How did chemistry and physics acquire their separate identities, and are they on their way to losing them again? Mary Jo Nye has written a graceful account of the historical demarcation of chemistry from physics and subsequent reconvergences of the two, from Lavoisier and Dalton in the late eighteenth century to Robinson, Ingold, and Pauling in the mid-twentieth century. Using the notion of a disciplinary "identity" analogous to ethnic or national identity, Nye develops a theory of the nature of disciplinary structure and change. She discusses the distinctive character of chemical language and theories and the role of national styles and traditions in building a scientific discipline. Anyone interested in the history of scientific thought will enjoy pondering with her the question of whether chemists of the mid-twentieth century suspected chemical explanation had been reduced to physical laws, just as Newtonian mechanical philosophers had envisioned in the eighteenth century.

Scientific Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Chemistry - General, grade: 2, Egerton University, language: English, abstract: This paper discuses the philosophy of chemistry. Philosophy of chemistry is a sub-branch of the philosophy of science. It is a new field that was hived from the traditional philosophy of science. It has acquired autonomy from the philosophy of physics under which it was regarded as a part. Its late evolution was due the assumption that most philosophers and scientists made in regard to the relationship between physics and chemistry. The assumption was that the chemistry can be reduced to physics. Most scholars in the philosophy of science argued that physics, under the principle of quantum mechanics, is the science that describes reality at its best, whereas chemistry, as the phenomenological science describe phenomenon as they are seen by human beings.

This book represents a collection of papers from one of the founders of the new Philosophy of Chemistry. It is only the second single-author collection of papers on the Philosophy of Chemistry.The author is the editor-in-chief of Foundations of Chemistry, the leading journal in the field. He has recently gained worldwide success with his book on the periodic table of the elements titled The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. This volume provides an in-depth examination of his more philosophical and historical work in this area and further afield.