Abstract
The application of quantum-theoretic models to the explanation of chemical structure and bonding is one of the great twentieth-century stories of interaction among disciplines. Some philosophers have found in this interaction both evidential support and historical explanation. The evidential support is for the philosophical doctrine of physicalism, the thesis that everything is, or depends in some way on, the physical. The historical explanation concerns the fall of emergentism, and in particular its doctrines concerning the independence of chemical law. With the emergence of quantum chemistry, the physicalists argue, chemical structure and bonding was explained in terms of physical laws, and the hitherto popular and plausible philosophical view that chemical laws were in some sense sui generis was rendered less popular and plausible, at least among scientifically oriented philosophers.
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Hendry, R.F. (2001). Mathematics, Representation and Molecular Structure. In: Klein, U. (eds) Tools and Modes of Representation in the Laboratory Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 222. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9737-1_13
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