The relationship between chemistry and physics from the perspective of Bohmian mechanics

In the practice of chemistry, the problems are set aside or even ignored under the assumption that the link between the chemical and the physical domains is gradual and continuous: chemistry, with its concepts and regularities, would arise as the result of applying different approximations to the quantum descriptions. However, during the last years many authors have stressed the conceptual breakdown between the two domains (Woolley 1978, Primas 1983, 1998, Amann 1992, Lombardi and Labarca 2005, Labarca and Lombardi 2010). More recently, Hinne Hettema (2012, p. 368) recognizes the “ontological discontinuity” between chemistry and physics: certain terms, used both in chemistry and in physics, refer to different items in the two disciplines. According to this author, such discontinuity is “one of the central problems in the philosophy of chemistry, around which many other problems, such as that of reduction, revolve.” (Hettema 2012, p. 368).