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ISPC 2007 third editorial
Tami I. Spector
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T. I. Spector (&) University of San Francisco
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San Francisco, CA, USA
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The papers by Joseph Earley, Klaus Ruthenberg and Rom Harre are the last to be published
from the 2007 International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry Symposium held at
the University of San Francisco. The previous papers from the symposium can be found in
Foundations of Chemistry v11.1 and v10.3. Together these three papers form a
conversation on the epistemology and ontology of element and substance, a subject of on-going
interest to philosophers of chemistry.
Earley and Ruthenberg, two well-known chemist-philosophers, directly engage one
another on the use of the terms einfacher Stoff and Grundstoff by Fritz Paneth
(an important early twentieth century chemist-philosopher). Earley uses a linguistic
framework to dissect Paneths terminology and explicate its polysemic underpinnings.
Translated as simple substance and basic substance respectively, he suggests that these
provide alternate meanings of the term element, where einfacher Stoff is an element in
the Lavoisierian sense, while Grundstoff encapsulates the conceptual notion of an element
(i.e., within a compound, bound to other elements) that chemists actually use, and is
therefore not a substance in either the vernacular or philosophical sense. To prove this he
tracks the etymological progression of the word substance from Aristotle onward,
ultimately proposing that einfacher Stoff be translated into elementary substance and
element be available for exclusive use as an English translation of Grundstoff.
While Earley separates Paneths philosophical understanding of element and substance
from Kants transcendental schema of phenomena and noumena, Ruthenberg argues that
Paneths philosophy is directly grounded in Kants epistemology and that therefore a
linguistic analysis is insufficient. By reframing einfacher Stoff as observables and
Grundstoff as non-observables he tracks Paneths shifting conception of element/substance
from that of the purely phenomenological (1916) into the realm of the transcendental
(1931). Once tied to Kants philosophy, Ruthenberg untangles the intricacies of the
connection by showing that whereas Paneths empirical view on simple substances does not, in
fact, quite square with Kants (as expressed in the Critique of Pure Reason), his notion of
basic substances as theoretical concepts rather than existing things accords well with
Kants and other antirealists (like Frantisek Wald, a chemist and Paneths contemporary).
This epistemological perspective also leads Ruthenberg to take exception with Earleys
substitution of elementary substance for simple substance. He finds both terms equally
ambiguous (i.e., both empirical and transcendental), and instead suggests that modern
chemists embrace such linguistic ambiguity as a truer reflection of the conceptual nature of
chemical entities themselves.
Rom Harre is a distinguished philosopher and author of more books than most of us
have had hot dinners, to use the delightful British expression. In his article in this issue
Harre discusses three alternatives to the traditional ontology of chemistry, which assigns
attributes to substances. These alternatives include two approaches which Harre calls
dynamism and which are based on such notions as causal powers and dispositions that
Harre has written about extensively. Different versions of these ontological approaches
have been developed by Joseph Earley and Harre himself and are collectively known as the
Georgetown ontology given the association of both authors with Georgetown University in
Washington DC.
A third alternative to the traditional substance/attribute ontology is trope theory. The
main purpose of Harres article is to provide a critical examination of tropism. His
conclusion is that trope theory is not as applicable to chemistry as the various ontologies of
dynamism that are currently on offer.
(...truncated)