Conferencia plenaria: Ontological pluralism in chemistry

OLIMPIA LOMBARDI

Rio de Janeiro

Conferencia; First Brazilian Meeting on Philosophy of Chemistry (invitada); 2011

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

In the problem of the relationship between chemistry and physics, the ontological reduction of the chemical world to the physical world is taken for granted.  The autonomy of chemistry is usually defended on the basis of the failure of epistemological reduction.  The aim of this paper is to argue that this position is not strong enough to reject the idea of a hierarchical dependence of chemistry with respect to physics and to defend the legitimacy of the philosophy of chemistry.  A philosophically grounded ontological pluralism leads to deny not only epistemological reduction but also ontological reduction.