Linking chemistry with physics: arguments and counterarguments

The many-faced relationship between chemistry and physics is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of chemistry. In his recent book Reducing Chemistry to Physics. Limits, Models, Consequences, Hinne Hettema (Reducing chemistry to physics. Limits, models, consequences, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen, 2012) conceives this relationship as a reduction link, and devotes his work to defend this position on the basis of a “naturalized” concept of reduction. In the present paper I critically review three kinds of issues stemming from Hettema’s argumentation: philosophical, scientific and methodological.     

P.‐O. Löwdin and the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: A kaleidoscopic agenda for quantum chemistry

This is a article about P.‐O. Löwdin's life, his work in shaping quantum chemistry into a mature discipline at the intersection of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and his founding of the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry in 1967. Unavoidably, it is, also, a article reflecting our views about the history of quantum chemistry. We attempt to convey the complexities in the becoming of a subdiscipline, like quantum chemistry, where a variety of factors will have to be taken into consideration for a comprehensive understanding of its historical developments: the relations of chemists to the Heisenberg‐Schrödinger formulation of quantum mechanics after 1926, the institutional dynamics centered around the establishment of new courses and chairs, the research agendas and the vying for dominance within the community of quantum chemists, the methodological, and philosophical issues that have never left the quantum chemists indifferent, and, of course, the dramatic role of the computer in transforming the culture for actually practicing quantum chemistry. Furthermore, attracted by American history, culture, and ways of life, Löwdin suggested in the late 1970s that the post‐WWII character of quantum chemistry was dependent on its ability to hub a “scientific melting pot,” much like the United States of America which he viewed as a fusion of people from diverse provenances and cultures. In this article, we attempt to investigate another metaphor, that of the “kaleidoscope.” Löwdin believed that quantum chemistry's strength arose from its ability to nurture a multiplicity of heterogeneous cultural elements/subcultures and practices, interacting with each other, exchanging perspectives and modes of action, which circulated in an increasingly extended network of actors and institutional frameworks. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

浅议基于学科思维的化学类专业课程体系设计与课程内容编排

对化学学科的世界观和方法论等哲学特征进行了分析,提出按照化学的学科思维模式构建新型化学课程体系——"学科思维体系"的理念。并对课程的设计、教学内容的安排提出了一些建议。希望能够对今后化学类专业课程体系设计、教材建设和教学内容改革提供一定的借鉴。     

在分析化学实验中渗透马克思主义哲学思想的探讨

分析化学实验中蕴含着丰富的马克思主义哲学思想,如对立统一规律、质量互变规律等。如果教师注重从辩证唯物主义的视角来分析问题,并将哲学观点渗透、融入到日常教学中去,不仅有利于学生掌握科学知识,训练科学思维,更有利于学生形成马克思主义哲学观,提高综合素质。笔者结合自己的教学经验,对分析化学实验教学中马克思主义哲学原理的应用进行简要阐述。     

Breaking the law: promoting domain-specificity in chemical education in the context of arguing about the periodic law

In this paper, domain-specificity is presented as an understudied problem in chemical education. This argument is unpacked by drawing from two bodies of literature: learning of science and epistemology of science, both themes that have cognitive as well as philosophical undertones. The wider context is students’ engagement in scientific inquiry, an important goal for science education and one that has not been well executed in everyday classrooms. The focus on science learning illustrates the role of domain specificity in scientific reasoning. The discussion on epistemology of science presents ideas from the emerging field of philosophy of chemistry to highlight the much neglected area of epistemology in chemical education. Domain-specificity is exemplified in the context of chemical laws, in particular the Periodic Law. The applications of the discussion for chemical education are explored in relation to argumentation, itself an epistemologically grounded discourse pattern in science. The overall implications include the need for reconceptualization of the nature of teaching and learning in chemistry to include more particular epistemological aspects of chemistry.     

