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Structure as Abstraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Robin Findlay Hendry
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Abstract

In this article I argue that structure in chemistry is a creature of abstraction: attending selectively to structural similarities, we neglect differences. There are different ways to abstract, so abstraction is interest dependent. So is structure. First, there are two different and mutually irreducible notions of structure in chemistry: bond structure and geometrical structure. Second, structure is relative to scale (of energy, time, and length): the same substance has different structures at different scales, and relationships of structural sameness and difference vary across the scales. However, these facts have no tendency to undermine structure’s claim to reality, or its metaphysical seriousness.

Type
Chemical Structure
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 1070 - 1081
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am most grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for funding the Durham Emergence Project, as part of which this article was researched and written.

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