To be, or not to be, that is the question…In his wonderful Facts and Mysteries, Martinus Veltman terminates a section with an anecdote: “When quarks were not immediately discovered after the introduction by Gell-Mann he took to calling them symbolic, saying they were indices. In the early seventies I met him at CERN and he again said something in that spirit. I then jumped up, coming down with some impact that made the floor tremble, and asked him: Do I look (...) like a heap of indices? This visibly rattled him, and indeed after that he no more advocated this vision, at least not as far as I know” (see page 240 in Veltman 2003). Although it is probable that Murray Gell-Mann, the inventor of quarks, has changed his mind regarding the reality of his symbols after this tough conversation, even later in the start of eighties the reality of quarks, as basic constituents of protons and neutrons, was a matter of disputes and exchanges (Shrader-Frechette 1982a, b; Albright 1982; Gruender 1982). A g. (shrink)

Since molecules are inaccessible to immediate observation, our conception of the molecule is brought about by transdiction which entails invention of various transcendental ideas. In organic chemistry we think that molecules consist of atoms, bonds, functional groups, etc. This is, however, not the unique description of the molecule as is shown by quantum mechanical calculations, for example. Then, what description represents the real molecule? Before asking this question, we have to consider what the real molecule is in the first place. (...) Constructive realism distinguishes our cognitive world and the world just given, and claims that we should accept the former as reality. Understanding our cognitive world is possible only through construction of micro-worlds. Atoms, bonds, functional groups, etc., are micro-worlds which make sense in a theoretical framework of organic chemistry. In this study we translate a micro-world to an affordance and paraphrase it as a context-relative dispositional attribute of an {agent-world} complex. Then, we can understand that it is what we take as molecular structure, not what might be out there to be found, that we should accept as reality. Excluding metaphysical fictions from scientific arguments, constructive realism makes science a meaningful activity. Constructive realism claims that, for getting knowledge of the world, we have to integrate information into our own linguistic frame, i.e., to translate it. Strangification is a technique of intentionally taking an accepted proposition out of one scientific system and putting it into a completely different context. As is the case with translation, strangification brings about deeper understanding of philosophical as well as scientific grounds on which the proposition system holds. We apply this method to molecular structure and reveal that it is an ingenious model to describe molecular behavior in multi-molecular systems with strong interactions between molecules. Information provided by strangification is essential to claim the legitimacy of a proposition system. As far as strangification is properly applied, relativism is irrelevant to constructive realism. (shrink)

In modern German ‘Anschauung’ is translated as intuition. But in Kant’s technical philosophical context, it means an intuition derived from previous visualizations of physical processes in the world of perceptions. The nineteenth century chemists’ predilection for Kantian Anschauung led them to develop an intuitive representation of what exists beyond the bounds of the senses. Molecular structure is one of the illuminating outcomes. (Ochiai 2021, pp. 1–51) This mental habit seems to be dominant among chemists even in the twentieth century, as (...) is illustrated by the electronic theory of organic chemistry and the frontier orbital theory as well. The former assumes that (1) bonds are paired electrons shared by bonded atoms—in fact, electrons in molecules are not localized in bonds; (2) the difference of electronegativities between bonded atoms causes electron drifts—expressed by the curly arrow—that result in bond formation or bond cleavage. The latter focuses on the orbitals that make the greatest contribution to the energy of a system undergoing electron delocalization, while the LCAO method says, as is suggested by the word Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals, molecular orbitals should be constructed from all of the atomic orbitals that have the appropriate symmetry. In other words, every molecular orbital contributes to some extent to the electronic state of a molecule. The curly arrow in the electronic theory and the orbital lobe in the frontier orbital theory illustrate an intuitive character of these theories. Although both theories rely on such simple and qualitative models rather than mathematically rigid quantum mechanical calculations, they are successful in explaining, predicting, and designing chemical reactions. What makes these prima facie intuitive theories so successful? In this study we address this problem from a historical and philosophical as well as scientific point of view. The key to solve this problem is that they are concerned with only bond formation or bond cleavage, in which the localized-bond principle holds. (shrink)

I argue and demonstrate in this essay that interconnected systems of science and technology, or technoscience, existed long before the late nineteenth century, and that eighteenth-century chemistry was such an early form of technoscience. Based on recent historical research on the early development of carbon chemistry from the late 1820s until the 1840s—which revealed that early carbon chemistry was an experimental expert culture that was largely detached from the mundane industrial world—I further examine the question of the internal preconditions within (...) the expert culture of carbon chemistry that contributed to its convergence with the synthetic-dye industry in the late 1850s. I argue that the introduction of new types and techniques of organic-chemical reactions and organic substances in this experimental expert culture, along with the application of chemical formulae as paper tools for modeling reactions as well as the chemical constitution and structure of substances, enabled academic chemists to make specific, novel contributions to chemical technology and industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