基于香港高中化学学科校本评核的教、学、评活动设计*

化学实验评价对于培养学生的创新意识和化学学科实践能力具有重要意义,尝试借鉴香港高中化学学科校本评核方法设计“教、学、评”活动促进学生化学学习和实验能力发展。介绍了香港高中化学学科校本评核框架及准则,以人教版《化学1》(2003年课标本)“铁盐和亚铁盐”为例,结合2017年课标设计实验评价量表,通过实验活动串联教学任务,以期实现教、学、评目标。通过评价反馈,促使更加科学、全面地评估学生的实验能力表现,为教师的化学教学实践提供改进依据。     

Chemistry as a practical science: Edward Caldin revisited

This is an attempt to take a look at chemistry from the point of view of practical realism. Besides its social–historical and normative aspects, the latter involves a direct reference to experimental research. According to Edward Caldin chemistry depends on our being able to isolate pure substances with reproducible properties. Thus, the very basis of chemistry is practical. Even the laws of chemistry are not stable but are subject to correction. At the same time, these statements do not necessarily make Edward Caldin a predecessor of practical realism. The latter has other predecessors, like Rom Harré’s policy realism or Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism. Chemistry is an experimental science. The experiment is a purposeful and critically theory-guided constructive, manipulative, material interference with nature according to Rein Vihalemm, the founder of practical realism. Chemistry is physics-like science but just partly so. This is an important point in the context of the current paper.     

Chemistry as a practical science (Edward Caldin Revisited)

This is an attempt to take a look at chemistry from the point of view of practical realism. Besides its social–historical and normative aspects, the latter involves a direct reference to experimental research. According to Edward Caldin chemistry depends on our being able to isolate pure substances with reproducible properties. Thus, the very basis of chemistry is practical. Even the laws of chemistry are not stable but are subject to correction. At the same time, these statements do not necessarily make Edward Caldin a predecessor of practical realism. The latter has other predecessors, like Rom Harré’s policy realism or Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism. Chemistry is an experimental science. The experiment is a purposeful and critically theory-guided constructive, manipulative, material interference with nature according to Rein Vihalemm, the founder of practical realism. Chemistry is physics-like science but just partly so. This is an important point in the context of the current paper.     

The production of purity as the production of knowledge

Using the concept of purity to reflect on the relationship between chemical practice and the philosophy of science, this article considers the philosophical significance of the chemical manipulations that aim to purify or otherwise transform matter. Starting from a consideration of the nature and role of pure (or idealised) examples in philosophy of science, the article underlines the temptation towards abstraction and theory for both scientists and philosophers. The article goes on to argue that chemistry, despite its increasing theoretical sophistication, is a science that remains particularly close to laboratory manipulations. This point is made in reference to the work of Gaston Bachelard on the production of purity and with the aid of historical examples, notably exploring the interplay between techniques of purification and the definition of elements, with special attention paid to Lavoisier’s definition of elements as the final limit of analysis. The closing section concerns the manufacture of steel from iron ore in the eighteenth century, illustrating this process using texts by Pierre-Joseph Macquer and Denis Diderot. Steel production is used to illustrate the kinds of philosophical question that are raised by paying attention to the details of chemical practice rather than jumping straight to chemical theory and also suggests how scientific theory can emerge from this practice itself.     

Paneth’s epistemology of chemical elements in light of Kant’s Opus postumum

Friedrich Paneth’s conception of “chemical element” has functioned as the official definition adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry since 1923. Paneth maintains a distinction between empirical and “transcendental” concepts of element; furthermore, chemical science requires fluctuation between the two. The origin of the empirical-transcendental split is found in Immanuel Kant’s classic Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787). The present paper examines Paneth’s foundational concept of element in light of Kant’s attempt, late in life, to revoke key distinctions made in his Critique, including that of regulative and constitutive functions of reason. In a section of his Opus postumum devoted to the “Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics,” Kant bends his philosophical system to address the newly emerging sciences of matter of his time. Specifically, he tried, without success, to develop the transcendental ground for microscale motions of bodies encountered in physical, electrical and chemical processes. Paneth’s discussion of chemical element does not take the Opus postumum into account, which is why it begins with a rejection of Kant’s rejection (in his earlier writings) of chemistry’s status as science. I make the case that Paneth’s definition of element effectively maintains something very like Kant’s critical separation of regulative and constitutive principles, while a advancing the concept of chemical science.     

