Philosophical Chemistry furthers Manuel DeLanda's revolutionary
intervention in the philosophy of science and science studies. Against a
monadic and totalizing understanding of science, DeLanda's historicizing
investigation traces the centrality of divergence, specialization and
hybridization through the fields and subfields of chemistry.
The strategy followed uses a series of chemical textbooks, separated
from each other by fifty year periods (1750, 1800, 1850, and 1900), to
follow the historical formation of consensus practices. The three
chapters deal with one subfield of chemistry in the century in which it
was developed: eighteenth-century inorganic chemistry,
nineteenth-century organic chemistry, and nineteenth-century physical
chemistry. This book creates a model of a scientific field capable of
accommodating the variation and differentiation evident in the history
of scientific practice. DeLanda proposes a model that is made of three
components: a domain of phenomena, a community of practitioners, and a
set of instruments and techniques connecting the community to the
domain.
Philosophical Chemistry will be essential reading for those engaged in
emergent, radical and contemporary strands of thought in the philosophy
of science and for those scholars and students who strive to practice a
productive dialogue between the two disciplines.
