(1) Ontological Autonomy of the Chemical World

8/12/2019 (1) Ontological Autonomy of the Chemical World

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OLIMPIA LOMBARDI and MARTI N LABARCA

THE ONTOLOGICAL AUTONOMY OF THE CHEMICAL

WORLD

ABSTRACT. In the problem of the relationship between chemistry and

physics, many authors take for granted the ontological reduction of the

chemical world to the world of physics. The autonomy of chemistry is

usually defended on the basis of the failure of epistemological reduction: not

all chemical concepts and laws can be derived from the theoretical frame-work of physics. The main aim of this paper is to argue that this line of

argumentation is not strong enough for eliminate the idea of a hierarchical

dependence of chemistry with respect to physics. The rejection of the sec-

ondary position of chemistry and the defense of the legitimacy of the phi-

losophy of chemistry require a radically different philosophical perspective

that denies not only epistemological reduction but also ontological reduc-

tion. Only on the basis of a philosophically grounded ontological pluralism

it is possible to accept the ontological autonomy of the chemical world and,

with this, to reverse the traditional idea of the superiority of physics in the

context of natural sciences.

1. INTRODUCTION

At present, several disciplines devoted to the philosophicalproblems of particular sciences have branched off from thephilosophy of science: in the literature we find philosophy ofphysics, philosophy of biology, philosophy of mathematics, etc.However, the philosophy of chemistry is usually absent in this

list. In fact, there are very few journals specialized in thephilosophical issues derived from chemistry, and philosophersof chemistry are generally confined to the sections correspond-ing to the philosophy of physical sciences in academic meetings.This situation, clearly described by Scerri and McIntyre (1997),is particularly surprising in the light of the long history ofchemistry as a scientific discipline and its relevant position in the

Foundations of Chemistry (2005) 7: 125148 Springer 2005

DOI 10.1007/s10698-004-0980-6


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contemporary context of natural sciences. Why is chemistryignored by philosophers?

As many authors agree, this situation is due to the tradi-tional assumption about the relationship between chemistryand physics: in spite of the fact that chemistry has historicallyevolved independently of physics, since the impressive successof quantum mechanics, it has been widely accepted thatchemistry can be completely reduced to physics. In other words,chemistry has been conceived as a branch of physics to theextent that it deals with complex systems or particular processeswhich, nevertheless, could in principle be described and ex-

plained by means of quantum theory. A famous statement ofDirac has become a commonplace in this line of thought: Theunderlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theoryof a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry [are]completely known from quantum mechanics (Dirac, 1929,p. 714). Diracs views rapidly spread out, being propagated bymany authors from physics and philosophy (cf. van Brakel,2000a, Chapter 5). Of course, this traditional assumption notonly deprives the philosophy of chemistry of legitimacy as afield of philosophical inquiry, but also counts against theautonomy of chemistry as a scientific discipline: whereas

physics turns out to be a fundamental science that describesreality in its deepest aspects, chemistry is conceived as a merephenomenological science, that only describes phenomena asthey appear to us. This supposed difference between both dis-ciplines agrees with the traditional hierarchy of the naturalsciences, rooted in the positivistic thought of the end of 19thcentury. Due to its fundamental character, physics is at the topof the hierarchy, whereas chemistry is relegated to an inferiorposition, to the extent that it can be derived from fundamentalphysical laws.

In recent years some authors have begun to challenge thesetraditional assumptions in order to recover the autonomy ofchemistry and, as a consequence, the legitimacy of the phi-losophy of chemistry. In general, the arguments are based onthe discussion of the philosophical notion of reduction. Theautonomy of chemistry is usually defended on the basis of thefailure of epistemological reduction: not all chemical concepts

126 OLIMPIA LOMBARDI AND MARTI N LABARCA


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and laws can be derived from physics. In particular, manyrelevant chemical notions, as chemical bond, chirality,molecular shape or orbital among others, are not amenableto rigorous quantum mechanical treatment. Nevertheless, inthe case of the relationship between chemistry and physics,ontological reduction is taken for granted: the ontologicaldependence of the chemical world on the physical world isusually presented as a thesis which does not need to be dis-cussed. This new perspective guarantees the methodologicalautonomy of chemistry with respect to physics, since it pro-vides chemistry with a realm of specific concepts that have no

place in fundamental physics. However, a new questionarises: Is the mere failure of epistemological reduction suffi-cient for rejecting the secondary position of chemistry withrespect to physics? When the ontological reduction of thechemical world is not questioned, the fundamental physicalentities become the only real entities and all the chemicalconcepts non derivable from quantum mechanics lose theirreferring character. In other words, the physical reducingrealm has ontological priority; chemical descriptions onlyrefer to appearances or, at most, to secondary entities en-dowed with a merely derived existence. As a consequence, the

metaphysical picture supplied by ontological reduction leadsto a secondary position of chemistry with respect to physics:whereas physical descriptions refer to the true and ultimateontology, chemistry only describes apparent phenomena or,at best, an ontologically inferior level of reality. Of course,this subordinate position of chemistry does not affect theeveryday activity of chemists, since the methodologicalautonomy of their work is guaranteed by the failure of theepistemological reduction of chemistry. But the ontologicalrelationship between the chemical and the physical worlds is

still a relevant philosophical question which has direct con-sequences with respect to the legitimacy of the philosophy ofchemistry. In fact, if chemical entities are no more thansecondary entities ontologically derived from underlyingphysical entities, the philosophical problems of chemistry,when considered in depth, are problems belonging to thephilosophy of physics.

