Abstract
Friedrich Paneth’s conception of “chemical element” has functioned as the official definition adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry since 1923. Paneth maintains a distinction between empirical and “transcendental” concepts of element; furthermore, chemical science requires fluctuation between the two. The origin of the empirical-transcendental split is found in Immanuel Kant’s classic Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787). The present paper examines Paneth’s foundational concept of element in light of Kant’s attempt, late in life, to revoke key distinctions made in his Critique, including that of regulative and constitutive functions of reason. In a section of his Opus postumum devoted to the “Transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics,” Kant bends his philosophical system to address the newly emerging sciences of matter of his time. Specifically, he tried, without success, to develop the transcendental ground for microscale motions of bodies encountered in physical, electrical and chemical processes. Paneth’s discussion of chemical element does not take the Opus postumum into account, which is why it begins with a rejection of Kant’s rejection (in his earlier writings) of chemistry’s status as science. I make the case that Paneth’s definition of element effectively maintains something very like Kant’s critical separation of regulative and constitutive principles, while a advancing the concept of chemical science.
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Notes
Kant made extensive additions and changes in his second edition of the Critique. I follow the standard A/B notation to indicate the pagination of first and second editions (Kant, 1929/1965), respectively.
I thank Klaus Ruthenberg for his discussion (2009) of this passage vis-à-vis Paneth’s thought.
A detailed discussion of how he came to this decision would take us far afield. See for example, Scerri (2005). We will instead consider the consequences of this choice.
Among them, material, substance, stuff, and medium.
Joseph E. Earley, personal communication, August 2012.
Schwanken occurs in the conclusion of his article. The context of its introduction is discussed in depth in next section, below.
For example, http://en.bab.la/dictionary/german-english/schwanken.
Quantum theory established that the canonical variables of mechanics are not independent at subatomic scales, they are conjugate (Bohr 1958, 39).
Bohr noted that “any attempt to trace the detailed course of a transition process would involve an uncontrollable exchange of energy between the atom and the measuring instruments which would completely disturb the very energy balance we set out to investigate” (Bohr 1958, 7).
van Brakel’s extensive discussion of water and “polywater” at the interface of the manifest and scientific images of the world (van Brakel 2000) contains several interesting starting points, as does the Philosophy of Chemistry Handbook (Hendry et al. 2011) and Scerri’s collected essays on the periodic table (Scerri 2008).
This is a significant claim that bears further examination. At its most general level, beyond its application to Kant’s philosophy, this perspective is consonant with my understanding of the scale and range of metaphor’s efficacy in science. Metaphor is here presented as a mode of thinking, what Wu calls “metaphoring.” (Wu 2001).
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Mahootian, F. Paneth’s epistemology of chemical elements in light of Kant’s Opus postumum . Found Chem 15, 171–184 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-013-9182-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-013-9182-4