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Abstract
Whether or not Chemistry may be reduced to the physical principles is responded to here in the negative in the light of atomic structure with reference to its chemical periodic properties (e.g. atomic number, triads of periodic system, electronegativity), while reviewing similar ideas from Scerri's recent work on Periodic Table.
Keywords: electronic configuration, atomic number, atomic triads, chemical vs. physical concepts
1. Introduction
In celebrating the International Year of Chemistry in 2011 it is worth rethinking what Chemistry has added to the human knowledge, and what was not accomplished by other disciplines, Physics for instance - often seen (and rightly in a general or quantitative sense) as the foreground bath of natural laws, if not the depositary of all Natural laws (and eventually the philosophy) as we learn from the great Newton.
However, it is worth noting that in the times after the Middle Age there was a recrudescence reaction against any natural laws that were presumably against the theological doctrine of "believing without researching". Chemistry was in fact the single discipline that emerged as an independent field of knowledge. This happened perhaps because it was regarded as containing enough mystery such that crude minds would be never corrupted from seeing Nature through the veil of initiation.
In fact, Alchemy, was the only pseudo-science present in those days, to which Newton itself, among others preeminent figures, adhered to in addition of being proud to be considered as belonging to. Let us recall his vision about light as being composed from elementary particles "sympathetic one to each other", i.e. manifesting a sort of chemistry among them, or describing the body interactions by engaged "sympathies" among corps, what were duly later recognized as corresponding to noless than the "second quantization" of Physics (fields to elementary/quantable corpuscles).
Therefore, one may say that Chemistry is a special way to see physical phenomena, there where the mass or number of particles does not count in macroscopic way. And this is the first big leap of Chemistry: it seems to deal with macroscopic things when in fact it deals with observable quantities - that is a different approach of reality; this, because observability is not a given fact but an emerging effect whose cause lies in microscopic reality of...