 Yeah, well, hi everyone. It's a real pleasure introducing my good friend, Professor Klaus Rutenbeig. And it's an honor to kick off this philosophy of chemistry seminar with Klaus. Klaus was one of the founding fathers, I can say, of the philosophy of chemistry, so 30 years ago I guess by now. And since then, yes, carved out his very own research style in philosophy of chemistry, which has always been very inspired by the history of chemistry, especially 19th century chemistry. He's one of the great experts on Pannet, Ostwald, Wild, all of them were philosophers of chemistry, avant la lettre, you can say. And all of that culminated recently in his book, Heinephilosophy, which is going deeply into philosophy of chemistry. But as you will see, and I'm sure you'll notice it during this book as well, Klaus is not easily swayed by reductionist arguments or by the essentialist arguments of metaphysicians. He's someone who sticks very closely to the empirical side of chemistry. It's very interesting what substances and stuff are. And he's about to tell us more about catalysis, which is a huge topic in chemistry, one of the more important topics in chemistry, which has earned a lot of Nobel prizes recently. And yet there is little to no research done from philosophical perspective on the whole topic of catalysis. So this is going to be, yeah, I think a start to some exciting new research on catalysis. So Klaus, the floor is yours. Thank you, Peter. Thank you for the invitation. I'm happy to be back in Belgium. It was not really easy to get here because of the German trains. Especially the very, very fast trains never come to the destination, at least not in time. Yeah, and I think the most important things Peter has said already, I have been here in Belgium, not in Duval, but in Leuven, in 26, I think, I worked with Jaap van Brakel, maybe some of you know him. Hopefully some of you know him. Jaap van Brakel was the host of a bigger project, which it was with us as well, on stuff. That means on chemical substances. And since then I've been back four or five times, but this is the first time here. And the first time I must admit in the French-speaking part of it. Okay, so I can begin, hopefully. It's not, so to say, all work and progress, as many of the seminar times as hopefully. So there are no results, in a way, which you can take with you as takeaway messages. But let's see. Strangely, I'm reading something, because my English is not so fluent as yours, but maybe you were born there while the people speak English. Strangely, that is the beginning now. The recent philosophy of chemistry lacks any detailed studies of catalysis, a process whose technical applications continue to greatly affect our daily life, and which has been researched at enormous cost for more than a century now in the chemical sciences. This deficiency cannot be remedied in its entirety here, of course. However, I would like to draw your attention to a few critical or crucial aspects. What does a chemical reaction tell us? What does a chemical reaction equation tell us? Just as a warm-up. One should always check whether everything is to be seen for the others as well. This is the equation we are writing down for the process of bringing together the elements of nitrogen and hydrogen, for those who are not so familiar with chemistry, but many, hopefully, all of you have seen some similar things. Now we could ask what does that reaction equation tell us? It's clear what I said already. It's nitrogen and hydrogen in a certain proportion of amounts reacting to ammonia. By the way, we will be talking about, what we will have referred to that process again later. So keep that in mind. In the first place, you could mean, okay, obviously, there is a way to make ammonia, NH3, from nitrogen and hydrogen. And we, as well, know how many atoms, if you like, or how many moles of those substances have to be put together to yield two moles of ammonia. So that looks pretty algebraic and pretty deterministic to use a philosophical word. But then you might ask, and the professionals do ask, in which state, which aggregate state, we would need those elements, and then you would come up with an equation like the upper one. So this upper reaction equation tells us that we have to use or that we can use those elements in the gazes state, and it will yield some amount of ammonia as well in the gazes state. So if we examine in the laboratory, examine that process, using nitrogen and hydrogen, we will come up with a result that even if the reaction is over, at least to our senses over, we would still measure some amount of the educts of hydrogen and nitrogen, in this case. And therefore, people in the 19th century, maybe even a third of those people who were inventing the theory of mass action, which is, by the way, unfortunately translated into German as Theometer Massenwirkung, which is wrong, because it's not the Massenwirkung if you take mass as the physical notion, because here is meant amount of mass. So that is a critical thing because some philosophers, even philosophers of science do interpret that theory of mass action as being something different than the chemists do think. Here, in the second line, I'm referring to the equilibration of this process. So at a certain stage, this process might be, so to say, quite, might be not working anymore, because we are not sensing, looking, or maybe measuring some other movement in the mixture of those materials. So we have to keep in mind that no chemical reaction, not only this one here, but no chemical reaction is really finished when we think it is finished. It is never finished. It is always a forward and backward at the same time. And we can, this is our possibility, we can measure those substances and put them in the proportion This proportion is here shown as the partial pressure of those substances and the proportion leads to what we call the equilibrium constant. Hence, chemical reactions do inform us at best roughly about the involved substances and again roughly about educts and protons. In real equilibria, however, chemical processes do not reach an end, as I said already. In other words, chemical determinism can by no means be realized. We have to keep that in mind when we meet deterministic analytical philosophers. If they talk about free will, they do as if, or they pretend as if, everything that happens in the brain, normally they are talking about the brain, there are other things going on in the body, maybe some of you know better than me. Even very easy equations and easy processes are not really deterministic. This is my main question here in that maybe 45 minutes. Whereas the art of experimentation does not have unlimited influence on the result of synthesis, one can affect the path and rate of the reaction by manipulating the reaction conditions. Slowing down a reaction that could be called a sort of negative catalysis, we can think about that later. Slowing down a reaction is always possible in principle. But can the opposite be achieved as well? How is it possible to accelerate a reaction? This is the question those colleagues in the research of catalysis are asking all the time. Is it possible and how is it possible? The fundamental idea is obvious and maybe even simple. If the distance between the reactants slows down the reaction, then they must be brought together more often per unit of time in order to accelerate the reaction. The condition of particles of the reactants is a prerequisite of realizing the reaction. Chemistry is always happening at the same place. Those educts and maybe even the products have to be at the same place in space, at the same spot, so to say. Whereas the chemical thermodynamics largely does not require sub-microscopic images, modern chemical kinetics, that is the field in which temporality is the central motion of time, is the question there, immediately launches conceptually into the sub-microscopic range. The kinetics, chemical kinetics are only possible if we are thinking of particles. And yet the empirical point of departure, as always in chemistry, is the phenomenology of substance. Of the four state variables, pressure, volume, temperature and quantity