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More recently some attempts have been directed at reversingthe secondary character of chemistry by appealing to symmet-rical relations between the discourses of chemistry and physics(van Brakel, 2000a, 2000b) or to autonomous though relatedlevels of reality (Scerri, 2000a, 2000b). In this paper we willargue that the rejection of the traditional hierarchy of naturalsciences, where physics occupies the top position, and the de-fense of chemistry as a legitimate field of philosophical inquiryrequire us to abandon not only epistemological reduction, butalso ontological reduction. Our starting point will be Putnamsinternalist realism, according to which ontology only arises as a

synthesis between the noumenal reality and a conceptualscheme. This philosophical position will lead us to an onto-logical pluralism which supplies the necessary foundations forsupporting the ontological autonomy of the chemical world.Once it is accepted that chemical concepts and laws refer toentities and regularities of a non-derived, non-secondaryontology, the traditional idea of the superiority of physicswith respect to chemistry can be abandoned and the philosophyof chemistry becomes an area of study in its own right.

2. ONTOLOGICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL REDUCTION

When the problem at issue is reduction, the first step is todistinguish between ontological reduction and epistemologicalreduction. Ontological reduction refers to the ontologicaldependence of the entities, properties and regularities of astratum of reality upon the entities, properties and regularitiesof another stratum considered as ontologically fundamental.Therefore, ontological reductionism is a metaphysical thesisthat postulates the ontological priority of a certain level of

reality to which all the other levels directly or indirectly reduce.Epistemological reduction is concerned with the relationshipbetween scientific theories: a theory can be reduced to anotherwhen it can be deduced from the latter. Then, epistemologicalreductionism is an epistemological thesis according to whichscience can be or should be unified by deducing all scientifictheories from a privileged one.



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Under the influence of the linguistic turn of 20th century,traditional philosophy of science has been mainly interested inepistemological reduction. The classicallocusof the analysis ofepistemological reduction is the book of Ernest Nagel (1961),The Structure of Science, where reduction is conceived as alogical relationship between theories: the reduced theory is alogical consequence of the reducing theory plus some defini-tions that connect the terms of the reduced theory with theterms of the reducing one. The paradigmatic case of interthe-oretic reduction is taken to be the reduction of thermodynamicsto statistical mechanics: the classical theory of heat has been

reduced to statistical mechanics (Kemeny and Oppenheim,1956, p. 7). This assumption is what leads Nagel to considerthat the term temperature of thermodynamics can be reducedby definition to terms of statistical mechanics: temperature isidentified with the mean value of the kinetic energy of themolecules of a gas (Nagel, 1961, Chapter 11).

In the last years, the applicability of Nagels model of int-ertheoretic reduction has been severely criticized. Many authorshave emphasized that there are no non-trivial and scientificallywell-founded examples of epistemological reduction in thesense of Nagel (cf., e.g., Primas, 1983; Scerri and McIntyre,

1997). In fact, the relationship between different theories is al-ways rather more subtle than the traditional deductive viewsupposes: intertheoretic links usually involve limiting proce-dures, coarse-grainings, approximations and other mathemati-cal techniques that are far more complex than the simple logicaldeduction proposed by Nagel (cf. Rohrlich, 1988, 1990). Fur-thermore, recent works have shown that the analysis of theformal and conceptual relationships between theories gives riseto new fields of inquiry: there are complex phenomena thatinhabit the asymptotic borderline between theories related by

singular limits (Batterman, 2002).Summing up, on the basis of the distinction between onto-logical and epistemological questions regarding reduction,contemporary philosophers of science agree on rejecting therelevance of Nagels deductive model to the explanation of thelinks between scientific theories, even those belonging to aparticular science as physics. As we will see, this discussion



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reappears when the problem consists in elucidating the peculiarrelationship between chemistry and physics.

