Chemistry has always characterized in the emphasis on the qualitative properties and in its opposition to reductionist philosophy. In this book, I show the importance of structured matter at the molecular level as source of the wealth of reality. This creates a number of different entities as particular as to deserve a specific name. As a consequence, the reductionist perspective is insufficient to make us understand one of the most important aspects of the real world: the existence of ordered entities, each one with its own structure and its organization. The idea of this book is that the reductionist and holistic approaches are partial: they capture important aspects of reality, and neglect others that are equally important. Both are essential for a scientific description of the world but only just taken together give a balanced description of reality. Today, the irreducibility of real entities to the reductionist approach, have bought new aspects in Systemic and in the so-called “Sciences of Complexity”. This book can be linked to these important cultural areas.
Chemistry has always characterized in the emphasis on the qualitative properties and in its opposition to reductionist philosophy. In this book, I show the importance of structured matter at the molecular level as source of the wealth of reality. This creates a number of different entities as particular as to deserve a specific name. As a consequence, the reductionist perspective is insufficient to make us understand one of the most important aspects of the real world: the existence of ordered entities, each one with its own structure and its organization. The idea of this book is that the reductionist and holistic approaches are partial: they capture important aspects of reality, and neglect others that are equally important. Both are essential for a scientific description of the world but only just taken together give a balanced description of reality. Today, the irreducibility of real entities to the reductionist approach, have bought new aspects in Systemic and in the so-called “Sciences of Complexity”. This book can be linked to these important cultural areas.
Giovanni Villani is a chemical researcher of Italian Research Council with interest in the epistemological and historical aspects of science. He published La chiave del mondo. Dalla fi losofi a alla scienza: l’onnipotenza delle molecole (2001), Complesso e organizzato (2008) and Mendeleev (2017).
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