Philosophy of Chemistry

In this essay, we aim to provide an overview of the periodic table’s origins and history, and of the elements which conspired to make it chemistry’s most recognisable icon. We pay attention to Mendeleev’s role in the development of a system for organising the elements and chemical knowledge while facilitating the teaching of chemistry. We look at how the reception of the table in different chemical communities was dependent on the local scientific, cultural and political context, but argue that its eventual universal acceptance is due to its unique ability to accommodate possessed knowledge while enabling novel predictions. Furthermore, we argue that its capacity to unify apparently disconnected phenomena under a simple framework facilitates our understanding of periodicity, making the table an icon of aesthetic value, and an object of philosophical inquiry. Finally, we briefly explore the table’s iconicity throughout its representations in pop art and science fiction.

Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism.

This article provides an overview of the origins and development of green
chemistry. Aiming to contribute to the understanding of green chemistry, basically from a
historical point of view, this overview argues that contextual influences and the user
friendliness of the term are drivers for the explosive growth of green chemistry. It is
observed that political support for its development has been significant, in which the
Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 was a formal political starting-point, but informally the
origins of green chemistry go back to before 1990. US EPA played an important role in all
this, but did not solely contribute to the growth of green chemistry.

Decades of cognition research have shown that external stimuli “spark” neural patterns in particular regions of the brain. This has fostered a view of the brain as a space that we can map: here the brain responds to faces, there it perceives a sensation in your left hand. But it turns out that the sense of smell—only recently attracting broader attention in neuroscience—doesn’t work this way. A. S. Barwich asks a deceptively simple question: What does the nose tell the brain, and how does the brain understand it?

Barwich interviews experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery in an effort to understand the biological mechanics and myriad meanings of odors. She argues that it is time to stop recycling ideas based on the paradigm of vision for the olfactory system. Scents are often fickle and boundless in comparison with visual images, and they do not line up with well-defined neural regions. Although olfaction remains a puzzle, Barwich proposes that what we know suggests the brain acts not only like a map but also as a measuring device, one that senses and processes simple and complex odors.

Accounting for the sense of smell upsets theories of perception philosophers have developed. In their place, Smellosophy articulates a new model for understanding how the brain represents sensory information.

The book gathers contributions from philosophers of medicine, pharmacologists, philosophers of biology and (formal) epistemologists around topics such as causal inference, evidential standards and study design, as well as the interplay between ethical, social, and financial dimensions in strategic behaviour underpinning methodological choices, evidential standards, and policies related to drug approval, monitoring and regulation. Authors include: Rani Anjum, Jeffrey Aronson, Marta Bertolaso, Giovanni Boniolo, Gustavo Cevolani, Brendan Clarke, Roberto Festa, Sven Ove Hansson, Bennett Holman, Jürgen Landes,  Mael Lemoine, Ulrich Mansmann, Klaus Ruthenberg, Miriam Solomon, David Teira, and Jon Williamson.

حين ننظر في السجل الميثودولوجي للكيمياء بُغية إعادة بنائه, فلا بد وأن تواجهنا ثلاثة تساؤلات مترابطة, تحقق الإجابة عنها ما تزعمه أسطرنا السابقة, ويمكن إيجازها على النحو التالي:
1. ما هي البنية المنطقية للكيمياء الحديثة؟ وهل ثمة نقاط اتصال واضحة يمكن تعيينها لهذه البنية بالتفسيرات الفلسفية المطورة للمنهج العلمي؟
2. هل ثمة قوانين خاصة بالكيمياء تجعل منها علمًا مستقلاً قائمًا بذاته؟ وإذا لم يكن النفي سمة إجابتنا, فماذا عساها تكون هذه القوانين، وهل تُسهم – على نحوٍ كافٍ – في بناء نسق استنباطي كيميائي كامل ومستقل؟
3. إلى أي مدى يمكن التمييز – من خلال الكيمياء – بين قوانين العلم ونظرياته؟ وهل يمكن التوفيق بين وجهتي النظر المتنازعتين فلسفيًا إزاء النظريات العلمية، أعني الأداتية والواقعية، بحيث تجمع النظرية العلمية بين كونها أداة عقلية لتنظيم المعرفة وتطويعها وفقًا لأهداف العلم الإنتاجية، وكونها وصفًا وتصويرًا متناميًا للواقع المحسوس؟
وقبل أن نعمد إلى فحص هذه التساؤلات ومحاولة الإجابة عنها, تنبغي الإشارة إلى أن زعمنا باستقلالية الكيمياء كعلم لا تعني قطع أواصر الارتباط بين الكيمياء وغيرها من علوم الطبيعة، لاسيما الفيزياء، بل تعني – على العكس من ذلك – أن ثمة علاقة للاعتماد المتبادل بين علومٍ مستقلة, لكل منها مفاهيمه ومصطلحاته ومناطق اهتمامه، وهو ما سنسعى لتبيانه خلال هذه الدراسة.