3. THE USUAL DEFENSE OF CHEMISTRY

The usual line of argumentation proposed by philosophers ofchemistry to defend the autonomy of chemistry and the legiti-macy of their own field of philosophical inquiry emphasizes thefailure of the epistemological reduction of chemistry to physics.Although the particular arguments differ from case to case,

authors generally agree on considering that chemical conceptsand descriptions cannot be derived from the concepts and thelaws of physics as the epistemological reductionist supposes.For instance, Vemulapalli and Byerly (1999) claim that episte-mological reduction fails even in relatively simple cases: ingeneral, the properties of a chemical system cannot beexplained in terms of the properties of its physical micro-components; and even when the properties of a chemicalmacro-system can be derived from those micro-components,this requires additional assumptions related with macroscopicphenomena. One of the situations considered by the authors is

equilibrium in non-ideal multicomponent systems: althoughthere exists a method for relating the properties of a system tothe activities of its components, the numerical values of theindividual activities must be derived empirically from experi-ments on the system or theoretically from postulated intermo-lecular forces or from otherad hochypotheses coming from theoutside of the main body of the theory; in either case, theycannot be deduced from theories involving only the micro-components of the system. Analogously, in the case of non-ideal systems in statistical thermodynamics, the equations of

state used to estimate the energy of interaction between mole-cules cannot be deduced from any fundamental theory. On thebasis of these and other examples, Vemulapalli and Byerly(1999, p. 37) conclude that: Epistemological reduction failsradically since attempts to derive specific chemical explanationsfrom fundamental physics [...] only succeed in deriving chemicalresults from assuming chemical data. In the same sense,



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Benfey (2000, p. 198) asserts that: There is an intrinsic limit inwhat physics can do in predicting the phenomena of chemistry.[....] Only chemical data can indicate which quantum mechan-ical approximation is valid.

In the same line of thought, Scerri and McIntyre (1997)distinguish between quantitative reduction and conceptualreduction. Quantitative reduction refers to the calculation ofchemical properties from physical theories, in particular,quantum mechanics. This kind of reduction requires approxi-mation techniques that can only be justified on a post hocbasis,that is, on the basis of the experimentally observed data which

one is trying to calculate. On the other hand, conceptualreduction is concerned with the definition of chemical conceptsin terms of physical concepts. According to the authors, thisform of reduction is impossible due to the very nature of thechemical concepts themselves: the concepts of composition,bonding or molecular structure cannot be expressed except atthe chemical level. As the result of the failure of both kinds ofreduction, we should eschew the epistemological reduction ofchemistry to physics (Scerri and McIntyre, 1997, p. 220).

Van Brakel (1997) addresses the traditionally alleged reduc-tion of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics from a similar

perspective. He correctly points out that, in general, tempera-ture cannot be defined as the mean molecular kinetic energy: thisis true for perfect gases compounded of idealized billiard-ballmolecules in random motion, but not for solids, plasmas or avacuum. According to Van Brakel, all the problems for reduc-tion seem to be related to the macroscopic notion of equilib-rium, the central notion of thermodynamics: for instance, themacroscopic concept of temperature only makes sense for sys-tems in equilibrium; but microscopically there is no such thingas equilibrium.

Although at present there exists a widespread agreementbetween philosophers of chemistry about the failure of theepistemological reduction of chemistry to physics, almost no-body casts doubt on ontological reduction: chemical entitiesare, when analyzed in depth, no more than physical entities.For instance, Vemulapalli and Byerly (1999) adopt a physicalistposition according to which chemistry remains ontologically



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dependent on fundamental physics in spite of the fact that theproperties of a chemical system cannot be effectively derivedfrom physical properties: Ontological reduction, in the senseof showing the dependence of all phenomena on constituentphysical processes, has been a highly successful research pro-gram (Vemulapalli and Byerly, 1999, p. 18). For the authors,emergence should be interpreted only in an epistemologicalsense: physicalism avoids the emergence of dubious entitieswith no ontological support. From a similar perspective, Scerriand McIntyre (1997, p. 215) believe the ontological depen-dence of chemistry on physics to be almost a foregone con-

clusion; for them, the problem of reduction which need to besolved to preserve the autonomy of chemistry is an episte-mological and not an ontological question. In turn, Luisi (2002)replaces the distinction between ontological and epistemologi-cal reduction by the distinction between in principle andpractical or effective deductibility: chemical properties are inprinciple deducible from physical properties; however, theycannot be effectively derived from the features of the physicallevel because of technical difficulties, such as the lack ofcomputational power or the insufficient progress of our skills(Luisi, 2002, p. 192). In other words, although the properties of

a chemical system are not deducible a posteriori from theproperties of its physical components, a priori predictabilitycannot be denied without reintroducing a kind of unacceptablevitalism into science. In a similar sense, Benfey (2000) recallsthe second part of Diracs traditionally quoted assertion:... the difficulty [for deriving chemistry from physics] is onlythat the exact application of these laws [of quantum mechanics]leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble (Dirac,1929, p. 714). Following Diracs claim, Benfey points out theintrinsic limit to the effective deduction of chemistry from

physics: for instance, the mathematical computation needed todescribe the electron density profile of a structure as simple asthat of benzene would require a number of entities greater thanthe number of the fundamental particles in our universe.

All these considerations show that there seems to exist abroad consensus among philosophers of chemistry about therelationship between chemistry and physics: epistemological



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reduction must be rejected, but ontological reduction cannot bedenied; chemical properties are emergent only in an epistemo-logical sense, since to accept ontological emergence amounts topopulating the ontology with dubious metaphysical entitieswhose existence is not guaranteed by science.

4. THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE CHEMICAL WORLD

As we have seen, the discussions about the alleged reduction ofchemistry to physics follow the traditional philosophy of sci-

ence of 20th century in focusing on epistemological issues: theconclusion is that not all the chemical concepts and laws can bededuced from the concepts and laws of physics. However,ontological questions usually do not go further than unques-tioningly accepting ontological reduction. As van Brakel says,the question of reduction is tied to that of autonomy; how-ever, the issues addressed in the philosophy of chemistry gen-erally have little bearing on discussions about the ontological

autonomy of chemistry (van Brakel, 2000a, p. 121. Italics inthe original). Our aim is to reverse this situation by analyzingontological problems, that is, questions focused not on the

epistemological reducibility of concepts and laws but on theontological dependence of chemical entities and regularities onthe entities and regularities of the physical world.

Somebody could ask about the need of addressing ontolog-ical issues in the context of the relationship between chemistryand physics: Why are they relevant? What are we missing if wedo not discuss them? In fact, the failure of epistemologicalreduction is sufficient to guarantee the methodological auton-omy of chemistry with respect to physics. To the extent thatthere are specific chemical concepts that are not amenable to

rigorous quantum mechanical treatment, chemists can continuewith their work with no worry, since physicists will not replacethem in the laboratories. As Benfey (2000, p. 199) says, wewill continue to carry out the work of chemists because no non-chemists are equipped to do it. However, when we ignoreontological issues, we miss an important philosophical ques-tion: Why is chemistry a secondary science? The answer to



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this question strongly depends on the assumption of ontologi-cal reduction: if the physical reducing realm has ontologicalpriority on the chemical reduced world, the chemical conceptsthat are non-reducible to quantum mechanics refer to apparentor secondary entities endowed with a derived ontological sta-tus. For instance, molecular shape turns out to be only apowerful and illuminating metaphor (Woolley, 1982, p. 4).Under this assumption, whereas physics describes the deepestand fundamental structure of reality, chemistry is a secondaryscience which studies metaphorical entities not really exis-tent. Of course, this fact does not affect the work of chemists,

but it has important philosophical consequences: the philoso-phy of chemistry, deprived of specific metaphysical problemsconcerned with real chemical entities, would be confined tomethodological discussions about chemists activity.

In recent years, two authors have directed their attention toontological questions related to the referring character ofchemical descriptions. One of them is van Brakel (2000a,2000b), who discusses the reference of the physical and thechemical discourses under the paradigm of the mirror of nature:Each mirror gives a different autonomous picture of (part of)the world, but one mirror the ideal physical one mirrors

reality as it is (ontologically speaking). All other mirrors []picture mere appearances, without cosmic significance (p. 169,italics in the original). According to the author, this paradigmshould be abandoned by denying the asymmetric relationshipbetween chemistry and physics: The same event can have achemical and a physical description, [] but no privilegeddescription exists (p. 171). In fact, if quantum mechanics wouldturn out to be wrong, it would not affect the chemical knowledgeabout molecular shape, bonding or chirality. As a consequence,the relationships between chemistry and quantum mechanics

are best seen as symmetrical relations (p. 177). Furthermore,van Brakel stresses the fact that the failure of epistemologicalreduction implies nothing about the interpretation of chemicalconcepts and their relation to what is real. If there is noprivileged description, chemical and quantummechanicalconcepts may be both powerful and illuminating metaphors.On this basis, van Brakel concludes that we could be tolerant



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enough to leave equal ontological room for manifest water,water in terms of the thermodynamic theory of substances, themolecular structure of water (constructed out of spectro-scopic measurements), the proper quantum mechanicalequations for an isolated water molecule, and experiments withisolated water molecules which, depending on the measurementtechnique, show more of less of the classical molecular struc-ture (pp. 147148, italics in the original).

An even more interesting case of this new interest in onto-logical issues is the position of Scerri about the interpretation ofthe concept of orbital. Scerri admits that, under the assumption

of ontological reduction, terms as orbital or molecularshape philosophically speaking, are nonreferring terms(Scerri, 2000b, p. 51). But chemists are often realists in the sensethat they believe in orbitals as though they were real andconcrete entities; chemists and chemical educators show a greatreluctance to abandon that realistic interpretation in spite ofthe theoretical pronouncements of philosophers of science, whoclaim that orbitals do no correspond to anything in the realworld. In his first works about this subject, Scerri (1991)advocated for the rejection of the realistic interpretation oforbitals because it is not possible to obtain exact solutions of

the Schro dinger equation in many-electron systems, and thisfact represents a clear example of the failure of the epistemo-logical reduction of the orbital concept. However, later he hasrevised his original views, claiming that the chemists realismmay not be such a bad thing. In fact, in more recent articles,Scerri (2000a, 2000b) proposes an intermediate position be-tween realism and ontological reductionism, which leads to theautonomy of chemistry as the result of a form of liberationfrom physics imperialism. According to this new view, theinterpretation of scientific terms is theory-contextual: Not

only is the question of the realistic as opposed to the anti-realistic interpretation of the orbital concept contextual withregards to whether one considers chemistry or theoreticalphysics, but even within chemistry it emerges that practitionersin different sub-fields generally adopt opposite interpretations(Scerri, 2000a, p. 421). In other words, there is no singleontology to which all the scientific knowledge refers. On the



