of its own worthy of philosophical consideration. One motivation for this anthology is to demonstrate that this view requires serious rethinking, particularly in the context of modern molecular science. In a 1981 review article entitled “On the Philosophy of Chemistry,” J. van Brakel and H. Vermeeren pointed out that although there is a vast amount of literature on the history of chemistry, there is precious little in the philosophy of chemistry. They observe that “even isolated articles in which the philosophy of science is applied to chemistry are extremely rare: in all cases it is clear that the published work is the outcome of a side interest of the author (most of whom are chemists who developed an interest in the philosophy of science)”. An exception to this lack of interest, cited by van Brakel and Vermeeren, is a strand of scholarly activity in Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, East Germany, and Romania, where books and articles on the philosophy of chemistry have been published since the late 1950s.