La tabla periódica se ha desarrollado gracias a la teoría atómica, la física cuántica, la teoría de la relatividad y la química sintética. El planteo de autonomía de la química por parte de varios filósofos y químicos actuales, ha permitido encontrar otros criterios de organización y ordenamiento de los elementos, que han resultado en otras propuestas de modelo y representación que permitan integrar criterios físicos, químicos y filosóficos.
En el presente trabajo, se analizará la autonomía de la química a partir de una visión histórica, de algunas de las representaciones de la tabla periódica, considerando ventajas y desventajas en su enseñanza.

En este trabajo intentamos responder una pregunta (bastante frecuente) que se plantea desde el ámbito de la didáctica cuando se pretenden acercar contenidos de la filosofía de la ciencia a los contextos de formación de profesores de ciencias: ¿qué filosofía de la ciencia contemporánea podría aportar a una comprensión de la ciencia (como producto y actividad) más adecuada para su introducción en la didáctica de las ciencias y cómo podría ser vinculada a los ámbitos de formación de profesores y profesoras de ciencias? Las posibles respuestas que den solución a este problema, creemos, inciden directamente en las imágenes de ciencia y de científico que se construyen en las clases de ciencias de los diversos niveles educativos. Nuestra perspectiva podría interpretarse como un abordaje metacientífico con fines didácticos. Partiendo de aquí, se despliega la estructura general de este trabajo:  El capítulo 2 constituye una contextualización del problema abordado en este trabajo en el que se pretenden establecer los fundamentos para la introducción de la familia semanticista y en particular de la metateoría estructuralista al ámbito de la didáctica de las ciencias. Para ello, se presenta una contextualización desde la didáctica de las ciencias que pretende ubicar teóricamente nuestro trabajo, presentando algunas de las dificultades que pueden encontrarse al intentar acercar a la filosofía de la ciencia general al ámbito de la didáctica de las ciencias. En esta sección se establece el área de investigación de la didáctica de las ciencias que soporta nuestra propuesta y la línea de investigación que podría permitir desplegar nuestra estrategia devinculación. La contextualización desde la filosofía de la ciencia pretende establecer nuestros marcos metateóricos de referencia. En ella se hace una presentación general de la concepción semántica de las teorías.  El capítulo 3 constituye nuestra contribución (general) para un acercamiento de la familia semanticista a la didáctica de las ciencias. Si bien los principales rasgos de cada una de las propuestas que integran la familia semanticista se ampliarían con el acercamiento a sus obras fundamentales, cabe aclarar que en el ámbito de otras disciplinas,1 estos trabajos son casi desconocidos y, por supuesto, también las discusiones en torno a la existencia (o no) de una familia semanticista; en este sentido, la caracterización de las principales similitudes (y diferencias) de las propuestas que constituyen dicha familia se convierten en novedosas. Un acercamiento inicial de la perspectiva semántica contemporánea al creciente marco teórico de la didáctica de las ciencias modeloteórica –como el que pretende este capítulo– podría contribuir al fortalecimiento de las líneas de investigación que acuden a la filosofía de la ciencia para fundamentar sus propuestas, y sobre todo, al esclarecimiento de las relaciones que podrían establecerse entre “filosofía de la ciencia y didáctica de las ciencias” a través de un análisis global o, como se ha considerado llamar aquí, una “hoja de ruta” que dirija el acercamiento contemporáneo de la filosofía de la ciencia de una manera formativa, evitando ambigüedades y respetando la profundidad de la reflexión metateórica.  En el capítulo 4 analizamos, desde la perspectiva estructuralista, la teoría de la naturaleza del enlace de valencia. El propósito de esta sección es ejemplificar el modo en el cual el instrumental estructuralista nos permite explicitar la estructura fina de una teoría y, consecuentemente, identificar sus componentes principales. Esta reconstrucción nos servirá como insumo para la planeación de actividades que permitan introducir las nociones básicas del estructuralismo a la didáctica de las ciencias, y en particular, a la formación de profesores de ciencias. Este capítulo es, a su vez, de interés para la filosofía de la ciencia. La reconstrucción de la teoría de la naturaleza del enlace de valencia si bien será usada como insumo para la planeación de actividades en el capítulo 5, su análisis podría resultar interesante tanto para la reconstrucción de teorías científicas, como para los análisis de teorías en las filosofías especiales de la ciencia, en particular para la filosofía de la química.  