of substance, which by the way are contributing to the concept of substance, everything like pressure, volume, temperature and the quantity of substance as well, of course, have to do with substances. The temperature has the best chances of influencing the reaction. In the first place you think of temperature, increasing temperature and hope that such a reaction would be accelerated. A rule of thumb, which we use, not every day but in many versions, says that the temperature increase of 10 degrees will double the reaction velocity. This is not really actually correct, but it is normally the way we are thinking as chemists, thinking of increasing the velocity of chemical processes. The category of time for describing chemical reactions was introduced relatively late in the second half of the 19th century. The more precise study of reaction rates and curses, that is the emergence of the branch of chemical kinetics, brought with it the development of notions about the processes we call catalytic. Catalysis in chemistry describes a phenomenon whereby reaction is accelerated by a substance that itself does not occur in the reaction equation. Wilhelm Ostwald, I will be talking about him, because I know him quite well, I think at least, honored with the 1909 Nobel Prize for his work, exceptionally in this field, aptly summarizes the phenomenon nearly a decade later. There it is, hopefully you can read it. In many cases, the rate change from the presence of such substances is slight, in others very significant. In certain cases, even almost immeasurably, small amounts of foreign substances are enough to increase the rate to several multiples of its initial value or reduce it to a small fraction of it. Again, the reduction, you see, is decreasing. The term catalysis was introduced around 1835 already by Jöns Jakob Lassilius, a Swedish chemist with enormous influence, who identified the phenomenon. He describes it as different from conventional chemical affinity and suspects that its nature is not dissimilar to the known electrochemical relationships. He was talking, he loved to talk about electrochemical relationships, by the way. As so often in chemistry, when the success of an application has highest priority, the term catalysis and even initial applications had become accepted long before the infusion of an appropriate theory. The more familiar early applications of technical significance include the production of sulfuric acid from a sulfurous acid by means of nitrous acid or nitrogen oxide, acid-catalyzed reactions in organic chemistry, the breakdown of starch into sugar in the presence of acids, the oxidation of combustible gases on heated platinum and also the oxygen-hydrogen reaction on the so-called platinum response at room temperature, which became famous by the Dover Einer's lamp, maybe you have seen that in some museum. That is a piece of platinum and if you put hydrogen and oxygen into that bottle it will flame up and give a sort of lamp, if you like. What these reactions have in common is that certain substances, here in that case platinum, certain substances influence the process without themselves being consumed. It was soon noticed that this phenomenon is very specific and that not every substance can influence any random reaction. However, there was no catalytic affinity theory at that time, 1825. Berzilius gave the phenomenon a name but made no attempt to postulate a theory. Nonetheless, he spoke of an intrinsic force and suspected that giving a name would be helpful to further research. As early as 1834 only, Eilhard Mitschelich, who had been with Berzilius as a post-doctoral student since 1822 was a professor in Berlin, had introduced the expression contact reaction before describing the acceleration of a reaction. Berzilius criticizes the letter with the argument that contact between substances is necessary for all chemical processes and the term contact reaction is therefore not sufficiently specific. Yet the term catalysis also has its drawbacks. The German translation, Celsetzon, many of you read and understand German, almost all of them, although I know one, he pretends not to speak German and we never spoke a German word together. And he knows how good I am in English. Additionally, a literal interpretation places the term overly close to the decomposition meaning of analysis. Celsetzon means decomposition. Additionally, a literal interpretation places the term overly close to the decomposition meaning of analysis, like cutting into pieces, which has nothing to do with analytical chemistry, by the way. Analytical chemistry is not just cutting into pieces, it's just much more. Thus it is more the power of personal influence and not the intrinsic conceptual power of persuasion that is behind the general acceptance of this expression. We find those examples in many places, in the history of science, of course. Friedrich Wöhler invested a lot of effort and time in explaining to his friend Libig, Gustav Libig, maybe you know him, then to his friend Libig, the eldest of the Swedish teacher, and in attempting to turn him away from the reproach of a new vis or cultar or vis vitalis, something like this. Yet his efforts met with little success. Oswald later stopped by Berthelius. They were friends, at least friendly. Although he himself missed no opportunity, Oswald had no opportunity to criticize theoretical speculations poorly supported by empirical findings and in his own work usually tended not to venture into theory. As with the affinity that he studied early in his career, he started with affinity. Even the Nobel Prize was in part given to him because of his works in his doctoral thesis 30 years ago. In Grundres der allgemein Chemie, I missed that one, quite early 1899 as you can see, he says something about Libig as well. Libig was not his friend, they were fighting all the time, maybe not hopefully, not personally, but in their works. I'm just reading the yellow part here. Libig assumed that a substance in decomposition or chemical motion can communicate its chemical motion to another that is present and not decomposing and thereby bring that substance to decomposition. So Libig as another metaphysical idea, which Oswald didn't like. According to Oswald, the broad, apparent explanation of the instigation hypothesis of Libig has had no success other than to delay the study of the problem for half a century. In other places as well, Oswald accused Libig to be, so to say, some problem to be just decreasing the progress of chemistry, which is maybe right in some parts and totally wrong. Libig finds the idea of force inappropriate that replaces it with another, as you have seen, speculative motion, which presumably comes from comparison with fermentation processes. Oswald assumes that the cause of a substance change is a chemical potential that is in thermodynamic terms, negative or free and lovely, as we would put it today. Consequently, he feels the instigation hypothesis is not conclusive. In his view, the chemical process is already underway, albeit immeasurably slowly. Oswald claims that every chemical process, if the substances are there in one room, is already starting from the beginning on, without maybe our recognition. Another guy, Alvin Mittas, a quite funny photo, but I just wanted to show you at least one photo of each, and Alvin Mittas, who studied under Oswald, he heard his philosophical lectures in Leipzig and received his doctorate in Einstein, which is another quite well known chemist in the group of the historians of chemistry. And Mittas argues in his writings on the philosophy of chemistry for another interpretation, a different interpretation, different from what his teacher was saying. For him, the catalytic effect is an occasioning, initiating or actualating causality. In his writings, we find a scientific and methodological standpoint that is extremely rare among chemists, that is this one. The classification of catalysis within the study of reaction kinetics is a matter of science. It's epistemological classification within the whole of nature's causal relationships is a matter of philosophy. Maybe he's right with that. Yet it is not worthy that this