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Comte's Hierarchy: Chemistry's Central Role

The document discusses how chemistry can be seen as the central science according to Auguste Comte's hierarchical classification of sciences. Chemistry is built on an understanding of physics but also possesses emergent concepts such as periodicity and chemical bonds that are more than just the underlying physical forces.

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Dave Soriano
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36 views1 page

Comte's Hierarchy: Chemistry's Central Role

The document discusses how chemistry can be seen as the central science according to Auguste Comte's hierarchical classification of sciences. Chemistry is built on an understanding of physics but also possesses emergent concepts such as periodicity and chemical bonds that are more than just the underlying physical forces.

Uploaded by

Dave Soriano
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

The central role of chemistry can be seen in the systematic and 

hierarchical classification of the


sciences by Auguste Comte. Each discipline provides a more general framework for the area it
precedes (mathematics → astronomy → physics → chemistry → physiology and medicine → social
sciences).[3] Balaban and Klein have more recently proposed a diagram showing the partial ordering
of sciences in which chemistry may be argued is “the central science” since it provides a significant
degree of branching.[4] In forming these connections the lower field cannot be fully reduced to the
higher ones. It is recognized that the lower fields possess emergent ideas and concepts that do not
exist in the higher fields of science.
Thus chemistry is built on an understanding of laws of physics that govern particles such
as atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, thermodynamics, etc. although it has been shown that it has
not been “fully 'reduced' to quantum mechanics”.[5][6] Concepts such as the periodicity of the elements
and chemical bonds in chemistry are emergent in that they are more than the underlying forces
defined by physics.

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