This paper addresses the conceptual as well as social origins of Mendeleev’s discovery of the periodic law and its reception by the chemical community by taking account of three factors: Mendeleev’s early research and its relevance to the discovery; his concepts of chemistry, especially that of the chemical elements; and the social context of the discovery and the reception in the chemical community. Mendeleev's clear distinction between abstract elements and simple bodies was a departure from Lavoisier’s famous definition of elements (...) as an endpoint of analysis and originated from his research in indefinite compounds. As a comparison, the paper also analyzes Lothar Meyer’s approach to the classification of the elements. Mendeleev’s new concept of chemical elements and the existence of an audience in the form of the newly established Russian Chemical Society, and his ``German connection'', helped Mendeleev in his discovery and its reception. (shrink)

The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, TRF, serves as an example. The work of Robert Merton, Thomas Kuhn, Augustine Brannigan, (...) and Grygory Markus shows that scientists read scientific articles by means of the application of a set of pragmatic rules that subtend the normative requirements of what counts as a scientific discovery. In other words, there is a hermeneutics of science, but it is internal to that form of life. Recategorization of priority conflicts has an impact on our view of scientific controversy generally. The impact is the revision of the boundary lines of scientific controversy and the further specification of its fine-structure. (shrink)

: In contrast to anti-Jewish campaigns at German universities in the 19th century, which met with opposition from liberal scholars, among them prominent chemists, there was no public reaction to the dismissals in 1933. Germany had been an international leader in (bio-)chemistry until the 1930s. Due to a high proportion of Jewish physicists, (bio-)chemistry was strongly affected by the expulsion of scientists. Organic and inorganic chemistry were least affected, while biochemistry suffered most. Polymer chemistry and quantum chemistry, of minor importance (...) among the majority of academic chemists (despite pioneering work by German physicists) was further weakened by the expulsion of renowned scientists. However, a look at the research carried out in Nazi Germany shows that no field of research "emigrated" as such, except research into molecular beams. The reception of emigré (bio-)chemists differed with respect to their field of research and the degree of competition in the host countries. Thus biochemists and physical chemists were accepted at American universities, whereas organic chemists were not. In contrast, they received high positions in Turkey, Palestine/Israel, and Egypt. After WWII, few emigrés were asked to come back. The delay of the resumption of international contacts by German (bio-)chemists contributed to the delay in rebuilding in particular German biochemistry, the physical chemistry of polymers, and physical organic chemistry. (shrink)

Der Denkstil der Chemiker. Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Tragfähigkeit des Begriffes “Denkstil”, wie er von Alistair Crombie eingeführt und Ian Hacking aufgegriffen wurde, für das Verständnis dessen, wie das Fach Chemie historisch seine Identität ausgeprägt hat. Obwohl weder Crombie noch Hacking den Begriff “Denkstil” in Bezug auf einzelne Disziplinen verwendet haben, erscheint im Fall der Chemie seine Anwendung besonders vielversprechend, weil er hier hilft, ein zentrales Problem zu thematisieren – nämlich die Frage, wie es Chemikern trotz wechselnder Gegenstandsbereiche und theoretischer (...) Umbrüche gelang, eine eigenständige und stabile Identität auszubilden. Nach einer Einführung in den Begriff “Denkstil”, argumentiert der Aufsatz, dass die Beständigkeit der Chemie als eines Faches wesentlich in ihren Laborpraktiken gründet, die ihrerseits wiederum die spezifische Art der Fragen bestimmten, die Chemiker in ihren Forschungen stellten bzw. die Form der Antworten, nach denen sie suchten. Folgende Merkmale kennzeichnen diesen “chemischen Denkstil” (1) eine spezifische, im Herstellen begründete Form des Wissens, (2) die Befassung mit einzelnen Stoffen und Materialien statt mit Materie im Allgemeinen und (3) eine Beobachtung von Natur besonders im Hinblick auf Transformationsprozesse.The Chemists' Style of Thinking. This paper discusses the relevance of the notion of “styles of scientific thinking” introduced by Alistair Crombie and revisited by Ian Hacking, for understanding how chemistry shaped its identity. Although neither Crombie nor Hacking applied this notion to individual disciplines, it seems appropriate to use it in the case of chemistry because it helps to address a puzzling issue: how did chemists manage to shape an identity of their own, despite shifting territories and theoretical transformations? Following a presentation of the notion of style, I will argue that the stable identity of chemistry is rooted in laboratory practices, which determined the specific questions that chemists put to nature as well as the answers to their questions. The “chemical style of thinking” is characterized by i) a specific way of knowing through making, ii) the concern with individual materials rather than matter in general and iii) a specific commitment to nature. (shrink)