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contrary, each science, and even each theory, operates on itsown ontological level, where the entities and regularities re-ferred to by the theory may be legitimately considered as real:there is no contradiction in conceiving orbitals as existententities at the chemical level but not real in the quantummechanical world. It is in this sense that Scerri argues for theview of autonomous though related levels of reality (p. 412),in terms of which the autonomy of the secondary sciences canbe consistently defended.

It is quite clear that, behind the positions of van Brakel andScerri we can identify an implicit rejection of the ontological

reduction of chemistry to physics. Both views seem to tendtowards an ontological pluralism which would permit chemicaland physical entities to be existent with the same degree ofreality. In the next sections we will argue that Putnams inter-nalist realism provides a fruitful philosophical framework foraddressing the problem of the relationship between the physicaland the chemical worlds. The internalist perspective leads to anontological pluralism that preserves the autonomy of thechemical world but avoids the intrusion of phantomlike entitiesor properties lacking any scientific support.

5. INTERNALIST REALISM

Putnam begins his book Reason, Truth and History (1981) byclaiming that the acceptance of the objectivesubjectivedichotomy leads to the unavoidable choice between twomutually exclusive alternatives:

1. The adoption of the copy theory of truth, which presup-poses the existence of an objective world, completely inde-pendent of human mind. Such a world admits the One True

Theory as the only description.2. The rejection of the copy theory of truth, which leads to a

relativistic perspective: systems of thought, ideologies andeven scientific theories are considered as subjective.

Putnams starting point is the rejection of the traditionalobjectivesubjective dichotomy. He tries to find a middle way



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between metaphysical realism and radical relativism, and usu-ally calls his position internalism or internalist realism, ascontrasted with externalism or metaphysical realism also re-ferred to as Gods Eye point of view (Putnam, 1981, p. 49).

According to externalism, the world exists independently ofour knowledge and theories, and consists of some fixed totalityof mind-independent objects. Then, there is only one true andcomplete description of the way the world is, whose truthinvolves some sort of correspondence between words and ob-

jects and between sentences and facts. By supposing that ref-erence is a relationship between the words of the language

and the external, independent ontology, externalism needs anon-human point of view Gods Eye to fix the reference ofthe language and, with this, the truth-value of its sentences.

As Pe rez Ransanz (1999) argues, the key for understandingthe disagreements between externalism and internalism is theconcept of object. For the internalist, objects do not existindependently of conceptual schemes. We cut up the worldinto objects when we introduce one or another scheme ofdescription (Putnam, 1981, p. 52). The question What ob-

jects does the world consist of ? only makes sense to be askedwithin a theory or description. In other words, objects depend

on conceptual schemes in a strong sense, which includesexistence. This means that conceptual schemes are not mereintermediary elements between subjects and objects; rather,they play an essential role in the constitution of objects.Therefore, even though there is a reality independent of thesubject, ontology only arises from a conceptual scheme. Ob-

jects resulting from the synthesis between each conceptualscheme and the independent reality are the only objects.Objectivity does not mean independence from the subject, butresults from our conceptual schemes applied to reality. This is

an objectivity for us, but it is the only possible objectivitywhen we have given up the idea of Gods point of view. Inother words, from this perspective rooted in Kantian philos-ophy, the reality independent of the subject is a noumenalrealm, which is not the object of our knowledge. It is nonsenseto think about an independent ontology, since there are noentities in the noumenal reality: as in Kants philosophy, the



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noumena are ineffable, they can only be conceived as a limitof thought. Kantian system is not an epistemology but abroad philosophical framework that establishes the necessaryconditions for knowledge and, therefore, for any meaningfulscientific discourse. In the same sense, the ontology resultingfrom the synthesis between a conceptual scheme and thenoumenal realm cannot be interpreted as an epistemologizedontology resulting from our contingent means of access toreality.

To assume that different conceptual schemes define differentontologies leads to the thesis ofontological pluralism, a central

feature of Putnams internalism. Ontological pluralism pointsin the same direction as the underdetermination of theories byevidence, according to which there can exist incompatible the-ories that explain the same set of phenomena: we may have twoempirically indistinguishable scientific theories that refer tocompletely different ontologies. Both theses have been usedagainst scientific externalism, which assumes that science con-verges to the true description of the real ontology the OneTrue Theory. But although Putnams internalism has beenwidely discussed in the context of the problem of theorychange, in general it has not been applied in a synchronic sense.

