Reducing Chemistry to Physics

Download or read book Reducing Chemistry to Physics written by Hinne Hettema and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chemistry and physics are two sciences that are hard to connect. Yet there is significant overlap in their aims, methods, and theoretical approaches. In this book, the reduction of chemistry to physics is defended from the viewpoint of a naturalised Nagelian reduction, which is based on a close reading of Nagel's original text. This naturalised notion of reduction is capable of characterising the inter-theory relationships between theories of chemistry and theories of physics. The reconsideration of reduction also leads to a new characterisation of chemical theories. This book is primarily aimed at philosophers of chemistry and chemists with an interest in philosophy, but is also of interest to the general philosopher of science.