Structuring the Liberal (Arts) Education in Chemistry

Following the tenets of a re-integrative philosophical framework for curriculum design and educational objectives, we provide strategies that describe our effort to change the educational experience of beginning college students in introductory chemistry. We focus on the explicit connection between instructional goals and practices. For instructors and students, whom we view as collaborators in learning, we address how mental models for instruction and information can affect the classroom environment. We also describe a series of classroom, laboratory, and outside-of-class tasks that are intended to promote meaningful engagement by individual students within the context of these recommendations.     

Der Maler Wilhelm Ostwald: Kunst und Wissenschaft

Closely linked to the scientific‐philosophical work of the Nobel Laureat in chemistry in 1909, Wilhelm Ostwald, there exists an artistic work, that hardly was given attention to in the literature up to now. This contribution shows the creative periods of the painter Ostwald and their connection to the physical chemistry and the colour theory. More than 4000 paintings of the scientist are kept at his country house “Energy” in Großbothen.     

供给侧改革视角下高职院校生活化学实验的设计与教学实践*

在供给侧改革背景下,结合高职院校教学实际,分析了生活化学实验课程在实验设计、教学内容、教学方法等方面存在的问题。从精心设计的实验项目、基于实验展示的教学方法和凸显学生专业特色的考核方式等3个方面进行实践,体现了课程的科学性、实用性、趣味性和可操作性,有助于提升高职院校学生的科学素养。     

Humphry Davy and the Problem of Analogy

Analogy, the comparison of one set of relations to another, was essential to Humphry Davy’s understanding of chemistry. Throughout his career, Davy used analogical reasoning to direct and to interpret his experimental analyses of the chemical reactions between substances. In his writing, he deployed analogies to organise and to explain his theories about the relations between physical processes and between the properties of different chemical elements and compounds. But Davy also regularly expressed two concerns about analogical comparison: first, that it was founded not on the rational interpretation of facts but on imaginative speculation; and second, that it was a kind of rhetoric, the persuasiveness of which depended not on material evidence but on misleading figures of speech. This article discusses the influences that informed Davy’s ambivalent assessment of the value of analogy, and it examines the distinct yet overlapping ways in which this assessment was expressed in his notebooks, his lectures and treatises on chemistry, his philosophical writings, and his poetry.     

What History Tells Us about the Distinct Nature of Chemistry

Attention to the history of chemistry can help us recognise the characteristics of chemistry that have helped to maintain it as a separate scientific discipline with a unique identity. Three such features are highlighted in this paper. First, chemistry has maintained a distinct type of theoretical thinking, independent from that of physics even in the era of quantum chemistry. Second, chemical research has always been shaped by its ineliminable practical relevance and usefulness. Third, the lived experience of chemistry, spanning the laboratory, the classroom and everyday life, is distinctive in its multidimensional sensuousness. Furthermore, I argue that the combination of these three features makes chemistry an exemplary science.     

From phlogiston to caloric: chemical ontologies

The ‘triumph of the anti-phlogistians’ is a familiar story to the historians and philosophers of science who characterize the Chemical Revolution as a broad conceptual shift. The apparent “incommensurability” of the paradigms across the revolutionary divide has caused much anxiety. Chemists could identify phlogiston and oxygen, however, only with different sets of instrumental practices, theoretical schemes, and philosophical commitments. In addition, the substantive counterpart to phlogiston in the new chemistry was not oxygen, but caloric. By focusing on the changing visions of chemical body across the revolutionary divide with a more sensitive probe into the historical actors’ material manipulations and linguistic usage, we can historicize their laboratory realities and philosophical agenda. An archeology of chemical bodies that configures the fragile stability of the material worlds chemists created in succession promises a philosophical horizon that would recognize our hybrid (natural–artificial) environment as an evolving investigative object of science.     

应用型本科院校开展学生科研训练的探索与研究*

大学生创新实践能力的培养是当前高校教育的重要命题,作为一所应用型本科院校,吕梁学院积极探索学生培养新模式,率先在化学化工系开展了人才培养方案改革、扩大实验室开放、“科研小助手”的选拔与培养等工作,项目的实施带动了多方面的变化并产出了一批科研与竞赛成果,为在全校范围全面开展学生科研训练提供了宝贵经验。