Chemistry’s Periodic Law: Rethinking Representation and Explanation After the Turn to Practice

Abstract

Contemporary philosophy of science makes frequent mention of the “turn to practice”, but what exactly does this signify? The phrase refers not to a single shift, but rather a cluster of related, and potentially interdependent, changes, each consisting in a retreat from a certain sort of abstraction: • Conception to representation: Theories originally treated as abstract conceptual objects characterized predominantly by their logical structure are replaced by theories as artifacts, rendered as particular representations, whether linguistic, diagrammatic, or other, and associated with distinct sets of models. In important respects, the relation here is analogous to the one between propositions, taken as abstract objects, and the specifi c linguistic statements used to express them.

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