ISPC 2007 second editorial

Abstract

I am pleased to present the second set of papers from the ISPC symposium held at the University of San Francisco in August 2007. The third and final set will be published in another issue of Foundations later this year. The papers contained in this issue cover a greater variety of topics related to the philosophy and history of chemistry than those from the symposium published in Foundations of Chemistry 10.3. These disparate topics have the advantage of revealing how diverse the field of philosophy of chemistry has become. Thus, N. Sukumar’s ‘‘The Chemist’s Conception of Molecular Structure’’ and James Salmon’s paper on emergence tread different paths, but both provide new perspectives on topics that have received relatively cursory attention from scholars within the field; by contrast, Pio Garcia, Richard Pagni, and Meredith Tromble’s papers on serendipity, the history of the acidity function, and Sonia Rapaport’s art, respectively, provide virtually new pathways for philosophers of chemistry to investigate. N. Sukumar’s ‘‘The Chemist’s Conception of Molecular Structure’’ provides a chemist’s-eye view on the current debate on structure in philosophy of chemistry. Rather than arguing for or against the realism of molecular structures and representations he provides a thorough review of ways physical chemists have theorized molecular structure. Starting with the Born–Oppenheimer Approximation (BOA) he shows us the limits of the BOA approach, its modification via virial partitioning into the Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules, and how chemists have moved beyond the BOA altogether to formulate new theories, like Nuclear Orbital plus Molecular Orbital theory, that include, among other things, the dynamic aspects of molecular structure such as Jahn–Teller Molecules, tautomers and the conformational flexibility of biomolecules. James Salmon’s ‘‘Emergence in Evolution’’ argues that explanations for emergence in evolution, including the evolution of life forms, cosmic evolution and the evolution of chemical/biochemical systems, goes beyond that captured by the quantitative notion of ‘‘frequency of occurrences’’. As an alternative to Whitehead’s process metaphysics, which others have applied to emergence in chemical systems, Salmon suggests Teilhard de Chardin’s informal metaphysics of spirit-matter as an equally valid, and more accessible,