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A chemical element, treated as a concept, entails objects and attributes. From the eighteenth century to date, objects include substances up to quasi-molecular species and nuclides. Attributes range from non-decomposability up to lifetimes of 10^-14 seconds. By analyzing the historical changes of the concept, we found the central role “chemical reaction” has played. However, historical changes of objects and attributes of the concept of chemical element lead to expand chemical reactions to the more general “chemical relations,” which contain traditional chemical reactions and any kind of relation between chemical species. In such a setting, a general structure for the concept of chemical element is presented that entails chemical species as objects and detected chemical relations and experimental measurement of atomic number as attributes.

Philosophers sometimes discuss the “ontological status” of this or that kind of entity. They should be addressing one of the following questions, or the word ontological is being misused: 1. Does X exist? 2. Under what conditions can X exist? 3. Do we have good reasons to think that X exists? All three questions can be asked about elements, and have been asked. Aristotle criticized the atomist account of chemical combination, according to which elements survive in their compounds. Eighteenth-century chemists rejected the Aristotelian view, although tacitly; they simply assumed that an element lives on in its compounds. Nineteenth-century chemists gradually adopted (an adapted form of) atomism, according to which an element can exist wherever its characteristic atoms do. The periodic table also allowed them to ask, of its empty spaces, whether they correspond to real but unknown elements. Priority disputes forced them to consider when there is sufficient evidence for the discovery of new elements. In the 1920s, IUPAC proposed a very thin definition of an element, according to which an element exists wherever its characteristic nuclear charge does. But according to some scientists, it is now challenged by the fleeting existence of some superheavy elements; if a nucleus cannot survive long enough to acquire a stable electronic structure, then it cannot be said to have any chemical properties. How then can it be called a chemical element? In this paper I explore this latest ontological question, in the light of a sufficiently nuanced understanding of earlier ones. I then relate this discussion to a more general question about existence: the Special Composition Question.

The concept of element is fundamental to modern chemistry and yet it embodies an apparently persistent ambiguity that has remained unresolved for the nearly one hundred years since it was made official by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists (IUPAC) in 1923. This chapter presents a take on why this definition has the form it does, how it arose, and why it persists. Following the introductory overview, there are two historical sections, one on Immanuel Kant whose imprint on modern philosophy and science persists in various forms, including the genesis and interpretation of the IUPAC definition. Kant initially dismissed chemistry as a science, though he had a lifelong interest in this area. In his later years, his opinion about chemistry changed in response to the rapid growth of the field in the late 1700s. This change of mind had a profound impact on him; he began, but could not finish, a significant revision to his critical philosophy of science. The other historical section is on Ernst Cassirer, founder of the Marburg school of neo-Kantian thought, who wrote about chemistry both before and after the IUPAC definition above. Despite Cassirer’s deep engagement with the cultural and intellectual history and philosophy of science, very little is to be found about him in the literature of the philosophy of chemistry. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Cassirer’s relational understanding of chemistry with Guillermo Restrepo’s mathematical chemistry, and then with Joachim Schummer’s conceptual analysis of the “chemical core of chemistry.”

This chapter focuses on the thesis of Paracelsus in the new era. Paracelsus wrote that there is nothing inside the body that is not observable from the outside, and that is the antithesis of Vesalius's position. Most of Paracelsus's biographical details are uncertain. Paracelsus, in contrast to Vesalius, did not look into the body and he even did not find the words used convincing. The important thing is that he compared the processes in the body with the processes he had seen at the metal foundry in Carinthia, or somewhere else. He had observed that in nature, external to humans, there are flammable substances. There is an underlying principle to these substances. This he called sulfur, the principle of the sulfuric, that which is oily and flammable. Paracelsus knew no chemical elements but he recognized principles of effect. Fire possessed the greatest meaning for him. It was the most important power that Paracelsus recognized to dissociate, to separate.

This chapter investigates the interconnectedness of mining knowledge in a wider German and Swedish cultural sphere, and how the Officials of the Bureau began to distinguish themselves from their counterparts in the mining regions of the Holy Roman Empire. It outlines how officials of the Bureau such as Georg Brandt and Axel Fredrik Cronstedt created a new type of mechanical, mineralogical chemistry by integrating chymistry with assaying practices, and with the natural history of e. g., Carl Linnaeus. This thoroughly transformed the production of knowledge at the Bureau, and established the foundations of a new cameralist science of mining, devoid of what now had come to be regarded as superfluous speculation, and with a new theoretical and methodological foundation in chemistry and physics/mechanics.

This chapter analyzes how humans owe their existence to the rich variety of chemical elements that exist in the universe. The solar system contains hydrogen to power the Sun; iron and silicon to build rocky planets; and carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to form the building blocks of life. Almost 100 elements occur naturally in the solar system in varying amounts. Some, like hydrogen, oxygen, and iron, are abundant everywhere. Others, like gold, silver, and uranium, are much less common. The mixture of elements has remained almost constant since the solar system formed, apart from changes deep in the Sun's interior. The chapter shows how the composition of the solar system was shaped by events elsewhere in the universe dating back to the Big Bang itself.