philosophical work has primarily been undertaken by men who were natural scientists and not specialized philosophers. Peter was telling you that we have a quite new group of philosophers of chemistry since the beginning of the 90s, of the last century, and almost all of them, like me and Peter, are, although we have not been... where have you been in the 90s? It's still correct what he's saying. Mittag does not give very good marks to the community of specialized philosophers of his time, when it comes to chemical or catalytic causality. However, this is hardly surprising because in this day, there were very few philosophers who had developed enough interest in chemistry as a reference science. And therefore a few chemists have of necessity become active in the philosophy of chemistry themselves. It is also interesting to note that the research interests among the handful of academic philosophers now some who were initially chemists usually have little to do with chemistry. I think five people who studied chemistry and then went into philosophy. The indirect, I must say, the dispute between Ostwald and Mittag as indirect has always been dispute between Mittag, the proponent of the catalytic actuation thesis, and Ostwald, the thermodynamicist, is not merely one of words. Ostwald rejects the causal influence of the catalyst as a driving force categorical. He says there is no causal influence on the process only by just pushing it into an ion, so to say. Mittag, who played a crucial role in developing the catalytic actuation thesis of ammonia, we have seen the equations already, and therefore very well knows what he is talking about. It does not mean only his actuation, it is only his actuation thesis. Rather, he would like to consider both elements, the driving force and the actuation effect as an integrated whole. As we have seen, substance permutation is actually complete. No chemical process is complete. We can just talk about and negotiate and say, we think it is complete, but if you look closely, no process is complete, if it is really a process. The notion of an infinitesimal reaction rate prior to contact with the catalyst cannot be excluded. Oswald might be correct in certain cases, we can even measure, although we cannot see very well that there is a process going on, we can measure if we are good in analytical chemistry. Oswald is not wrong in this regard, but he does not see the whole process. Let's consider a non-chemical example. There we have a simple example. A brick lying on the edge of a roof. The potential that pulls the brick down can be easily quantified if we multiply mass, height and acceleration due to gravity. All of us know that in school. And by equating this potential energy with kinetic energy, we can predict the speed at which the brick will hit the ground when it falls. All of us can do that easily. Thus we would understand the cause and even some of the future events. Yet the crucial point that Mittorch describes better in the corresponding chemical case is this, we do not know if or when the brick will leave the edge of the roof. We do not know when that will happen. If we only talk about the equilibrium, we are giving a sort of description that is not complete. Comprehending potentiality is necessary but not sufficient for a comprehensive description and explanation of the processing. This is really important. Comprehending potentiality is necessary but not sufficient for a comprehensive description and explanation of the process. What I have just said is the sentence you should use if you talk to quantum physicists. Because some of them are thinking quantum theory is just falling out of the blue somewhere. It is very, very important for everything. But if you can describe only the potentiality which the Schrodinger equation is doing, you do one thing that is important and nice, but you are not able to describe any chemical process, any biological thing. And to speak here of an actuation of causality as Mittorch understands it does not necessarily include the claim of causation. To put that brick down to Earth is maybe some people would say that's the causation. No, the causation that is correct with Ostwald that the causation is just the gravidity that puts the stone down. It is surprising that even after having received Nobel honors in good part for his catalytic investigations, I told you that there are other parts as well, Ostwald admits to be not yet clear about the nature of catalysis here in the fifth edition of his Rundris der Eigeneinchen. That's one. Catalysis, maybe only the first line, has not yet been scientifically explored in great detail because despite its importance and despite its having been known for about a hundred years, that is from 1917, it has only recently begun to be studied systematically. The yellow ones, as regards the previously accepted laws of catalysis it should first be emphasized that this is a very general phenomenon. It's his claim even later that this is maybe a phenomenon that we cannot just put aside when we are talking about chemistry as a whole. The other one, the other yellow part yet no general law has yet been found that expresses specific relationships between the type of reaction and that of the catalysis. Here we are, maybe the last one as well. Meanwhile, precisely the last sentence precisely the cases have suggested a theory which in many cases has proven in essence to be correct. It consists in the assumption of an intermediate reaction. Intermediate reaction. Here often there's a claim or a sentence that is uttered by a phenomenonist, chemist and philosopher. Here we are reading the writings of Wilhelm Ostwald who by his own standards is leaning pretty far out of window. For a long time he applied his eloquence and influence in fending of speculative theoretical entities. And although his conversion to atomism is a modernistic fairy tale we have to be very, very clear that there is one mentioning in the form of one of his textbooks but he never changed his mind to atomistic ideas. But here I must admit so to say as a sort of anti-atomist or non-atomist the notion of intermediate reactions or even intermediate stages that one can detect empirically only indirectly or even not at all is something he would have rejected categorically some years before. However in today's chemistry in which theoretical and manifest entities are more or less treated equally the so-called theory of the transitional state is the exception of Ostwald prefers the acceleration concept to the actuation concept which is why he does not use an expression such as activation energy. Although the activation energy was invented by a friend of him of a news we will have a look at this equation in a minute he never talked about activation energy Ostwald which is quite interesting if not straight Actuation cannot occur without expanding energy however kicking the brick may cost only a small amount of energy but it is a necessary amount despite the fact that it does not appear in the energy balance of the process in question and this line of thought also makes it clear that the dispute again indirect dispute between Ostwald and Wittorch is attributable to the difference in how they view the system that is more theoretically a theoretical idea Ostwald assumes a closed system an inertial system that allows an exchange of neither substances or energy Wittorch's conception allows the controlling intervention of the catalyst by contact from outside so they have in mind maybe two different models as I think whereas Ostwald in his own studies almost exclusively observed homogeneous systems that is cases and solutions Wittorch at BISF at the company BASF had researched systems had developed the heterogeneous catalyst and gas reactions by solid catalysts especially the synthesis of ammonia for many years these different lines of work doubtlessly had no small influence on these researchers' choice of their respective theoretical interpretation the actuation conception correlates very well with the activation energy here is one version of the equation of Arrhenius you can see this EA that is the activation energy today we would say activation enthalpy but it's almost