En el capítulo 5 presentamos una guía de trabajo y una actividad a modo de “ejemplificación” sobre la forma de introducción de las nociones básicas del estructuralismo en la formación de profesores de ciencias, y podrían, a su vez, servir en la planeación de otras actividades que coincidan con nuestros fines de una actualización de la filosofía de la ciencia en la didáctica de las ciencias.  El último capítulo pretende ser una síntesis de las principales conclusiones que nos ha permitido este trabajo. Esta sección constituye las conclusiones de esta pretensión general de establecer una línea de trabajo consolidable que vincule dos metadiscursos de referencia: la filosofía de la ciencia de corte semántico y la didáctica de las ciencias. Creemos que la estructura del trabajo nos permite cumplir con los siguientes objetivos específicos:  Identificar las relaciones que pueden establecerse entre la didáctica de las ciencias y la filosofía de la ciencia, a fin de establecer una ruta de integración de los contenidos contemporáneos de la familia semanticista.  Esclarecer las principales dificultades existentes en la didáctica de las ciencias cuando se introducen contenidos pertenecientes a la filosofía de la ciencia general e identificar las principales dificultades que tiene la introducción específica de contenidos provenientes de la familia semanticista.  Caracterizar los acercamientos a la familia semanticista de las teorías que se han realizado desde la didáctica de las ciencias.  Establecer una hoja de ruta que permita identificar los contenidos presentes en la familia semanticista, a fin de seleccionar aquellos que coincidan con las exigencias actuales de la alfabetización científica de todos los niveles educativos y la formación de profesores de ciencias.  Adecuar la complejidad de algunos de los contenidos pertenecientes a la metateoría estructuralista para introducirlos en la didáctica de las ciencias.  Integrar al área de trabajo de la metateoría estructuralista un contexto novedoso para este programa: la enseñanza y divulgación de la ciencia.  Diseñar actividades de integración de contenidos específicos de la familia semanticista en la formación de profesores de ciencias.  Vincular reconstrucciones estructuralistas a actividades para la formación en filosofía de la ciencia de profesores/as de ciencias. Estos objetivos engloban los siguientes objetivos generales:  Actualizar las aportaciones que la filosofía de la ciencia tiene para la didáctica de las ciencias.  Introducir contenidos de la filosofía de la ciencia de corte semántico en la didáctica de las ciencias.  Contribuir al establecimiento y reconocimiento de una familia semanticista en la filosofía de la ciencia que funcione como guía de trabajo para identificar contenidos metacientíficos de valor para la didáctica de las ciencias.  Introducir el programa metateórico estructuralista en los contextos de formación de profesores de ciencias, enseñanza y divulgación científica.  Contribuir al establecimiento y reconocimiento de una didáctica de las ciencias modeloteórica nutrida por las aportaciones de la filosofía de la ciencia de corte semántico, y en particular, del estructuralismo. Bajo las consideraciones anteriores, se hace evidente la pretensión de iniciar una exploración que permita acercar la metateoría estructuralista al campo de la didáctica de las ciencias. Al interior de este programa metacientífico no se dispone actualmente de una línea de investigación que indague sobre su influencia en la enseñanza de las ciencias o sobre las implicaciones que tendrían tanto sus elementos de análisis metateórico como la gruesa cantidad de teorías reconstruidas con el instrumental estructuralista (aunque resulta justo aclarar que no son muchas las escuelas filosóficas de la ciencia que toman como objeto de estudio su influencia en la enseñanza de las ciencias). Esto marcaría, en un sentido amplio, la expansión investigativa del ámbito de trabajo de la metateoría estructuralista hacia el campo de la didáctica de las ciencias. Este trabajo podría también verse como una investigación que pretende cumplir objetivos tanto de carácter didáctico (respecto de la vinculación de la metateoría estructuralista con la didáctica de las ciencias) como de carácter filosófico sobre la ciencia (respecto del análisis de una teoría científica específica). Esperamos dar algunas respuestas posibles dentro de esos dos espacios de trabajo, o al menos, esperamos brindar guías de trabajo para hallar esas respuestas.

