Foundations of Chemistry: Philosophical, Historical, Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies of Chemistry

Edited by:
  • Eric R. Scerri
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Twentieth-century philosophy of science — especially the anglophone tradition — virtually ignored chemistry. From logical positivism through to Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, physics has been the model science. This neglect of the philosophy of chemistry prompted a strong reaction in the 1990s in Britain, Germany and the United States. After a number of conferences and symposia in 1994, two journals were created to fill the gap: Hyle: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Chemistry in 1995, published by the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, and Foundations of Chemistry in 1999.

If we admit that ‘filling a gap’ is more than a rhetorical justification for new journals, the main question is, ‘how do you fill the gap?’. The answer is not clear from the four issues of Foundations of Chemistry. Its editor-in-chief Eric Scerri, an American chemist, turned to the philosophy of chemistry in order to fight against the reduction of chemistry to quantum physics. His initial motivation was to demonstrate that the foundations of chemistry lie in chemistry itself. For him, the philosophy of chemistry is mainly a strategy to claim chemistry's autonomy.

The journal's title clearly indicates that it is a response of the chemical community to the longstanding neglect of chemistry which began with Foundations of the Unity of Science, the famous publication of the logical positivism movement. Scerri, aware of the dangers of a reactive attitude, is trying to broaden the scope of the journal to include such topics as the role of instruments in chemistry, and to develop a historical dimension lacking in logical positivism. However, the success of the enterprise will rely on the journal's ability to interest philosophers and historians of science. Its future depends on the formation of a multidisciplinary and multicultural research community of philosophers of chemistry.

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