SummaryIn the history of chemistry, the Danish chemist Julius Thomsen (1826–1909) is best known for his contributions to thermochemistry. Throughout his life, he was a pronounced atomist and a tireless advocate of neo-Proutian views as to the constitution of matter. On many occasions, especially in his later years, he engaged in speculations concerning the unity of matter and the complexity of atoms. In this engagement, Thomsen was alone in Danish chemistry, but his works were representative of a large number of (...) 19th-century chemists, particularly in England and Germany. Thomsen's ideas as to the constitution of matter, the periodic system and the noble gases, may be seen as typical of this vigorous trend in fin de siècle chemistry. (shrink)

The term philosophy of chemistry is here construed broadly to include some publications from the history of chemistry and chemical education. Of course this initial selection of material has inevitably been biased by the interests of the author. This bibliography supersedes that of van Brakel and Vermeeren (1981), although no attempt has been made to include every single one of their entries, especially in languages other than English. Also, readers interested particularly in articles in German may wish to consult the (...) bibliography by Dittus and Mayer which also contains some material not included here (Dittus and Mayer, 1992). The aim is to maintain an up-to-date version of this bibliography and to publish a revised version in due course. Suggestions for further inclusions should be sent to the author. (shrink)

The French physicist Jean Baptiste Perrin is widely credited with providing the conclusive argument for atomism. The most well-known part of Perrin’s argument is his description of thirteen different procedures for determining Avogadro’s number (N)–the number of atoms, ions, and molecules contained in a gram-atom, gram-ion, and gram-mole of a substance, respectively. Because of its success in ending the atomism debates Perrin’s argument has been the focus of much philosophical interest. The various philosophers, however, have reached different conclusions, not only (...) about the argument’s general rationale but also the role that the multiple determination of N played in it. This paper emphasizes the historical development of Perrin’s experimental work in order to understand the role that the multiple determination of molecular magnitudes played in his argument for molecular reality. It claims that Perrin used the multiple determination strategy to put forward an exceptionally strong no-coincidence argument to argue for both the correctness of the values for the molecular magnitudes determined and the validity of the auxiliary assumptions upon which the different determinations were based. The historicist approach also allows the identification of the elements responsible for the epistemic strength of Perrin’s no-coincidence argument. (shrink)