A lively philosophical debate has lately arisen over the nature of elementhood in chemistry. Two different senses in which the technical term ELEMENT is currently in use by chemists have been identified, leaving chemistry open to the logical fallacy of equivocation. This paper introduces a third, more elemental candidate: the high-enthalpy short-lived unbonded atom. An enthalpy index based on free-atoms-as-elements is established, whereby one can monitor the degree to which an atom’s spin-based attractive force is implemented exo-enthalpically when the atom (...) binds chemically to others. Enthalpy indexing shows that the strength of an atom’s attractive force is proportional to its spin angular momentum. Vibrational spectroscopy shows that the force varies inversely as the fourth power of the inter-atom distance. Both features differentiate the chemical force from the stronger electromagnetic force and from the weaker Van der Waals force. (shrink)

This article analyses and evaluates the uses of the concept of causal power in the critical realist tradition, which is based on Roy Bhaskar's philosophy of science. The concept of causal power that appears in the early works of Rom Harré and his associates is compared to Bhaskar's account of this concept and its uses in the critical realist social ontology. It is argued that the concept of emergence should be incorporated to any adequate notion of causal power. The concept (...) of emergence used in Bhaskar and other critical realists’ works is shown to be ambiguous. It is also pointed out that the concept of causal power should be analysed in an anti-essentialist way. Ontological and methodological problems that vitiate Bhaskar's transcendental account of the concept of causal power are examined. Moreover, it is argued that the applications of the concept of causal power to mental powers, reasons, and social structures in the critical realist social ontology are problematic. The paper shows how these problems might be avoided without giving up the concept of causal power and the notion of structural social causation. (shrink)

Many philosophers attribute extraordinary importance to the idea of natural kinds seemingly intimating that the very possibility of certain kinds of activity are ontologically beholden to the existence of kinds. Specifically, regarding chemistry, Brian Ellis intimated that the success of any plausible metaphysical essentialism depends upon its “reliance on examples from chemistry.” Ellis’s view is representative of a tradition in analytic philosophy that has utilized chemical examples as paradigmatic natural kinds. In this regard, Kripke and Putnam emerge as the architects (...) of an entrenched research program dedicated to the chemical tradition of natural kinds in analytic philosophy. The emergence of a critical body of literature by philosophers of chemistry and others has shattered the complacent reliance upon chemical examples as exemplary kinds. On the basis of this emerging critical literature, I will critically explore the way in which chemical practice and inquiry affects the natural kind debate. So, instead of the pretense that we simply carve nature at its joints, we need to become better grounded in the practice of science, and especially with regard to the debate about natural kinds in chemical practice. Consistent with this orientation, we need to make the practice turn, that is, eradicate the fantasy of logical reconstruction and become involved with the interpretative and historical challenges of understanding the nuances of practice. The point here is quite clear, metaphysical questions regarding natural kind should be imminent to scientific practice. Indeed, any legitimate metaphysics of natural kinds should be appropriately informed and grounded in practice and not operate on the basis of a priori sovereignty. I will insert this critical discussion within the analytical context of the notion of interpretive communities and make the case that philosophers should not assume that appeals to the purity of philosophy can substitute for the complexity and practical orientation of chemical practice. (shrink)

Natural-kind essentialism faces an important but neglected difficulty: the problem of complex essences (PCE). This is the question of how to account for the unity of an instantiated kind-essence when that essence consists of multiple distinct properties, some of which lack an inherent necessary connection between them. My central goal here is to propose an essentialism-friendly solution to this problem. Along the way I also employ some points from that solution to argue for the necessary truth of essentialism (necessary, that (...) is, in all possible worlds in which there are material objects), and to support the essentialist ontology of laws over and against a major rival. (shrink)

What accounts for the linkage of seemingly diverse and inherently separable fundamental properties, such that they are regarded as properties of a single thing? Multiple answers to this question have been put forward in both the historical and current literature, especially from competing substance ontologies and competing theories concerning the metaphysics of natural kinds. Here I lay out and critically assess two ways in which dispositionalism might contribute to the discussion.

The question of whether there could be a physical object that is necessarily constantly active has a long history, and it has recently arisen again in the literature on dispositions. I examine and critique two proposals for affirming the possibility of such an object. I then advocate a third option, one which is workable if paired with natural-kind essentialism. Finally I briefly outline three possible implications of this view for wider debates concerning the ontology of dispositions and natural kinds.

In this paper, I focus on life-threatening medical conditions and argue that from the point of view of natural properties, induction(s), and participation in laws, at least some of the ill organisms dealt with in somatic medicine form natural kinds in the same sense in which the kinds in the exact sciences are thought of as natural. By way of comparing two ‘divisions of nature’, viz., a ‘classical’ exact science kind (gold) and a kind of disease (Graves disease), I show (...) that there is no justifiable ‘ontological gap’ between disease kinds and exact sciences kinds. We have instead a difference of degree. (shrink)

In this paper, the practice of chemistry is viewed in terms of the interaction of three elements – the physical world (at the molecular level), the conceptual world (the canon of chemistry) and the social world (the community of chemists). This interaction, which is based on critical realist ideas such as, for example, the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality, affords a clear distinction between the practice of chemistry as science and the practice of chemistry as technology. It also shows (...) the significance of the particularity of the chemist in the practice of chemistry. Finally, it allows a coherent philosophical foundation for chemistry research and chemistry education. (shrink)