Nevertheless, when we realize that different theories or evendifferent disciplines are accepted at the same historical timeand in the context of a single paradigm, we must also admitthat different ontologies may coexist since each one of them isconstituted by its corresponding theory. And to the extent thatthe different accepted theories cannot be linked by epistemo-logical reduction, there is no reason to believe that one ontol-ogy has metaphysical priority over the others. Since theprivileged viewpoint of Gods Eye does not exist, there is not asingle true ontology: all ontologies have the same meta-

physical status because all of them are constituted by equallyobjective descriptions. Once again, they are not mere epist-emologized ontologies as opposed to the real ontology:when there is no single real ontology, the very expressionepistemologized ontology loses any content. As a conse-quence, the so-called fundamental theories cannot be con-ceived yet as describing, even in an approximate way, reality as



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it is in itself, since the noumenal reality does not constitute anontology to be described by science.

In previous works, one of us has applied this philosophicalframework to traditional problems of the philosophy ofphysics. For instance, the internalist perspective has been usedto deal with the question of the compatibility between deter-ministic and indeterministic descriptions in highly unstablesystems (Lombardi, 2002), and to explain the objectivity ofthe classical description that arises as the result of the classicallimit of quantum mechanics (Castagnino and Lombardi,2004). But it seems quite clear that similar arguments can be

transferred to the problem of the relationships betweenchemistry and physics. As we have seen, philosophers ofchemistry reject epistemological reduction but accept theontological reduction of chemistry to physics. This position isimplicitly based on an externalist or metaphysical realismaccording to which there exists a single true ontology: allthe entities, properties and regularities not belonging to thatontology have a secondary existence, which depends on and, then, can be ontologically reduced to the fundamentalentities, properties and regularities of the only real ontology.Some authors explicitly express this position; for instance,

Ramsey (1997, p. 239) suggests the need of rethinking thenotion of level because [U]ltimately, there is only one level ofreality. Since the ontological priority of the world of physicsis taken for granted, the entities and properties of chemistryhave only a derived existence. This assumption amounts toaccepting that, whereas physics studies the only objectiveontology that is, reality as it is in itself, chemistry merelydescribes a metaphorical or, at best, an ontologically derivedrealm. But this traditional position can be abandoned from aconsistent internalist perspective. When the idea of Gods

point of view is given up, it is not yet possible to conceive thedescription of reality in itself: even quantum theory corre-sponds to a particular conceptual scheme that constitutes thequantum ontology. On the other hand, chemistry involves itsown conceptual framework and, as a consequence, refers to itsown ontology. If chemical concepts could be epistemologicallyreduced to quantum concepts, there would be a good reason



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to believe in the ontological reduction of the chemical worldto the ontology of quantum mechanics. But when the episte-mological irreducibility of chemistry is accepted, there is noargument other than metaphysical realism for postulatingontological reduction. Summing up, from the internalistviewpoint, chemical concepts like composition, chemicalbonding, molecular shape and orbital refer to entitiesbelonging to the chemical ontology, which only depends onthe theory that constitutes it and does not derive from anontologically more fundamental level of reality. In this way,we can fulfill van Brakels desideratum of leaving equal

ontological room for water in all its scientific meanings. Andwe can also give philosophical support to Scerris autonomousthough related levels of reality, in some of which orbitalsexist.

It is worth stressing that the philosophical framework sup-plied by internalism can be applied not only to chemistry, butalso and by means of analogous arguments, to all the othersecondary sciences, as biology, psychology, etc. Furthermore,in a recent paper internalist realism has been proposed as anon-dualistic response to the traditional mind-matter problem(Lombardi, 2002). However, strictly speaking, ontologies are

theory-dependent and, therefore, different ontologies maycoexist in the context of a single scientific discipline. For in-stance, when this philosophical approach was used to explainthe objectivity of the classical description arising from theclassical limit of quantum mechanics (Castagnino and Lom-bardi, 2004), the problem consisted in the relationship betweenthe classical ontology and the quantum ontology, both de-scribed by physical theories. As van Brakel correctly points out,if the relationship between chemistry and physics is considered,more than two discourses, not only chemical and physical,

need to be distinguished: there is manifest water, physico-chemical, chemical and biochemical macroproperties of water,there is (chemical) molecular microdiscourse and (physical)quantum mechanical discourse (van Brakel, 2000a, p. 122).Internalist realism can account for the objective realms referredto by all these discourses corresponding to the different theoriesof chemistry and physics.



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6. OBJECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ONTOLOGIES

Up to this point we have emphasized the fact that internalistrealism allows us to conceive a diversified phenomenal reality,where different theories cut their own ontologies out of thesame noumenal substratum. But this does not mean that thecoexisting ontologies are completely disconnected in the sensethat they are not related to each other in any way. The questionis how to conceive the relationships between these coexistingontologies.

As we have seen, from the traditional philosophical view-

point reduction is a logical relationship; the links betweentheories are logical connections, analytical definitions or con-tingent conditions. This implies that the reduced theory adds nonomological content to the reducing theory. This view is per-fectly consistent with the assumption of a single objectivedescription of reality, which is, of course, the description givenby the reducing theory. Therefore, emergent properties intro-duced by the reduced theory are not really properties. In otherwords, emergent predicates have no ontological reference; theyare only economical ways of saying what we could have said, inprinciple, without them.

