INVESTIGADORES
LOMBARDI olimpia Iris
artículos
Título:
Stuff versus individuals
Autor/es:
LUCÍA LEWOWICZ; OLIMPIA LOMBARDI
Revista:
FOUNDATIONS OF CHEMISTRY
Editorial:
SPRINGER
Referencias:
Lugar: BERLIN; Año: 2013 vol. 15 p. 65 - 77
ISSN:
1386-4238
Resumen:
During the most part of the twentieth century, the philosophy of science was deeply influenced by logical-positivism, with its strong aversion to metaphysics. Fortunately, in the last decades and mainly in the context of the particular sciences, many authors have freed themselves from the exaggeratedly rigid constraints imposed by the logical-positivist tradition. Since then, the problems related with the ontology of science began to be addressed from different perspectives. The present work, which focuses on ontological matters, is framed in this trend. The general question to be considered here points to the nature of the world described by chemistry: what is macro-chemical ontology like? In particular, we want to identify the ontological categories that underlie chemical discourse and chemical practice. This is not an easy task, because modern Western metaphysics was strongly modeled by theoretical physics, in such a way that the practical activity of chemistry remained as a domain of minor relevance from a philosophical viewpoint. Therefore, in this work in progress we will attempt to delineate an answer to our question by contrasting macro-chemical ontology with the mainstream ontology of physics and of traditional metaphysics. For this purpose, we will begin by recalling a distinction, introduced by Joachim Schummer, between matter-metaphysics, proper of chemistry, and form-metaphysics, proper of physics. In spite of the merits of Schummer’s distinction, we will introduce a complementary one, between stuff-ontology and individual-ontology, which differ from each other in the basic categories of their own structures. On this basis, we will characterize individual-ontology in such a way that the features of stuff-ontology will arise by contrast with it. Then, we will argue that the conceptual analysis of mass terms by contemporary philosophy can offer fruitful insights for the understanding of the stuff-ontology specific of macro-chemistry. Finally, we will suggest that the conclusions resulting from the attempt to characterize the stuff-ontology not only shed light on the peculiar features of the world of chemistry, but can also supply conceptual elements to physics in the task of facing the interpretation of the subatomic realm.