the same in modern chemical kinetics yes that's what I thought when I saw this for the first time but it's worth a Nobel Prize it's part of a description of Gerhard Erthel who won the Nobel Prize for the interpreting the processes of the ammonia synthesis in the catalyst these energy diagrams like the one you can see here show in partial steps with amounts which amounts of energy are required to achieve a certain synthetic goal for example forming ammonia from the elements first requires breaking down the starting molecules so now we know much better how those processes are going on although we are making in large amounts ammonia in the industry since 1910 this is the second decade of the last century but no one knew exactly what is going on there under standard conditions the exothermic and exagonic reaction is unfortunately very slow but increasing the temperature shifts the equilibrium situation unfavorably it was discovered that significantly increasing the pressure improved the yield particularly because this made it possible to achieve the high temperatures necessary for any catalytic effectiveness without catalysts enormous amounts of activation energy would be necessary whereas with the catalyst first developed primarily by Nittas only far smaller barriers have to be overcome so this is the result of a work of maybe 30 years or so in the Fritz-Alder Institute in Berlin by mainly the group of Gerhard Erdrich the first few of a whole series of adsorption processes you can see here everything that is download listed has some indices like ad and so on all these particles are sitting on the surface and this quite interesting that could happen no one could just know or predict that that would happen the catalysts which were used in the industrial processing were found by the way by trial and error of course we had no theory we could not just predict which catalysts would be working which other catalysts would not be working I have the impression that the modern catalysis catalyst research is still something like increasing the temperature cannot increase the reaction rate and thus the yield in every case although we think that for 10 degrees we have the doubling of the velocity in some cases it's not possible increasing the temperature cannot increase the reaction rate and thus the yield in every case and to any desired extent in the best case heating leads to auto catalysis as increasing the total number of collisions also increases the number of effective collisions that result in deployment yet it is important to understand the application framework in this article again says something that hopefully will occur in chemistry it is primarily the range of medium and low temperatures in which the actuation and directionality due to various influences play a major role as chemical impediments continuously decrease with increasing temperature the reaction rate increases correctly one will hardly find any chemical reactions of the usual sort at 2000 degrees but all the more so in the lower temperature ranges in which people normally observe and perform chemical reactions this I think is a crucial specification of the catalysis concept and essentially of chemistry as a whole at extremely high temperatures every substance disintegrates and if no more chemical reactions are possible then it is obviously pointless to talk of actuation and acceleration Midas as well as the Nobel Prize winners Fritz Halber and Karl Bosch could hardly imagine what exactly the reaction mechanism looks like and why their ammonia synthesis was successful that is the situation we have always seen it is normal situation the mechanism was only deciphered with modern methods of surface examination Gerhard Erdrich I will show you the picture of this world in this case too the practical success preceded the scientific knowledge and now a sort of excursion normally we should not do excursions at the end of the talk because people are sleeping in a way ok I will show you the other guy as well this is from a small booklet written by Aldi Mittas William Ostwald's Auslösungsvere actuation and there he Mittas puts the picture of Ostwald into the book it is quite interesting because Ostwald as I told you Auslösungsvere on the other side ok now it is Ostwald's term undoubtedly to the surprise of some attendees William Ostwald addresses this topic the chemical theory of free will at the meeting of the mathematical, physical of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in Leipzig on the 3rd of December in 1894 1894 he was professor already but he was still quite young however he does Ostwald does not expand the fully developed theory of free will for he devotes only about the last 10th of the printed version of the lecture to philosophical questions anyways it is interesting to have a look at this very small paper the connection with the present talk arises from the concept of catalysis Ostwald begins his lecture with a discussion of the relationship between energy and time he says the only form of energy that does not allow any temporal reason is kinetic energy and then he says on the other hand the proposition that all natural occurrences are sufficiently determined is a required posture sufficiently determined it must follow that aside from the known laws of energetics and the law of the exceptional case one or more other laws are present by which the temporal cause of the processes is clearly determined even in those cases in which the energy conditions do not include any temporal determination such laws have hardly been sought much less fun finally Ostwald reshapes his previously pessimistic depiction of research into the outlook that progress will indeed eventually reveal these things where as I'm sorry there was no lack of good intentions in the last decade of the 19th century this hardly altered the fundamental situation that Ostwald himself knows nearly a quarter of a century later in the Squintresteiger 19th maybe only the yellow one first he is saying it could be that the kinetic part of science is the more fundamental one but then the more important thing if I'm as far as I'm concerned is the yellow one on the other hand it has not been possible to establish a general principle which would provide information about the field in a similar manner as the various equilibrium principles based on the generalization of the second law of thermodynamics two for chemical statics this is quite interesting for those people who think that Ostwald turned to atomistic thinking and working he is recognizing that there is some good work done in the kinetics but then he says what I was just reading and I must say this situation that we are still still is the difference between thermodynamics and kinetics in chemistry is still consisting it's still there as chemical kinetics lacks the altifies of equilibrium and the additivity of energy forms every individual experimental approach has to be studied separately functional there is no theory there is some description material but no theory to predict things that are really interesting in chemistry not to predict some things I can think of as a theoretist on the retail precise predictions or advanced calculations that is what I said of actual chemical process preferably even up initial are not possible still not possible and this I am saying not because I am just fighting against the kinetics in chemistry but it's really necessary to talk about meaning or notions this is one point of view in his Leipzig lecture that on free will Oswald used the expression actuation phenomenon for examples like explosions yet he avoids the term actuation in the sense of causation of a substance that is quite interesting this point in time is fundamentally energetic is fundamentally energetic attitude has already become predominant so that one can speak of an ontological determinism to put it more philosophically the origin of all natural processes is energetically determined however if and when this outcome that means equilibrium is established this makes it possible that is a quote possible to conceive of a structure determined by natural law in which even with the same initial states a different course occurs