Abstract
Since the time of Robert Boyle chemistry has been a mereological science based on part-whole principles within a ‘mechanical’ framework as well as in discussions of the ‘parts’ of mass substances. Mereological reasoning is limited by the fallacy of ascribing attributes of wholes to their parts in certain cases and by the fallacy of assuming that products of analytical operations on wholes always yields constituents of those wholes. Adopting the concept of affordance for managing part-whole reasoning resolves the product-constituent fallacy. Discussions of the role of chemical affordances concern the status of electrons in quantum chemistry. Electron structures for atoms can be interpreted as models rather than true representations. This is exemplified in Robert Mulliken’s choice of ‘orbital’ rather than ‘orbit’.
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Notes
- 1.
I will take the expression ‘atom-core’ from Joseph Earley’s writings to cover free ions as well as atoms in situ in stable molecular structures.
- 2.
I am grateful to J.-P. Llored for bringing Mulliken’s way of using the quantum mechanics of electrons in explaining bonding without requiring the assumption of actual orbits.
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Harré, R. (2015). Mereological Principles and Chemical Affordances. In: Scerri, E., McIntyre, L. (eds) Philosophy of Chemistry. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 306. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9364-3_8
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