Matters are not so clear on the physical side

OLIMPIA LOMBARDI; MARIO CASTAGNINO

FOUNDATIONS OF CHEMISTRY

SPRINGER

Lugar: BERLIN; Año: 2010 vol. 12 p. 159 - 166

1386-4238

According to ontological reductionism, chemical entities, when analyzed in depth, are nothing else than very complex physical entities.  In other words, molecular chemistry refers, at last, to the quantum ontology; therefore, the ontological commitments of chemistry turn out to be finally grounded on quantum mechanics. The main problem of this position is that nobody really knows what quantum ontology is. The purpose of this work is to argue that the confidence in the existence of the physical entities described by quantum mechanics does not take into account the interpretative problems of the theory: in the discussions about the relationship between chemistry and physics, difficulties are seen only on the side of chemistry, whereas matters highly controversial on the side of physics are taken for granted.  For instance, it is usually supposed that the infinite mass limit in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation leads by itself to the concept of molecular framework used in molecular chemistry. We will argue that this assumption is implicitly based on an interpretative postulate for quantum mechanics, which, in turn, runs into difficulties when applied to the explanation of the simplest model of the hydrogen atom.