in that influences are at work that do require any finnid expenditure of energy and work to be activated a second postulate he gives here is closely related to the identity that is also discussed in the contemporary philosophy of mind identity of mind and body to put it very short quote we may regard all mental processes as inseparably linked to material and particularly chemical elements Oswald formates the third postulate which in the present context is of pivotal importance as an implication therefore if man human beings has a means of bringing to bear catalytic effects in the course of the chemical process linked with the mental ones then he does has the possibility of accelerating or decelerating these mental processes some might I would say if where several processes are simultaneously possible for example a primarily instinctive one and a consciously intended one Oswald sees the possibility that the latter will maintain primacy because the psychophysical processes he sees as required are accelerated and all the competing processes are decelerated in Oswald's thinking the fundamental ontological determinism stipulated by energetics is thus joined by an epistemological internal indeterminism that's the second one here it is in this possibility of controlling the speed of the psychophysical processes even though their occurrence is determined by natural law that is to say energetically that I now see the source of our sensation of free will as is hardly surprising when a substance scientist ventures so briefly and abruptly into philosophy and answered questions remain what could the willful control of substance catalysts look like which catalysts can be willfully utilized and which cannot are not biosynthesis and biochemistry similarly determined and so on nonetheless I would like to emphasize one aspect that is not unimportant and the claim put forward in past and current philosophical debates that sensations and expressions of will are physically and chemically determined as usually made use of a cliche written and often distorted depiction of chemistry and biochemistry in this depiction chemical reactions have a clear beginning and a defined end and are complete indeed one can formulate as we have seen equations like algebraic perfection the law of mass action is overlooked normally or only applied to those partial steps currently under discussion everything that occurs is clearly defined and seems to have a predetermined goal in this regard Oswald's idea of shedding light on the kinetic catalytic influence on human actions seems to need to be not only innovative in his day and age but still current enough to enrich the debates I mentioned other important natural scientists have also weighed in on the topic of free will as you may know for example in a thought experiment James Clark Maxwell arrives at a similar conclusion to Oswald that is epistemologically based free will with ontological determinism however he follows an atomistic mechanistic law which Oswald was not found of there is also a lecture by Max Planck with the title the law of causality and free will which he held in 1923 interestingly here he emphasizes the inaccessibility of the human inner self a notion similarly argued much later by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel I'm reading that without giving you the possibility to read with me indeed there is a Max Planck one single point in the white immeasurable world of nature and mind which is and always will be not only practically but also logically inaccessible to every science and therefore also to every causal observation this point is one's own self yes that should be almost my last slide this as you can see is again by the Nittas the opponent so to say of Oswald here and he interestingly tried himself to put this situation of mind and body into a picture like this here and I'm not going into detail but it's quite interesting here you have to read this from the inner part from the A up to the D the A would be it is on bio causality bio causality bio causality A is the consciousness consciousness and will and then step one step outside B is subconscious psychic realm C is the physical realm and D is the world of memory and action so to say the outside I'm not sure about that apparently Nittas proceeds from the assumption of a free will the other people as well although a genuinely chemical notion as an approach to explaining this free will is lacking here as it is with Oswald and by the way Nittas knew of course this excursion to the free will discussion of Oswald but he says this is quite weird it's not what that it's quite weird ok outro means I try to find some main points to bring something home so to say these are my points so catalysis is at the same time substantial and unchemical so catalysis had something in common with the noble gases by the way noble gases are of course substantial but not chemical here it's a little bit different but they are substantial of course but they are unchemical because they take no part in the reactions the second one it can be interpreted catalysis as actuation that would be Nittas or as acceleration that would be Oswald's way of chemical process according to the respective reference to open or closed system models that's my interpretation that they are using different models and third one the question remains open whether all chemical processes have a catalytic core remains open as far as I can see Oswald was one one of those who just claimed that this might be the case or is it the case and ontological determinism as some analytical philosophers assume this question if real chemistry is considered not only catalysis but even other parts of chemistry are not that straightforward yes analytical philosophers would like to have it that's it, thank you so we start with the other question sure, yeah I have a question that came in from the chat supposedly from Gary it is from Gary well good, you've been warned so he asked if you can address the role of Fenthoff in chemical dynamics modern approaches employ the concept of a reaction surface give certainly use such concepts starting with Maxwell fluctuations became an important part of the discussion of chemical processes Gary, do you hear me yeah, you're live so I'm not sure whether I'm filmed okay yes, actually I think the derivation of this so-called Arrhenius equation is as you know Gary taken from Fenthoff it was just Arrhenius just took the Fenthoff equation as we called it and then put over his own ideas at the moment I'm no expert of what Fenthoff said but I know that Fenthoff and Arrhenius and Ostwald were quite close in what they're doing and they even took up what is quite strange referring to Ostwald took up the ionic description so later they were called the ionists the three of them and that's quite strange because Ostwald never liked to talk about to talk about particles that have any charge maybe I'm maybe I'm too modern a chemist I'm always thinking if the word ion is forming of a small particle that has a charge but I think it's not easy to be a phenomenologist to be fighting against any atomism and at the same time being an ionist so earlier I tried to write about this for Ostwald in certain points he's not really clear what he's claiming in a way although Gary I think you put that time quite often that point quite often this change to atomism is I think not really reliable if you look at the historical Ostwald was not at the end of his life was not an atomist maybe he was thinking about other things as well but he's still in 17 and even in other books of him he was still trying to bring forward the substantial way of looking at chemistry substantial means the way of looking at substances and not the way of looking into the microscopic universe which is our doing today if I'm talking in a chemistry an actual room I'm using the same things but from from time to time I try to tell them people chemistry is about substance it's not about products it's not about electrons or maybe in quantum quantum is okay but you have to use it clearly okay hopefully that was an answer it was a question it's less than a question than a puzzle sometimes between actuation and