This traditional concept of reduction is strongly rejected byPrimas (1998) by arguing that reduction is not a logical rela-tionship. On the basis of several examples coming from physicsand chemistry, Primas shows the need of identifying with pre-cision all the auxiliary conditions required for one theory to berigorously and completely deduced from another theory. Theseauxiliary conditions are the context that defines the validitydomain of the second theory. In a mathematically formalizedtheory, a context can be introduced by choosing a new coarsercontextual topology, compatible with the finer topology of themore basic theory. In such topologies, certain asymptotic limitsgive rise to emergent properties, unavailable in the finerdescription: In this mathematically precise sense, one canspeak of the emergence of novelty in descriptions of a higherlevel (Primas, 1998, p. 86). Therefore, the specification of thecontext is at least as important for intertheoretic connection asthe laws of the finer theory. Primas introduces the notion of



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contextual ontologies as the reference of context-dependenttheories: contextual objects and emergent properties are theelements of such higher level ontologies.

Atmanspacher and Kronz (1998) discuss Primas ideas as anexample of their notion ofrelative onticity an extension ofQuines ontological relativity, according to which the contex-tual dependence between two levels of description can be shif-ted to cover the entire hierarchy of complex systems. Thismeans that a theory derived from a more basic one may becomea reducing theory with respect to a higher-level theory if thenew context is properly specified. From this point of view, the

many contextual ontologies with their corresponding emergentproperties may be hierarchically organized in growing levels ofcomplexity: The problem is, then, to use the proper level ofdescription for a given context, and to develop and explorewell-defined relations between different levels (Atmanspacher,2002, p. 52).

These ideas are very appealing from the internalist viewpointbecause they both seem to advocate for the non-uniqueness ofontology and for the view that objects and properties are al-ways relative to a theory or conceptual scheme. However, thereis a relevant difference between them and the internalist ap-

proach. The notions of contextual ontology Primas andrelative onticity Atmanspacher and Kronz are based on thedistinction between ontic and epistemic descriptions, firstintroduced by Scheibe (1973) in the framework of quantummechanics. Ontic descriptions refer to things as they reallyare, independently of any epistemic context; epistemicdescriptions refer to our partial knowledge of the properties ofa system. Context-dependent theories are the epistemicdescriptions where emergent properties arise (for more details,cf. Atmanspacher, 2002). From an internalist perspective, on

the contrary, there is no way of describing things as they reallyare: we have always access to reality through our conceptualschemes; there is no noumenal ontology. If we have given upGods point of view, there is no privileged perspective, and alldescriptions have the same degree of objectivity all ontologiesare equally real. Therefore, we cannot accept that the so-calledfundamental theories describe reality as it is in itself that is,



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the noumenal reality since these theories are also conceptualschemes through which relative ontologies arise.

But, then, how to conceive the relationships between theory-relative ontologies and, correspondingly, between differenttheories from the internalist perspective? Primas is right whenhe rejects the traditional idea of logical reduction, but this is notsufficient for explaining the links between theories leading todifferent ontologies. Such an explanation requires us to make adecision about the status of the auxiliary conditions necessaryfor the effective derivation of one of the theories from the other.Primas and Atmanspacher choose to suppose that the context

required for intertheoretic connection consists of purely con-ventional conditions. It is in this sense that Atmanspacherspeaks of contexts or contingent conditions (Atmanspacher,2002, p. 52). Then, the context is what allows us to retain whatwe consider as relevant and to disregard the elements consid-ered as non-essential for our purposes: The context of anoperational description is given by the distinction between whatwe consider as relevant and what as irrelevant for a particularexperiment or observation (Primas, 1998, p. 83). In otherwords, to pass from a certain level of description to anotherinvolves an abstraction; that is, we neglect some irrelevant as-

pects and ontologize contextual objects and properties as ifthey were actually existing (Primas, 1998, p. 96, italics in theoriginal). Therefore, the epistemic description refers to ourpartial knowledge of the ontology described by the ontic the-ory. Although useful, this partial knowledge only reflects someaspects of the basic ontology.

The question is: can the onticepistemic distinction accountfor the objectivity of emergent properties? It seems quite clearthat, to the extent that emergent properties belong to the epi-stemic level, they are mere constructions based on our partial

knowledge of the real properties of a system and, therefore,they are nothing else than useful but dispensable descriptivetools: emergence is not ontological, but just a matter ofdescription. This position agrees with Vemulapalli and Byerlysview (1999), according to which emergence must be understoodonly in an epistemological sense. In other words, the onticepistemic distinction cannot justify that emergent properties



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have the same ontological status as the so-called fundamen-tal properties, since it hides a position that is not far fromtraditional metaphysical externalist realism with its adop-tion of an only true fundamental ontology.

