Chemical Synthesis: Complexity, Similarity, Natural Kinds, and the Evolution of a “Logic”

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to extract some of the conceptual underpinnings of the idea of synthesis and of the different aspects that constitute its practice. In so doing, we show why chemical synthesis should be of interest to metaphysicians and philosophers of science. To this end we (1) provide a provisional characterization of synthesis; (2) describe what chemists have understood to be the “logical” structure that underlies the modern practice of multistep synthesis; (3) explore the notions of molecular and synthetic complexity and the relationship between them; (4) analyze the use of similarity judgments in the categorization of compounds; and, related to this, (5) undertake a scrutiny of the notion of a natural kind in the context of the possibility of chemical synthesis. These last two, intertwined, issues having to do with categorization are of particular interest, given that some philosophers have taken chemistry to be the science that, in its theoretical workings, dispenses with such disreputable concepts as similarity and the associated idea of a natural kind which are of “dubious scientific standing.” For instance, Quine (1969) argues that the freedom from such imprecise means of categorization in chemistry is a marker of its status as a more “mature” science, one to which other domains aspire. However, by the same token, and ironically, this feature of chemistry in effect removes the discipline from the purview of philosophers, for reasons that will become clearer later on in the chapter. We argue against Quine, concluding that chemistry fails the test of maturity but becomes philosophically interesting in the process. The mid-nineteenth-century defeat of vitalism and the subsequent unification of organic and inorganic chemistry came in large measure as a result of chemical synthesis. This early indication of the powerful implications that arise for chemistry from this unique field of investigation might well suffice for its continuing philosophical scrutiny. There are at least two other reasons for undertaking a philosophical investigation of synthesis. Synthesis is, and has long been, pervasive in the practice of chemistry and is a unique, and defining, feature of this field.

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