acceleration if I try to understand the causal that's a different kind of causal process if I try to model my impressions so it's more common than a question if I try to modelize it like a manipulation account so relation between variables causality is some kind of dependency between variables actuation and acceleration almost the same on the other hand if I try to understand this as process causality they will be quite different because if one is something like you said like intermediate reaction will be a process entering in another process giving the product but if it's acceleration it's not an intermediate reaction as a process you will see a process some kind of constraint manipulating the field where the space where the process arrive the kind of things the process can do and it will be something from outside won't be internal but on the other hand I see how the philosopher that is say causality is only relation between variables this is metaphysics we should not discuss this distinction we will come in from that wants to discuss a little bit about kinds of process on the other hand I have no idea which is the right one even today with the atomic hypothesis I don't know do you have some idea about how people can map this process to the atomic stuff happening just to put that each time I have an intuition in chemistry Peter said to me all the time it's much more complicated than that there's an arrow in that and there's always an arrow in that sense and so I'm trying to because it's written like you said in the beginning it's a process from the beginning to the end so there's the attitude direction you are right it's still an open question because there is far too less probabilistic thinking in philosophy of chemistry so far what I haven't done by myself as well but I think we have to think about those processes as being probabilistic there is of course some way of starting a reaction some atoms or maybe particles are just meeting and pushing each other and if they come close something happens that is maybe steered by quantum processes I think so but the whole thing if you look at the chemistry or chemical process and the mixture of substances something is happening you can just even follow it looking at it not every partners reaction partners are just doing the same thing at the same time so some of those conditions are working out yielding the result yielding the product some not and even in between they might fall apart again and what we have is thermodynamics good back and forth theory it's just a description of the results of measurement of mass action we can just measure all these substances and then put them in proportion and then say now for this and that in surroundings or environment or ever for temperature and so on we can say that the equilibrium constant is such and such and there is no still no theory behind or the group of they found out the mechanism of this ammonia production they used surface analysis once so they try to to use every big machine you could have and then Max Planck and Citrus in Germany they have enough money to buy all these machines and they found out what he is stating in that picture and therefore there is still no background and he by the way if you read German I can send you a copy of this he by the way wrote I think 10 years ago wrote an article which I saw after the preparation of this one which where he was referring to the free will discussion as well so those people are in those areas they are sticking together clear there is no answer but when you say it is unchemical catalyst there is many ways to understand what is unchemical in your talk because if I see it is unchemical causally so it is not a typical chemical in that case I will think about acceleration I will say there is acceleration in a certain sense it is not part of the reaction it is changing the environment of the reaction but you probably wanted to say also it is unchemical in other sense so could you give more on unchemical? there are some places in chemistry where which are so to say described as chemistry which are unchemical which are not described in chemistry at all we talked about the super heavy elements of those things where we have had the luck to be part of a meeting of all the big shots in that field the organism and all these people and they many of them many of those products which are using again very large machines really thinking that they are referring to or presenting chemistry if they are making synthesizing so to say 5 or 7 cores of some very heavy atoms only the cores not the atom and not any chemical process therefore I would say I would tend to say this super heavy element research is not chemical research okay that is what I say those people are much more intelligent than me and maybe they have other arguments for this unchemical is in a way a noble gas noble gases we can only talk about or we can only think about if we are if we are using physical means they were found by physical means by spectroscopy of course and themselves they have been there, they have been with us they are still with us here 1% of the air we are breathing is argon but how do we know we don't know it not chemically but the application of physical means this is not dangerous but it means that chemical has to do with the central central grasp of certain changes certain properties or dispositions therefore the catalyst himself is not chemical because it is just outside some of the people define the catalysis in the same way it is not just there it is there and we can measure it, we can make it and we touch was very effective successful in making catalysis but it is not chemical so to say not a good setting because it is not part of the whole process on the other hand of course it is part of the process otherwise we could not accelerate so maybe it is not the wrong way what I wanted to say is that they are special typical but they are not chemical you entered the word in your answer you said disposition so they don't have chemical disposition if you define chemical disposition in a certain way these have chemical disposition however they have an inference on how chemical disposition is expressed themselves I am sceptic about disposition I like disposition but I see how a dispositionist have all the means to separate the three what I have read and what the analytical philosophers are doing with disposition is not what I am looking for but sometimes the philosophers claim that one should use such terms as well so what is really the case is that chemistry begins with substances even the chemistry that is referring to ending up at the super heavy elements all what they are doing they are doing with the substances and they are putting or doing without them I am looking for processes chemical processes those are typical changing disposition or the properties of the staffing systems substantial systems it is always not easy to define words for this because the word stuff is I know that there are some meanings for it which are not so well being you have this word stuff that is pretty clear just to follow up so I am not sure I mean to me the analysis is the most chemical yes I mean most typically chemical because this is something that does not happen in other processes like in physics and so on that is something that is there and technically not reacting actually has an influence to the point that we cannot say whether it is in or outside the system but it has to be there so I mean to me this is awfully chemical and that makes your work in the philosophy of chemistry so important is that you are picking up a topic that is not a phenomenon that is not happening elsewhere as far as I know and now about the unchemical I was also struck by the term and I wonder if you are not maybe struggling with the fact that they are in the reaction but they are not reactants would that be the thing because being unchemical and yet there are substantial I mean there are substance the platinum thing is you can feel it you can see it and so I wonder if that's your that's the what brings you to say that it's unchemical because I mean if I may add I do not agree with the fact that the chemicals or substance or chemical