CHEMICAL REACTIONS AS CAUSES AND LAWS

Project Information

CREACAL

Grant agreement ID: 101064082

DOI

10.3030/101064082

Project closed

EC signature date 22 July 2022

Start date 1 July 2023

End date 30 June 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 167 786,72

Coordinated by

ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CREACAL (CHEMICAL REACTIONS AS CAUSES AND LAWS)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

It is hard to overstate the importance of chemical reactions in understanding nature and sustaining life. From lighting fires and fermenting bread, to breathing, developing life-saving drugs and creating (but also tackling) climate change, there are very few activities in our everyday life that are not the result of naturally-occurring or synthetic chemical reactions.

From a philosophical perspective, it is natural to think that chemical reaction statements track causal relations. Chemists often say that the interaction of an acid with a base causes the production of an ionic salt and water, or that water is produced because hydrogen and oxygen reacted with each other. However, whether reference to causation should be taken seriously is debatable and establishing that chemical reactions identify causal relations is far from obvious. For example, do chemical reactions convey genuine causal relations or are they merely functional tools to describe more complex and fundamental relations in nature? Moreover, which understanding of causation best applies to the case of chemical reactions? And, if chemical reactions correspond to causal relations, does this mean that they should be thought as tracking laws of nature?

These questions are important because whether one admits causal talk in chemical discourse impacts the explanatory weight we ascribe onto the relevant scientific descriptions. In addition, given that chemistry is a special science, discussion of causation in chemistry brings forward a novel perspective through which to think of laws in nature which extends consideration of physics.

So, the aim of CReaCaL is to spell out precisely how chemical reactions can be understood as candidate causal relations. This is achieved by bringing together chemical knowledge of reactions with the philosophical literature on causation. Doing so, reveals interesting features not only about chemical reactions but also about causation. The project is realised by addressing the following questions:

- If chemical reactions correspond to causal relations, what sort of relations are they?

- What are the purported causes and effects of these relations?

- At what scale do chemical reactions occur?

- Do all statements of chemical reactions correspond to genuine causal relations?


By addressing these questions the project aims to offer a better understanding of the nature of chemical reactions that is informed by the extensive literature on causation in philosophy.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The objective of the project is to understand how and in what sense one can convincingly construe chemical reactions as causal relations, and consequently, as putative laws in chemistry. The result towards this objective revealed four key issues that are pertinent to a complete account of chemical reactions as causal relations. Specifically:
- If chemical reactions are construed as causal relations, what are the putative causes and effects?
- If chemical reactions are construed as causal relations, what sort of causation is involved?
- At what scale are chemical reactions found?
- How do different types of reaction statements relate to each other, as well as to the putative causal relations they represent?

These issues were presented and addressed through single-authored papers and talks at conferences and workshops. The papers made the following claims:
- There are good reasons to think of chemical reactions causally.
- Thinking of chemical transformations causally affects our view of chemical laws in specific ways
- A productive view of causation is better supported for the case of chemical reactions.
- Considerations around scale are particularly important in the discussion, especially vis-a-vis the issue of reductionism and that of the distinction between individual and general reaction statements.
- A key challenge against the idea of laws in chemistry stems from how we understand natural kinds in chemistry.
- A second challenge concerns how superheavy elements are predicted and discovered.

Exploring these issues resulted in a more nuanced understanding of the nature of chemical reactions as causal relations. Another result of this analysis is that the role of reaction mechanisms, chemical affinity and equilibrium states were understood better when spelling out precisely chemical reactions. In fact, reaction mechanisms and chemical affinity played a decisive role in defending a productive view of chemical reactions. On the other hand, equilibrium states do not play as prominent a role for chemical reactions as initially thought; this also constitutes progress as a significant conceptual challenge was thus overcome.

The activities performed during the project and which contributed to addressing its objectives included:

(i) Participation in 16 conferences with single talks or symposia that are related to the metaphysical analysis of chemical reactions. This activity allowed the researcher to receive feedback and improve her work on analysing chemical reactions.
(ii) The organisation of two workshops at the Host Institution with guest speakers that are experts on the relevant issues.
(iii) Two research visits so as to communicate the work performed and receive feedback by experts in the field.
(iv) Auditing classes at the School of Chemistry and seeking advice on scientific details by the project's scientific advisor.
(iv) The publication of peer-reviewed papers.
(v) Dissemination activities such as the publication of blog posts and articles in popular science magazines. The researcher also gave talks to audiences of the chemical community.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The results of the project include the following papers and book chapters:

1. The many laws in the periodic table, Philosophy of Science (accepted/in press) (preprint: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/23732/)
2. The value of laws in chemistry, Found Chem 26, 355–368 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-024-09523-z
3. Why water may not be a natural kind after all, Analysis Filosofico (accepted/in press) (preprint: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25528/)
4. Reframing the Reduction-Emergence Debate around Chemistry, In Book: Rethinking Emergence. Bryant, A. and Yates, D., (eds.) Oxford University Press (In Press) (preprint: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25553/)
5. Chemical causal relations across different levels of description, In Book: Laws and powers in the Metaphysics of Science. Ioannidis, S., Psillos, S. & Seifert V.A. (eds.) Routledge (In press) (preprint: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25554/)
6. Prediction and discovery in the search for chemical elements, In Book: The Perils and Promises of Prediction: Historical and Epistemological Perspectives, Arabatzis T., Arapostathis S., Katsaloulis I. & A. Tympas (eds.) Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Cham: Springer Nature. In press.
7. Chemical reactions as productive causal relations (submitted/under review)

These results are expected to impact how philosophers of chemistry approach chemical reactions from a causal perspective and to inform the general literature on causation by bringing forward this relatively under explored case study from chemistry. The novel issues that were illuminated and which constitute results that go beyond the state of the art are:

- the importance of thinking of chemical reactions from a metaphysically informed perspective;
- the relevance of the periodic table of elements and how relations among groups of elements can be construed as candidate laws of nature ;
- the different ways by which chemical reactions can be thought of causally, including via regularity and productive accounts of causation;
- relevant problems that stem from considerations around scale as well as from the relation of chemical entities with their underlying physical constituents;
- the issue of natural classifications in chemistry and how this may pose a challenge to our admittance of laws in chemistry ;
- the matter of whether all forms of chemical reaction statements can be thought as depicting genuine causal relations;
- relevant problems regarding the discovery of new chemical elements and the limits of the periodic table.

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