Abstract

This paper starts from the premise that the philosophy of chemistry needs to be primarily a philosophy of action. Its main task is to reflect on what chemists do, in their actual practice; not to bother with an ontological strawman, the fictional derivation from physics. As an autonomous science, chemistry has its own iconic language. Do diagrams, structural formulas, molecular models, and their mental images draw upon tacit knowledge? To a chemist, intent upon thinking about his current molecular object, can they assume an obsessive and even hallucinatory quality? The paper reflects on chemists’ characteristic schizovision, encompassing the microscopic entities and their actual operations in the laboratory, in an incessant shuttling back-and-forth. It also stresses the distinction between tacit knowledge, an ineffectual notion, and implicit meanings, which a chemist is trained into interpreting and decoding. In addressing these questions, the paper draws on seminal ideas of C.S. Peirce, M. Polanyi, and G. Bachelard.