substance is only defined by its reactions that's my other thing so for instance you gave the example of noble gases first of some noble gases do actually react with fluoride yeah well they do and then of course then the problem is how do you define what is reaction and what is chemical property because Gary noted that in the chat by the way I want to give credit where credit studio also said see not hexaflora I would be a chat yeah but anyway so I wonder I see what you're after and I think this is struggling with words but words cover things and concepts so I think it's worth discussing but that was just my my maybe I was just sticking unconsciously to that system thinking that maybe I was just thinking of what happens in the system then I would be the partner of Ostwald of course because he was very good in describing what happens in the system the inertial system so to say without any exchange of energy and of substance of matter if you like the English term I don't like it and if you look at the catalyst like Mitter has seen it I think you are outside the system the system is the reaction and you have to restrict it in the description as we restrict every description to equations for example and if you are looking for what the catalysts do catalysts are doing you have to look outside and then come into but then it is not an inertial system anymore and maybe the chemical reverse to what happens in that system and what comes from outside maybe even some energy some other energy is not part of the core of the chemical description that you are right not any chemical has some chemical so to say dispositions you are right of course since the beginning of the 60s we know some compounds of the noble gases but it still is or it is a very exaggerated or inventive form of doing substances of making substances but ok this as well but you cannot say because you have found one exception cannot say this is done by several colleagues the noble gases can have some kind of processes this is not correct you can say there are some exceptions but to put a sort of electronegativity to assign an electronegativity for example for example I think the point was also struck by the unchemical for exactly the same reasons and so I was also trying to figure out why a catalyst would be unchemical I mean the noble gas I could see as being unchemical because it doesn't tend to react with other substances even though we can force them to form substances with different elements but a catalyst is reacting all the time I mean it is part of the reaction it didn't react with one of the reagents to form some kind of intermediate that then will give you a final product and helps to thereby accelerate or facilitate the whole reaction so they're very much part of the whole reaction they are very active ingredients in the reaction the only thing that makes it a catalyst is that it isn't consumed by the reaction so now it seems as if it would have to change and have to get consumed in order to be a chemical because otherwise I am also not by following why this would be unchemical it's a substance it's part of the reaction it's I admitted it was a sort of try to find a way to describe the two things that is that is there and it has some properties it might be a weight it might have some some properties which are not necessary to describe for the process we are looking at but it was unchemical I meant because it's not not part because otherwise we would put it into the equation if it would be part it would put into the equation we could we could be already you're not sitting too much you're not sitting too much you answer very well the second time you're not sitting too much to Peter the system explanation was perfect it depends the whole discussion depends on which scope you would have the scope of it of the submicroscopic reality it would be of course clear that there had been some processes on that surface of the catheters making but the problem is for me the problem is how to get there how do I know of this after what was really inventive not what but here she was using large machines to find out after 20 or 30 years of hard work found out that such process can be described as we have seen there so if I'm looking for substances I don't know that a good term for this I would say there's some some processes are chemical if you say everything that might happen on the surface of the catheters is a good reaction you can even describe the inner sort of equation then I would say you end up with almost everything that can be a chemical reaction but then I would ask why do we need any just what is this really going on if there's something else I have a question I'm a little curious about how to account the cause of power of the lines sorry and in terms of Julie Peele's causal models how to the final state of chemistry action does it have any cause of power cause of power is zero or not if I don't change the final state how to account the cause of power is cause of power but if it's present or not I don't know if your family or would you be a real conception of the causality but if not an answer it's typically if you associate the variables to the quantity of catalyst present it will have a causal effect so it's why at the beginning I said if you are in the manipulation account of causality there's not much difference between acceleration and actuation however if you are in the mind of the philosophy of chemistry so you are in the process you have changed as causality that seems to be it seems to have two completely different of the causality but of course they don't obviously have the manipulation account of causality which is just there's variables there if you change the variables there if the catalyst is not there the rate is completely different so it has cause of power according to Julie Peele hmm how to count the cause of power you know it just changed the speed of chemistry and action but in the framework of Julia Pearl you cannot think causality without a model so you always probe the causal relation between two variables so if you don't have such a thing as causal power or things that exist in the world we don't know it's always ok the rate of the final product the quantity of reactive is this thing participate causally active you just have to manipulate it but it it's not usually an accelerant it could be diminishing like you said sorry I think Oswald is still correct to refer to causal power but Oswald is still correct that the end of a reaction is not caused by any catalyst it's just an acceleration in this words and I think this is not really wrong there is a catalyst cannot so to say change the direction of the end of a reaction into a totally other way and this is I think normal chemistry it is able to accelerate the processes but the end of the process is determined he says it's a quite nice term for that or quite correct term the end is determined by thermodynamics by what we call the free entropy and for any part of those processes effort is describing for any part you can write a new equation you can try to find out what the thermodynamic situation is it's not very easy because they all happen on a very small scale on the surface of the catalyst in principle you can say all these processes are chemical reactions as well because they happen something nitrogen or hydrogen are just sticking or colliding with the catalyst colliding with this surface and then on any ground just held for a certain moment for some milliseconds maybe and if they are happy to be close to another partner for the reaction they are just coming together and this is much more complicated than we describe in the chemical reaction but any of those processes you can describe in steps of chemical reaction equations and for any of those steps you will have a sort of causal power this causal power will always be when chemists are describing it always be something we would call the chemists would call free energy, free energy although we might be not possible to measure it let me try again about the young chemical one point I thought I would understand what he is saying after that you answer to these guys and you can see too much and now I'm confused so I thought