This essay seeks to give philosophical expression to the vitality, willfullness, and recalcitrance possessed by nonhuman entities and forces. It also considers the ethico-political import of an enhanced awareness of "thing-power." Drawing from Lucretius, Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, and others, it describes a materialism of lively matter, to be placed in conversation with the historical materialism of Marx and the body materialism of feminist and cultural studies. Thing-power materialism is a speculative onto-story, an admittedly presumptuous attempt to depict the (...) nonhumanity that flows around and through humans. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of the ecological implications of thing-power. (shrink)

Meaning is use: Wittgenstein's well-known dictum is used as starting point for a language game on the English word 'instrument' in historical discourse. In this way it is possible to collect a set of words (and corresponding objects) so heterogeneous that the likening 'chemicals as instruments' does not seem misplaced. Looking for a better understanding, three classes of chemicals are considered: solvents, indicators, and reagents (just a couple!). The first two classes comprise chemicals, which create new experimental conditions (as the (...) classical air pump), or measure 'something' (as the classical thermometer). The third class is more peculiar to chemistry, in that reagents are typical chemical instruments for operating at the microscopic level. In addition, a second language-game is proposed, and it is stressed the deep epistemological difference between physics, which creates 'phenomena', and chemistry, which synthesizes substances. (shrink)

In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

This is one of the seminal articles of the pragmatist tradition where C.S. Peirce sets out his doctrine of doubt and belief --and their relationship to inquiry and clarity of our concepts. Originally published in the Popular Science Monthly; and widely available in reprints and collections of Peirce's writings.

UNCLEAR as it is, the traditional doctrine that the notion "meaning" possesses the extension/intension ambiguity has certain typical consequences. The doctrine that the meaning of a term is a concept carried the implication that mean- ings are mental entities. Frege, however, rebelled against this "psy- chologism." Feeling that meanings are public property-that the same meaning can be "grasped" by more than one person and by persons at different times-he identified concepts (and hence "intensions" or meanings) with abstract entities rather than (...) mental entities. However, "grasping" these abstract entities was still an individual psychological act. None of these philosophers doubted that understanding a word (knowing its intension) was just a matter of being in a certain psychological state (somewhat in the way in which knowing how to factor numbers in one's head is just a mat- ter of being in a certain very complex psychological state). (shrink)

Mereology is the logic of part—whole concepts as they are used in many different contexts. The old chemical metaphysics of atoms and molecules seems to fit classical mereology very well. However, when functional attributes are added to part specifications and quantum mechanical considerations are also added, the rules of classical mereology are breached in chemical discourses. A set theoretical alternative mereology is also found wanting. Molecular orbital theory requires a metaphysics of affordances that also stands outside classical mereology.

Part 1 outlines the complex, parallel historical evolution of Ziegler-Natta catalysts and related problems. In Part 2, as a general method of inquiry, chemical language and discourse are analyzed, at first to clarify chemists' epistemic views and the ontological status of catalysts. After analyzing contrasting definitions of 'catalyst' and the chemical properties of catalysts, a suitable metaphor is suggested for catalytic activity, and then 'applied' to different cases of industrial catalysis (incl. Ziegler-Natta). The last two sections deal with intellectual attitudes (...) to industrial catalysis and the makeup of industrial catalysis as academic discipline. In conclusion, I suggest that references to the economic level of reality (the industrial production) serve both a better understanding of the microscopic level of reality (the chemical process), and a higher status at the social level of reality (the chemical community). (shrink)