2nd National Conference on Fundamental and Applied Chemistry (NACFAC 2016) is organized by the journal Chemical Science Review and Letters. This national conference include lectures from eminent scientists as well as oral and poster presentations by researchers, scholars, and students. As shown in the logo of the conference, “Chemistry” is the central science that bridges different fields of science and engineering. Thus,
the objective of the conference is to discuss the recent trends in fundamental and frontier/applied chemical, biological, medical, physical, pharmaceutical, engineering, and materials
sciences research.

El presente trabajo intenta indagar el campo de la epistemología de la química para lograr un entendimiento crítico y profundo de la disciplina, de manera que acerque tanto a educadores como a estudiantes de química hacia una perspectiva que resignifique su campo conceptual.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two objections to the 'kinetic derivation' of the equilibrium constant expression which is commonly seen in textbooks. To this end, it begins by consulting the history of deriving the equilibrium expression, and from there goes on to consider of the nature of scientific explanation and the value of demonstrations in education.

Update 2018/03/12: I have made some small changes to the body, and added a significant improvement to the kinetic derivation itself. I have removed from the body the derivation which shows that multiplying together the K of each step yields the correct K of the overall equation, and instead have added to the appendix a more rigorous derivation that shows exactly why this occurs. The superscripts get small, so it may be necessary to download the PDF in order to zoom in.

There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This article introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring noetic resources to be answered. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as the study (or “science”) of open questions, which uses conceptual design to analyse and answer them.

Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights.

The greatest challenge to the fundamental reality of human agency comes from physicalism—more specifically, microphysicalism.  Defenders of physicalism (e.g., Brian McLaughlin, Jaegwon Kim, David Papineau) often point to the ontological reduction of chemistry to quantum physics as a paradigm for the reduction of the rest of reality (including the biological, psychological, and social) to a microphysical foundation. This argument is based, however, on a profound misreading of the philosophical significance of the quantum revolution. A hylomorphic interpretation of quantum theory, in which parts and wholes stand in a mutually determining relationship, fits the both the empirical facts and the actual practice of scientists much better than microphysical imperialism. The “emergence” (or, as I prefer, “ontological escalation”) of chemistry from physics provides a useful model for thinking about the hierarchical dynamic structure of nature.

"Chemistry and physics are two sciences that are hard to connect. Yet there is significant overlap in their aims, methods, and theoretical approaches. In this book, the reduction of chemistry to physics is defended from the viewpoint of a naturalised Nagelian reduction, which is based on a close reading of Nagel's original text.

This naturalised notion of reduction is capable of characterising the inter-theory relationships between theories of chemistry and theories of physics. The reconsideration of reduction also leads to a new characterisation of chemical theories.

This book is primarily aimed at philosophers of chemistry and chemists with an interest in philosophy, but is also of interest to the general philosopher of science."