for you what is typically chemistry it's not just substance it's substance transformation so I thought for you did what is chemistry and physics something else so in that sense you have the notion of system that you introduced I have the reactant and I put this substance transform and in that case the catalyst even if it's very important that it's there is not chemical because the catalyst is a constraint on the chemical process but if you say and you can see to these guys that it could be also substance and not transformation of substance chemistry now I don't know why the catalyst is not here in chemistry but if you stick to your gun at the beginning you were insisting on the equation if you stick to your gun chemistry is typically the essence of chemistry is substance transformation now I buy catalysts that are very important but they are not chemical but I'm not sure it's what you wanted to say I'm not sure whether we should say a very important thing because you said catalysis this is of course part of chemistry and for you maybe a very very important part I'm not sure whether I would like to exclude catalysis from chemical processes maybe we are just beginning to I am just beginning to think about this substances are having some very basic properties which we can normally measure quite well and there are some intermediate transformer areas where it will not become easy to say is that chemical or not? by the way he said even the evaporation of something is a chemical process because I have once I have a sort of liquid maybe and after the evaporation it's gas so it's only one but a very important change of disposition also because he is starting from thermodynamics that's why if you define chemistry from starting from thermodynamics then of course water and liquid and water gas are different species that's what I'm doing phases and substances are the most important thing and if we look closely almost any every chemical process is describable or is just connected to the picture a question as a historian so this was very much a German story I mean German guys Oswald I'm wondering if there was a discussion in other language or other philosophies can I jump in right there with something from Gary Patterson online there's a perfect follow up who also mentioned yet to go unfortunately he's no longer on the other end of the chat but he mentioned that in the mid 19th century John Mercer discussed catalysts extensively at the British Association what today I was not referring to the prehistory of cathedrals I can only recommend to read the books quite a few books of I've been with us again I'm asking the question because philosophers are also context and of course the German the ghost maybe a normal cast so I just wonder if by contrast in other linguistic areas the discussion would be coming from other kind of philosophies you're right but on the other end Perseus was not a German but you're right it has been quite a lot of German speaking Perseus was fluent at that time it was clear for the Swedish people for the Danish as well I haven't come across any other important person in that interpretation because I think and to be sure Mittage in his descriptions is an outsider despite in this claim that it is a pity that the philosophers are not doing very much philosophy of chemistry I think because they do not know chemistry but that does not mean that the chemists who are interested in philosophy do it right we are just still in the start of a sort of profession of philosophy of chemistry although we have 30 years behind us Mittage was writing on that there's another because you are maybe interesting for you lady Gertrude Rooker she was Swiss Gertrude Rooker wrote a large book on the history of catalysis she comes to my mind yes at that time not everything in the natural sciences but many we are done for but on the other hand I'm still at the moment I told you I'm looking for a acidity and therefore it is really impressive how many people from that small country of Denmark and maybe a very wonderful town but a small town compared to other towns like Brussels, France Copenhagen we will speak of Copenhagen school in four or five years Copenhagen school is not Heisenberg and war but that will be Brunstedt and all these people just to comment on that you don't think I just left out all the others and I try to read the origins but I'm not even trying to read Danish Swedish, I know it still if you are not using the English it's not so easy but as far as I'm concerned there isn't no other sort of giant that I just left out but you are right it's a really interesting question whether this chemical I used there, this notion is really correct maybe if I can maybe more like a comment in trying to move from the history to modern day chemistry because I mean this very much felt like a historical talk and a historic kind of event that we'd post about the Meetage which you know is a hundred years ago since then chemistry has continued and developed and learned much more about the whole phenomenon of catalysis I was struck by the claim that it's still very much a trial and error game and it's true I remember as a student we would learn about catalysis but I don't recall really learning about here's the theory of catalysis and then you can apply it in any kind of situation so I wondered where are we now do we have a theory of catalysis do you think there's just one theory or do we need many theories what is catalysis is just one phenomenon multiple phenomenon some of which are better accounted in terms of actuation others are more accountable in terms of acceleration maybe we're trying to fit everything into this one kind of beautiful simple theory but it's something that is much more multifaceted and diverse but yeah where are we now this would be my big question also given the discovery of enzymes which is maybe the other big category of catalytic action I'm sure there must have been a lot of developments and questions surrounding and synthetic action I think the letter the possibilities you were talking about letter means that we have at the moment it's just a suggestion or maybe a cruel idea that we will have maybe sort of pluralism even in that field we're part of our workshop in March on acidity and then there I learned I wrote it together a comic from Tartu I wrote an article on pluralism and chemistry when we said chemistry is pluralistic that is in the headline that might be the same in acidity if I'm asking around here many of you would say yes I know I have been in the laboratory we measured the pH value this is of course what refers to acidity even this is not really correct but there are other meanings for this world acidity acids and bases and not all of them I would say make sense I'm critical with those modernistic descriptions the answer to your question depends on who you are asking if you are asking Jeffrey Seaman I can't see the names unless they post in chat so I can't spy on our audience Jeff Seaman a very modern American chemist he published an article and there they claimed acidity or an acid is a substance that has some quantum chemical properties what is positions I cannot even say what exactly and some people would say an acid is a substance that makes something with the electrons in that as a maybe a traditionalist I would say what is correct I would not exclude all the others but I would say this is the point of view I'm starting because it has some connections to what I can imagine and what I can feel or I can sense in the amount in which I can measure even the measurement of Lewis acids it's not possible therefore in that way I would be handling modern descriptions of course I'm pretty sure the more theoretically oriented researchers still have a sort of quantum chemical description of catalyst of course point because you can apply quantum mechanics to everything you know I've learned it as well about 30 years ago maybe this is the point that the more younger people coming from a fresh education thing but on the other hand I think Mittage was quite say or did say some quite right things we have to think about your point with the so to say equation actuation excellent it's cool good thank you