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Acidity: The Persistence of the Everyday in the Scientific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hasok Chang
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Abstract

Acidity provides an interesting example of an everyday concept that developed fully into a scientific one; it is one of the oldest concepts in chemistry and remains an important one. However, up to now there has been no unity to it. Currently two standard theoretical definitions coexist (Br⊘nsted and Lowry's and Lewis's); the standard laboratory measure of acidity, namely the pH, only corresponds directly to the Br⊘nsted-Lowry concept. The lasting identity of the acidity concept in modern chemistry is based on the persistence of the quotidian concept. This is suggestive for considerations of other scientific concepts.

Type
Everyday Concepts and Scientific Concepts
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 690 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank my research assistant Shahar Avin for a valuable textbook survey that informed the content of section 2 of this article significantly. I am grateful to Sophia Efstathiou and Anna Alexandrova for inviting me to participate in the PSA session where this article was first presented and Greg Radick for his collaboration in the session.

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