The issue begins with a commentary by the Italian philosophers of chemistry, Villani, Ghibaudi and Cerruti, on the work of Fortin, Lombardi and Gonzales who are philosophers of physics and of chemistry from Argentina. They are also regular contributors to this journal as well as the annual meetings of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry.Footnote 1 In a previous issue Professor Olimpia Lombardi and her co-workers, who have become affectionally known as ‘Olimpia’s boys’, proposed to introduce Bohmian mechanics into the philosophy of chemistry in order to bridge the gap that they perceive to exist between quantum chemistry and the foundations of quantum mechanics. In the current response the Italian trio concentrate on one aspect of this proposal concerning orbitals, a topic that has received a good deal of attention in the philosophy of chemistry. One of their conclusions is that contrary to Fortin et al. there is no need to make a clear-cut distinction between the use of standard quantum mechanics and Bohmian Mechanics.

Peter Hodder was for many years the editor of Chemistry Education in New Zealand. He is an author with wide cultural interests concerning the nature of science and chemistry in particular. In the article in the present issue he takes up my recent critique of the notion that science progresses in a revolutionary fashion (Scerri 2016). Hodder agrees that science does not progress through revolutions and suggests that it can be analyzed by analogy to the stages used in fictional storytelling, namely, the call, the hero’s companions, arrival and frustration, the final ordeals and achieving the goal. Hodder then proceeds to use episodes in the development of the periodic table to illustrate each of these phases in a very interesting manner.

Philip Stewart is an outstanding polymath whose talents include the Arabic language, ecology, botany and a deep knowledge of musical theory. Of more relevance to the Foundations of Chemistry is Stewart’s life-long study of the periodic system, a topic on which he has published before in this journal. For example, he is the author of one of the few comprehensive articles on another polymath, Charles Janet, the French engineer and originator of the much-debated left-step periodic table (Stewart 2010). In the present article Stewart presents a new tetrahedral representation of the periodic system which is based on some of Janet’s writings.

Mark Murphy a chemist by training is an attorney practicing chemical/pharmaceutical/nanotechnogy patent law. He is best known for his conception of a patented method for making Ibuprofen, which was commercialized to provide the large volumes of Ibuprofen needed when the drug was first approved for Over-The-Counter sales. That invention won several major national awards, including the 1997 Presidential Green Chemistry Award from the EPA. He is therefore extremely well-placed to present the article in this issue that is concerned with the early industrial roots of Green Chemistry and the history of the BHC Ibuprofen process.