The study develops a framework for examining the way the classic notion of valency is adapted by the secondary chemistry curricula. The analysis is based upon twenty seven new and old textbooks. The textbooks are divided in three categories: new Secondary Teaching (ensino médio), new Primary Teaching (ensino fundamental) and old Secondary Teaching (ensino secundário). The methodological approach uses precedence matrices and conceptual maps to verify the use of a specific precedence relationship, characterized as [A, P, L], which refers to the themes: atomistics, chemical periodicity and chemical bonding. This precedence relationship composes what is called the "hard nucleus" of the didactic strategy addressed by the authors for learning the themes related to the structure of matter. A counterpoint to what is found in the current books is observed in the books of the old Secondary Teaching, in which precedence [A, P, L] is not observed. In that sense, it is considered that the material of Chemical Bond Approach Committee – CBA – was a strong influence for the implementation of that precedence. It is also noticed that there is a prevalence of using the history as an organizing axis in the presentation of the themes related to the quantum mechanics, but that most textbooks lacked a history precedence and did not deal with the conceptual understanding. As an alternative way to the predominant organization observed it is proposed a strategy based in the history of the classic notion of valency.

This essay, or rather collection of essays, draws together three distinct streams of thought, time and space into a single river of understanding concerning labor, leisure, human-nature relations, city and town planning and human evolution at both the individual and collective levels. From Daoist tales of effortless leisure under 'useless trees' to Pieper's eulogy of leisure in the Modernist world(view) of total work and onto the planning theory and practice of Sir. Patrick Geddes, this ambling and nomadic stream seeks to problematize hegemonic contemporary conceptions of evolution, order, labor, leisure, nature and human-nature relations and to plant the seeds of a new principle, a new mythos, to which human evolution and being can be oriented in ashes of the charred edifice of Modernity. Can we transcend the materially rationalist, labor centric conceptions of humanity that reign in contemporary hegemonic culture for a more holistic perspective in which the infinite and finite aspects of human being can co-exist without either one interfering with the other? Can human-nature relations, especially as cultivated through city and town planning, transcend the present order of hierarchical domination, objectification and callous consumption of nature for an order of relations in which nature acts upon us as a teacher and we consume nature in harmony with its own natural order rather than through creation of an artificial order?

In questo breve articolo presenterò i concetti di base e gli argomenti di discussione attuali della filosofia della chimica, un settore relativamente nuovo della filosofia della scienza. Partendo dalla contrapposizione tipica tra riduzionismo ed emergentismo mostrerò in che modo scienziati e filosofi considerano i problemi concettuali della chimica. Questo sarà il filo conduttore di una panoramica che dagli atomi arriverà alle sostanze macroscopiche. Mostrerò infine come la questione dei generi naturali, ancora poco affrontata in filosofia della chimica, sia cruciale per caratterizzare epistemologicamente e ontologicamente i diversi concetti della chimica e quindi dell'intera scienza chimica.

In this article, I outline a logic of design of a system as a specific kind of conceptual logic of the design of the model of a system, that is, the blueprint that provides information about the system to be created. In section two, I introduce the method of levels of abstraction as a modelling tool borrowed from computer science. In section three, I use this method to clarify two main conceptual logics of information (i.e., modelling systems) inherited from modernity: Kant's transcen-dental logic of conditions of possibility of a system, and Hegel's dialectical logic of conditions of in/stability of a system. Both conceptual logics of information analyse structural properties of given systems. Strictly speaking, neither is a conceptual logic of information about (or modelling) the conditions of feasibility of a system, that is, neither is a logic of information as a logic of design. So, in section four, I outline this third conceptual logic of information and then interpret the conceptual logic of design as a logic of requirements, by introducing the relation of " suffici-entisation ". In the conclusion, I argue that the logic of requirements is exactly what we need in order to make sense of, and buttress, a constructionist (poietic) approach to knowledge.

The concept of element is fundamental to modern chemistry and yet it embodies an apparently persistent ambiguity that has remained unresolved for the nearly one hundred years since it was made official by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists (IUPAC) in 1923. IUPAC’s Gold Book is the current compendium of definitions and protocols for chemical methods and nomenclature. The Gold Book defines “chemical element” as follows:

1. A species of atoms; all atoms with the same number of protons in the atomic nucleus.
2. A pure chemical substance composed of atoms with the same number of protons in the atomic nucleus. Sometimes this concept is called the elemen¬tary substance as distinct from the chemical element as defined under 1, but mostly the term chemical element is used for both concepts.