In order to defend the autonomy of relative ontologies and,as a consequence, the objectivity of emergent properties, it isnecessary to stress that the elements required for intercon-necting different theories are neither contingent nor conven-tional factors, but have a nomological content. This implieslaying aside the traditional epistemological view according towhich the nomological content of science is concentrated at

the laws of the theories, whereas contextual and auxiliaryconditions represent the contingent aspects of each situation(cf. Wilson, 1989). From this new perspective, the links be-tween theories do not play a role as passive as the traditionalview suggests but, rather, they express an essential part of ourscientific knowledge. In other words, the context required forintertheoretic connection is not a mere convenient tool todescribe some aspects of a single ontology in response to ourpractical purposes or to our perceptual or technological lim-itations, as Primas and Atmanspacher suggest; on the con-trary, such a context has a nomological character. The idea

can be expressed in an intuitive way by saying that, besidesthe horizontal laws of theories, there are also verticalintertheoretic laws connecting different theories, and whichrefer to the objective relationships between relative but objectiveontologies. From this philosophical viewpoint, we live in adiversified phenomenal reality, organized in multiple onto-logical levels, each one of which is ontologically and, there-fore, non-trivially interconnected with the other levels (seeFigure 1). Furthermore, we can explain the ontologicalemergence of novelty in that diversified reality: emergent

properties are not mere constructions reducible to a singleontology; they are objective properties with the same onto-logical status as fundamental properties and reflect thediversified structure of our reality.

This non-reductive picture of a stratified reality is thephilosophical framework that allows us to defend the onto-logical autonomy of the chemical world. Since each conceptual



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scheme constitutes a relative ontology when it cuts its ownentities and properties out of the same noumenal substratum,the ontology of chemistry is as theory-dependent as quantumontology: both have the same degree of objectivity to the extentthat the privileged viewpoint of Gods Eye does not exist. Thetraditional acceptance of the ontological dependence of the

world of chemistry upon the world of physics relies on meta-physical realism and its fruitless seeking for the only realontology, as well as on the unjustified belief that quantummechanics describes, at least approximately, reality in itself.Once we admit that the reference of each theory is partially constituted by the theory itself and that this is the onlymeaningful notion of ontology, the illusion of the ultimatediscovery of an independent reality vanishes. As a conse-quence, chemical ontology does not depend on a more fun-damental ontology, but only on the conceptual framework that

constitutes it. The fact that the chemical world does notontologically reduces to the world of physics does not meanthat both ontologies are completely isolated from each other;on the contrary, they are interconnected by non-reductive,nomological links which permit the existence of objectiverelationships between both worlds but preserve the ontologi-cal autonomy of each one of them. On this basis, chemical

Diversified Phenomenal

Reality

Language Ontology Noumena

Theory 1

Theory 2

INTERTHEORETICLAWS

Ontology 1

Ontology 2

OBJECTIVE

RELATIONSHIPS

Noumenal

Reality

Figure 1.



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emergent properties like bonding, molecular shape or chiralitydo not need to be referred to physical properties in order toacquire ontological legitimacy: they are properties belonging tothe chemical world, and their objectivity does not depend onthe possibility of being ontologically reduced to the supposedlymore basic properties of physics. Only by accepting theautonomy of the chemical world, can the well-known causalefficiency of chemical properties be explained without turningthem into illusory features of metaphorical concepts.

7. CONCLUSIONS

The question of the relationship between chemistry andphysics is a philosophical problem and, as such, it must beaddressed by means philosophical arguments. In this paper wehave argued that, although the failure of the epistemologicalreduction of chemistry to physics can preserve the autonomyof the chemists everyday activity, it is not sufficient foreliminating the traditional conception of chemistry as a sec-ondary, merely phenomenological discipline: only the rejectionof ontological reduction can reverse such a traditional

assumption.The main aim of this paper has been to present a philo-

sophical framework, inspired by Putnams internalist realism,that permits the coexistence of different but equally objectivetheory-dependent ontologies interconnected by nomological,non-reductive relationships. On the basis of this framework, theontological autonomy of the chemical world can be justified onstrong philosophical grounds. In turn, this autonomy is whatplaces chemistry in the same hierarchical position as physicswithin the context of natural sciences. When chemistry begins

to be conceived not as a secondary field devoted to study sec-ondary and derived entities, but as a scientific discipline re-ferred to an ontologically autonomous realm, it can alsoacquire legitimacy as an area of philosophical concern: chem-ical problems deserve philosophical attention in their own rightsince they cannot be reduced to the issues traditionally dis-cussed in the philosophy of physics.



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to two anonymous referees for their veryconstructive comments. This paper was supported by grants ofCONICET, of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes and of theSecretara de Estado de Educacio n y Universidades de Espan a.

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Olimpia LombardiCONICET Universidad Nacional de Quilmes

Universidad Autonoma de MadridE-mail: [email protected]

Martn LabarcaUniversidad Nacional de Quilmes

Universidad Nacional de San Mart n


(1) Ontological Autonomy of the Chemical World

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