The chemist’s existential crisis can be an opportunity to think about the pursuit of chemistry from a reflective distance. Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline presents some models for raising one’s head above the chemical trenches and considering some “big questions” about chemistry as a practice and as a body of knowledge. The 19 chapters in this book, written by chemists and by philosophers, discuss chemistry’s historical development; its relations to other sciences; its approaches to explanation, representation, classification, and measurement; and the ways in which issues in chemistry connect with, and shed light upon, larger philosophical questions about how sciences help us make sense of the world we live in.

Paul Needham connects the understanding of chemical substances and transformations tied to modern atomic theory to Aristotle’s explanations in terms of his four-element (earth, air, fire, and water) theory. Examining this historical development sharpens the question of what remains unchanged in the course of a chemical transformation. Taking a more sociological approach, Ann Johnson explores recent historical developments, considering how the construction of more sophisticated mathematical models and tools worked in tandem with increased availability of high-speed computing to shape the daily practices in chemical process design.

A number of chapters explore the connection of chemistry to other fields, especially physics. G. K. Vemulapalli considers the influence of physics on the current understanding of the chemical bond. Eric R. Scerri discusses mismatches between how chemists use orbitals and what the fundamental theory of quantum mechanics says about orbitals. Robin Findlay Hendry examines the relations between chemical properties and physical properties—and whether it makes sense to say that one is reducible to (or supervenes on) the other. Moving beyond the chemistry–physics border to consider a larger set of scientific fields, Otto Theodor Benfey argues that the special sciences have become more unified by attending to similar conceptual issues (external spatial relations and internal structure, symmetrical and directional temporal relations, and discrete and continuous matter).

Balancing the chapters that focus on how chemistry fits into a larger historical development, or into a pantheon of special sciences, other chapters take a close look at what, precisely, chemistry does. What kinds of entities do chemists study? How do they represent them or obtain reliable information about their features (especially when those entities are far smaller than what can be perceived by the naked eye)? Do the chemical substances chemists make (synthesize) have a different kind of status than naturally occurring substances that chemists discover? What kind of connection does (or ought) chemistry’s view of the world have to everyday ways of understanding the world and its features (such as water)? Daniel Rothbart and John Schreifels demonstrate the connections between instrumentation and chemists’ commitments about the microscopic world they probe. S. H. Vollmer considers how two-dimensional diagrams represent three-dimensional molecules. Nalini Bhushan and Michael Weisberg each contribute a chapter on the kinds of entities chemists study; Bhusan’s considers the status of synthesized molecules and Weisberg’s considers how everyday terms such as “water” do not map neatly to chemical descriptions. Jeffrey Kovac’s chapter shifts from the details of chemical practice to the ethical norms governing it, pondering the responsibilities of chemists toward society and toward each other, and examining how ethical concerns are connected to the project of building good knowledge about chemical substances and phenomena.

Many chapters are directed at longstanding issues in the philosophy of science, or offer new philosophical insights from a close examination of chemical practice. Some of these debates will seem arcane to the chemist, who may be overwhelmed by close readings of texts from Aristotle and Kant, labored attempts to make philosophical terminology precise, and the use of symbolic modal logic to illuminate a relationship. (On the other hand, the mathematical formalisms and potential diagrams in some of the chapters may equally well frighten away the reader without experience in physical chemistry.) Even some of the chapters that are less packed with philosophical jargon will not be of interest to the chemist or chemistry student who does not already have an interest in where the field of philosophy of chemistry might develop.

Nonetheless, the diversity and wide sweep of the chapters in this volume leave the reader free to browse the contents, not obligated to plow through every selection. And some of the philosophical questions, and their clear, careful, and engaging presentation in this book, will be of genuine interest to chemists: Are chemical facts, at bottom, nothing but physical facts? Why has chemistry been viewed as a lesser science than physics? Why doesn’t “H₂O” pick out all the same things in the world that “water” does?

Development from being a student of chemistry to being a chemist brings with it reflection about the enterprise. What is it we know here? How did we come by that information, and how do we communicate it to other scientists? What sorts of assumptions about the organization of nature, or about the structure of the entities we are trying to make or to measure, shape our experiments and our explanations? How do we see the world differently from earlier scientists with different theories, instruments, and experimental techniques to guide them? How do we see the world differently from scientists in adjacent fields, or from non-scientists in their everyday lives? To the extent that considering such questions can add excitement and satisfaction to the experience of doing chemistry, the essays in this volume will be a welcome resource.