This dual definition appears awkward and troublesome for a number of reasons, and yet it has withstood the test of time. This chapter presents a take on why this definition has the form it does, how it arose, and why it endures. Following the introductory overview, there will be two historical sections, one on Immanuel Kant whose imprint on modern philosophy and science persists in various forms, including the genesis and interpretation of the IUPAC definition (see Paneth 2003; Scerri 2000; van Brakel 2006; Ruthenberg 2009; Mahootian 2013). The other section is on Ernst Cassirer, founder of the Marburg school of neo- Kantian thought, who wrote about chemistry both before and after the IUPAC definition above. We conclude with a comparison of Cassirer’s understanding of chemistry, first with the mathematical chemistry of Guillermo Restrepo, and then with Joachim Schummer’s conceptual analysis of the “chemical core of chemistry” (Schummer 1998).

In this essay, we argue that there exist obvious parallels between questions that inform philosophy of chemistry and the so-called hard problem of consciousness in philosophy of mind. These include questions regarding the emergence of higher-level phenomena from lower-level physical states, the reduction of higher-level phenomena to lower-level physical states, and 'downward causation'. We, therefore, propose that the 'hard problem' of consciousness should be approached in a manner similar to that used to address parallel problems in philosophy of chemistry. Thus, our contribution begins by scrutinizing the ways chemists and quantum chemists think about and use different levels of organization and chemical relations and relata and then investigates the problem of 'downward causation' as it relates to the question of emergence. We demonstrate that the science of the transformation of 'substances', namely chemistry, enables us to go beyond substantialism and to develop, instead, a non-substantialist account of levels of reality. Similarly, the 'hard problem' of consciousness will require that we transcend traditional emergentism and its substantialist conception of mind. As with chemical phenomena, mental phenomena must be examined in terms of the relationality of wholes and parts, and this will require the development of a mereology that explains how parts and wholes may co-define each other. Like the non-classical and non-transitive mereology that has been proposed for quantum chemistry, an extended mereology for philosophy of mind must be one that entangles the whole, its parts, and the environment, thus rendering 'downward causation' into a relational concept. This proposal is neither a reductionist analysis that only needs the parts to define the whole, nor a merely holistic description within which the whole is necessary to define the parts. Rather, we propose that the parts, the whole, and the environment co-define each other so that our understanding of parts, wholes, and environment as independent concepts must itself be altered.

Three classic distinctions specify that truths can be necessary versus contingent, analytic versus synthetic, and a priori versus a posteriori. The philosopher reading this article knows very well both how useful and ordinary such distinctions are in our conceptual work and that they have been subject to many and detailed debates, especially the last two. In the following pages, I do not wish to discuss how far they may be tenable. I shall assume that, if they are reasonable and non problematic in some ordinary cases, then they can be used in order to understand what kind of knowledge the maker's knowledge is. By this I mean the sort of knowledge that Alice enjoys when she holds the information (true content) that Bob's coffee is sweetened because she just put two spoons of sugar in it herself. The maker's knowledge tradition is quite important but it is not mainstream in modern and analytic epistemology and lacks grounding in terms of exactly what sort of knowledge one is talking about. My suggestion is that this grounding can be provided by a minimalist approach, based on an information-theoretical analysis. In the article, I argue that (a) we need to decouple a fourth distinction, namely informative versus uninformative, from the previous three and, in particular, from its implicit association with analytic versus synthetic and a priori versus a posteriori; (b) such a decoupling facilitates, and is facilitated by, moving from a monoagent to a multiagent approach: the distinctions qualify a proposition, a message, or some information not just in themselves but relationally, with respect to an informational agent; (c) the decoupling and the multiagent approach enable a re-mapping of currently available positions in epistemology (Classic, Innatist, Kant's and Kripke's) on these four dichotomies; (d) within such a re-mapping, two positions, capturing the nature of a witness' knowledge and of a maker's knowledge, can best be described as contingent, synthetic, a posteriori, and uninformative and as
contingent, synthetic, weakly a priori (ab anteriori), and uninformative respectively. In the conclusion, I indicate why the analysis of the maker’s knowledge has important consequences in all those cases in which the poietic (constructive) intervention on a system determines the truth of the model of that system.

