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Mechanisms and Their Explanatory Challenges in Organic Chemistry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jeffry L. Ramsey
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Abstract

Chemists take mechanisms to be an important way of explaining chemical change. I examine the usefulness of the mechanism approach in the recent philosophical literature in explicating the explanatory use of mechanisms by organic chemists. I argue that chemists consider a mechanism to be explanatory because it accounts for the “dynamic process of bringing about” (Tabery 2004, 10) chemical change. For chemists, mechanisms are causal explanations based on interventions that show “how some possibilities depend on others” (Woodward 2003, 375). Only possibilities are achievable because chemists face a number of challenges when they explain by means of a mechanism.

Type
Mechanisms: Beyond Biology to Psychology and Chemistry
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2006 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Cristina Bicchieri and Jason Alexander , December 2008 , pp. 970 - 982
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

For helpful comments and suggestions, my thanks to Lindley Darden, Bill Bechtel, Paul Teller, the audience at the 2006 Philosophy of Science Association/History of Science Society meetings and the Spring 2007 members of Philosophy 200 at Smith College.

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