Forms of ontological pluralism and chemistry

JEAN-PIERRE LLORED; OLIMPIA LOMBARDI

Lovaina

Congreso; Summer Symposium 2012 of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry; 2012

International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC), Catholic University of Leuven

In the context of the philosophy of chemistry, ontological pluralism has been appealed to for conceiving the relationships between the chemical and the physical worlds from a non-reductionist perspective (Lombardi and Labarca 2005) and also for querying a specific ontology for chemistry (Bensaude-Vincent and Simon 2008; Harré and Llored 2011, 2012). Moreover, an ontologically pluralist stance has been identified in Prigogine?s claims for the multiplicity of the voices of nature and against the reduction of the irreversibility of chemistry to the atemporal ontology of physics (Lombardi 2011). In both cases, the analysis was inspired by the Kantian-rooted internalist view of Hilary Putnam (1981) and his rejection of the viewpoint of God?s Eye. In the present talk we will return to that discussion in order to argue that ontological pluralism can be conceived as a point of convergence of two traditions, which should never have distanced from each other as they did it during the twentieth century: the English language and the continental French philosophical works. In particular, we will recall different ontological pluralist positions, stressing their potential roles in the philosophy of chemistry debates. Belonging to the English language tradition, Putnam acknowledges his debt to Quine (1953) and his ontological relativity, according to which ?to be is to be the value of a variable?: the ontology that we adopt is a consequence to our theoretical commitments. Almost a decade later, in Kuhn?s ?historicist turn? the idea of ontological relativity comes back hand in hand with the concept of incommensurability (1962), and later with the constitutive role of taxonomies (1993). An author who also arrives to pluralistic conclusions is Torretti, who explicitly adopts a Kantian framework to understand science (2008), and rejects the realist belief in a reality that is well-defined once and for all, independently of human action and human thought, in a way that can be adequately articulated in human discourse (2000). Ontological pluralism was already defended by the French philosopher of the Enlightenment, Denis Diderot (1754), who did not defined chemical bodies by means of an ?essence? independent from any chemical transformation but, on the contrary, by referring to a network of relations between multifarious chemical bodies. Following a new materialistic line of reasoning, Diderot advocated an ?empirical epistemology? based on the study of chemical devices, instruments and operations against Descartes?s mathematical and analytical line of reasoning. In the same vein and within the framework of the Encyclopedia, Gabriel-François Venel (1753) defined chemical bodies as active and heterogeneous ?individuals? while denying any reduction of chemistry to mechanics. We will then consider later kinds of pluralism to grasp what is at stake in current debates about ontological pluralism in the philosophy of chemistry. From the Leibnizian philosopher Michel Serres (1968, 1985) to Michel Foucault (2001), or from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980, 1991) to Gilbert Simondon (1958, 2005), pluralistic approaches got stronger in France. Notwithstanding their divergences, those philosophers give priority to differences against repetitions; they stressed the role of events, heterogeneity, novelty, historicity and context-sensitivity, processes of individuation, power and interrelations, immanence, and loose concepts. We would like to emphasize how and in what degree those forms of pluralisms are in interaction and still at work within current philosophical and methodological arguments developed by: (1) Isabelle Stengers and Bensaude-Vincent (1991, 1992), (2) Prigogine and Stengers (1979), (3) Bensaude-Vincent and Simon (2008), and (4) the leading French philosopher of techniques and chemistry François Dagognet (1989). We will eventually point out some interactions and crossroads between the two so-called ?traditions? by considering the linguistic, formal, and practical dimensions of chemistry at the same time (Llored and Harré, 2012). In doing so, we will propose further arguments for developing a pluralistic approach from a pragmatic and Neo-Kantian perspective (Córdoba and Lombardi, 2012; Llored and Bitbol, 2012).