The essay presents and discusses the ambivalences of petrochemistry as a possible means of experiencing the industrial sublime. It starts with a short prologue, a drive-by visit of the Österreichische Mineralölverwaltung (OMV) refinery in Schwechat near Vienna. The industries of oil typically deal with superhuman quantities, which since Kant may entail the experience of the sublime. Geology documents fossil timescales and planetary processes, whilst chemistry interacts with molecular and atomic processes. Both practices have effects that blur the frontiers of technology and nature. Furthermore, the oil industries inevitably invoke strong qualitative ambivalences. Fertilizers, fuels, and plastics are insignia of modern progress and wealth, but also of global ecological crisis. The essay argues that industrial humans are deeply entangled with these ambivalences and live with hydrocarbons as a companion substance. This close relationship challenges classical perspectives on nature and culture, on progress and power. However, it remains open whether the classical concept of the sublime matches with this industrial experience. An epilogue on the artwork Norco Cumulus Cloud of Richard Misrach, a successful artistic interpretation of man-made petro-landscapes, closes the piece.

Aquinas’s notion of virtual presence is a viable and consistent account of mixture which meets the criteria set out by Aristotle and elaborated by Wood and Weisberg.  While the persistence in mixts of the (prime) matter of the elements and their (virtual) forms may be mysterious to common sense, both are highly parallel to the best existing understandings of quantum physics.  Physical models for virtual presence do not answer all of the relevant exegetical questions, but they do avoid making merely verbal distinctions or collapsing Aquinas’s account into either that of Avicenna or Averroes, his explicit contrast cases.  Elemental and hylomorphic accounts of composition are not incompatible as the medievals feared, so there should be no reason for hesitation about using hylomorphism as an alternative to materialism and dualism.

The paper addresses a problem for the unification of quantum physics with the new Aristotelianism: the identification of the members of the category of substance (ousia). I outline briefly the role that substance plays in Aristotelian metaphysics, leading to the postulating of the Tiling Constraint. I then turn to the question of which entities in quantum physics can qualify as Aristotelian substances. I offer an answer: the theory of thermal substances, and I construct a fivefold case for thermal substances, based on the irreversibility of time, the definition of thermodynamic concepts, spontaneous symmetry breaking, phase transitions, and chemical form.

"Michel Weber et Vincent Berne (sous la direction de), Chromatikon IX. Annales de la philosophie en procès — Yearbook of Philosophy in Process, 2012 (224 p., 23 €, ISBN 978-2-930517-44-5)

Jean-Marie Breuvart, À Xavier Verley, en forme de dédicace
I. Séminaires de recherche — Research Seminars
François Beets, Condillac et la recherche d’un nouveau schème catégorial
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Chaos et Non-Sens dans les philosophies de Whitehead et de Weil
Roland Cazalis, De l’organisme à la spiritualité : une trajectoire whiteheadienne
Michel Weber, Syntonie ou agencement ethnopsychiatrique ?
II. Études critiques — Critical Studies
Vincent Berne, Le transitoire, pour quoi faire ?
A. N. Whitehead, « Process and Reality »
Frédéric Bisson, Du bon usage des zombies
Ronny Desmet, On the difference between  physics and philosophical cosmology
Philippe Gagnon, Que reste-t-il de la théologie à l'âge électronique ?
Arran Gare, Ethics, Economics and Civilization
Leonard Gibson, A Whiteheadian Perspective on Psychedelic Experience and Research
Benjamin Schewel, Mathematics and Metaphysics
III. Comptes rendus — Critical Reviews
Jean-Marie Breuvart, Process Approaches to Consciousness
Jean-Claude Dumoncel, Mahler homéomère
Philippe Gagnon, Xavier Verley, Sur le symbolisme
Dimitri Ginev, Process Strategies on the Nexus Temporality-Continuity
IV. Informations réticulaires — Reticular News
Michel Weber, Le 11-Septembre entre mythe et grand récit
Oxford Centre for Mindfulness and Adaptation Practice
2012–2013 Séminaires — Seminars
2013 Whitehead Psychology Nexus Workshop
Publications
Abréviations — Abbreviations
Table des matières — Table of Contents"

