The Philosophy of Chemistry: Practices, Methodologies, and Concepts

This volume connects chemistry and philosophy in order to face questions raised by chemistry in our present world. The idea is first to develop a kind of philosophy of chemistry which is deeply rooted in the exploration of chemical activities. We thus work in close contact with chemists (technicians, engineers, researchers, and teachers). Following this line of reasoning, the first part encourages current chemists to describe their workaday practices while insisting on methodological, metrological, philosophical, and epistemological questions related to their activities. It deals with sustainable chemistry, chemical metrology, nanochemistry, and biochemistry, among other crucial topics. In doing so, those chemists invite historians and philosophers to provide future developments. In a nutshell, this part is a call for forthcoming collaborations focused on instruments and ways of doing chemistry. The second part of the book illustrates the multifarious ways to study chemistry and even proposes new approaches to do so. Each approach is interesting and incomplete but the emergent whole is richer than any of its components. Analytical works need socio-historical expertise as well as many other approaches in order to keep on investigating chemistry. This heterogeneity provides a wide set of methodological perspectives not only about current chemical practices but also about the ways to explore them philosophically. Each approach is a resource to study chemistry and to reflect upon what doing philosophy of science can mean. In the last part of the volume, philosophers and chemists propose new concepts or reshape older ones in order to think about chemistry. The act of conceptualization itself is queried as well as the relationships between concepts and chemical activities. This volume is a plea for the emergence of a collective cleverness and aims to foster inventiveness
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