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Philosophy of Chemistry pp 91–105Cite as

One Substance or More?

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 306))

Abstract

Chemistry builds on distinctions of substance, which presupposes that matter can be divided into substances and these exemplars compared with others on different occasions to determine whether they are the same substance. Even the notion of a quantity comprising a single substance presupposes the same substance relation, i.e. being a quantity all of whose spatial parts are the same substance. Criteria of purity have been important for isolating substances and investigating their characteristic properties, which can in turn be used for establishing sameness of substance. With the development of chemistry into a theoretical science it became important that such criteria and characteristics should have a systematic theoretical basis. Thermodynamics was, perhaps, the first comprehensive theory to systematically divide the mass of the bodies with which it deals into distinct substances and offer general criteria governing the number of substances present. But the applicability of such macroscopic criteria is restricted to equilibrium conditions on a macroscopic time scale. They can be compared with microscopic conceptions of molecular structure, with which they have been complemented—some would say superseded. Since many substances are not molecular, however, the general formulation of a microscopic sameness of substance criterion remains unclear.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Duhem (1892, pp. 271–273; 1893, p. 304; 1894, pp. 240–1), Tisza (1977), p. 128 and further remarks in this spirit in Needham (2007), pp. 41–2.

  2. 2.

    For an explicit formulation of this and related principles governing the same substance relation, see Needham (ms).

  3. 3.

    In general, there is a connection between the chemical potentials of all the substances in a given phase given by the Gibbs-Duhem equation (f connections for f phases) and there are c(f – 1) interphase conditions given by the equality of the chemical potentials of each substance between any two phases. Thus, the variance = 2 + cf – (f + c(f – 1)) = c – f + 2, the “2” deriving from the two intensive variables pressure and temperature (each having the same values for each phase).

  4. 4.

    It is apposite to note that in his final chapter, Denbigh (1981) emphasises the importance of the concept of equilibrium even in kinetics: “There is no theory of rates which stands … on its own feet; all existing theories depend, in one form or another, on ideas carried over from the study of matter at equilibrium” (p. 439).

  5. 5.

    Isotopes of oxygen might all be called oxygen just as isomers of heptane might all be called heptane. The substantial point is whether isotopes are counted different substances as isomers are.

  6. 6.

    Armstrong (1927, p. 478) regarded Bragg’s claim that in sodium chloride there are “no molecules represented by NaCl. The equality in number of sodium and chlorine atoms is arrived at by a chess-board pattern of these atoms; it is a result of geometry and not of a pairing-off of the atoms” as “repugnant to common sense” and “not chemical cricket”.

  7. 7.

    I suggest that the macroscopic quantities to which the two-place predicate applies for macroscopic intervals of time are structureless mereological sums of all the material bits that partake of these interconversions at the microlevel (Needham 2010b).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, SE-106 91, Sweden

    Paul Needham

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  1. Paul Needham
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Correspondence to Paul Needham .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Eric Scerri

  2. Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Lee McIntyre

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Needham, P. (2015). One Substance or More?. In: Scerri, E., McIntyre, L. (eds) Philosophy of Chemistry. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 306. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9364-3_7

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