Harold Kincaid in Individualism and the Unity of Science postulates a model of unity-without-reduction in order to accurately describe the relation between individualism and macroeconomics. I present this model and apply it to the description of the relation between chemistry and quantum mechanics. I argue that, when it comes to the description of molecular structure, chemistry and quantum mechanics are unified in Kincaid's sense. Specifically, the two disciplines contribute to the formation of a unified body of knowledge with respect to molecular structure.

Resumen En el presente trabajo se presentan los lineamientos considerados en la elaboración de una propuesta de enseñanza de la Tabla Periódica desde una perspectiva histórica y epistemológica bajo el enfoque constructivista del aprendizaje, dirigida a estudiantes del curso Con ésta iniciativa se pretende promover la reflexión de las prácticas docentes en la formación de los estudiantes del profesorado, y a su vez se procura favorecer la autorregulación metacognitiva de los saberes ligados al estudio de la Tabla periódica. Palabras clave: tabla periódica, enseñanza, historia, epistemología. Introducción y objetivos La presente propuesta se concibe como una iniciativa superadora desde el enfoque constructivista del aprendizaje, en la que se intenta contemplar aquellos aspectos que junto a los contenidos disciplinares de la Química promuevan la reflexión de la práctica docente, y del rol del estudiante del profesorado, primando la inclusión del componente metateórico que subyace al estudio de la tabla periódica. Además, dado que el estudiante del profesorado, será un profesional con un perfil claramente distinto al del ingeniero o el del bromatólogo, se considera fundamental diferenciar la forma en que se les enseña. No sólo se trata de atender a los interrogantes qué y cómo enseñar los contenidos disciplinares de la química, si no también, asumir que el formador de formadores debe " enseñar a enseñar " y que para que esta transferencia de conocimientos se haga efectiva, el estudiante debe participar de manera autodependiente y activa en la adquisición del conocimiento y en un contexto auténtico de ocurrencia [1], dando lugar a la resignificación del rol de los estudiantes del profesorado y a nuevos desafíos pedagógicos para el docente, destacándose aquí, la importancia de conocer los prejuicios más comunes que tienen estos sobre la didáctica de la ciencias y su papel en la enseñanza, dado que generan una imagen distorsionada y en ocasiones negativa sobre la ciencia en la sociedad e inciden directamente en la manera en que se enseña [2]. Se exponen a continuación uno de los objetivos que se persiguen en esta propuesta: • Diseñar una propuesta didáctica desde la perspectiva histórica y epistemológica que permita a los estudiantes comprender y problematizar la tabla periódica y las propiedades periódicas de los elementos químicos..

Introductory Note: this nomadic exploration was developed through the nomadic exploration of the first of three lists I am reading for my comprehensive examinations… I'm feeling a bit tense. That's the design. Oh the unhealthy nonsense of the University, the absurd assumptions about human nature that say pressure, stress, competition, hierarchical domination (in the form of grading) and other such artificial means of manufacturing 'need' and 'urgency' are necessary to make me work hard, the actual barrier to creative expression this paradigm forms—but here I sit, fingers playing the music of the English language across my keyboard, trying to simply ignore the absurdity of the disciplinary structure known as 'comps' (there is a certain sense of dread that flitters across many eyes when this term is raised) so that I can focus my attention on the research that I will be conducting in this artificially limited timeslot. This first of my three 'comps lists' seeks to answer four related questions: 1. How are human-nature relations and the attainment of virtue through human-nature relations understood in the classical urban theory of Geddes and Mumford? How is technology and technological power seen as mediating the relationship between humans and nature?; 2. What is the pedagogical function of cities as envisioned in the work of Geddes and Mumford?; 3. What is the function of Utopian thought in Geddes and Mumford's urban theory?; 4. What is the role of spirituality and mysticism in Geddes and Mumford's conceptions of cities and humanity's conscious-cultural evolution?