This article presents how the philosophy of science has taken physics as the model of science, which has caused that, within the philosophy of science, all other sciences try to be reduced epistemologically and ontologically to physics. One of them, which following the development of quantum mechanics is intended to be reduced to physics, is chemistry, especially afterPaul Dirac stated that chemistry is a type of physics with highly complex mathematical equations. For chemists, understanding the structure of a chemical compound or molecule is fundamental. The molecular structure is the spatial representation of the chemical elements that make up that molecule. However, quantum mechanics cannot account for its structure, because in the quantum realm the concept of molecular structure would be nothing more than a “powerful and illuminating metaphor” with no real referent. In this artic...

Cuando se habla de filosofía de la ciencia, por lo general se viene a la mente la ecuación ciencia = física, situación que ha caracterizado la principal corriente de la filosofía de la ciencia en el siglo XX. La hegemonía que la física ha presentado dentro de la filosofía de la ciencia ha ocasionado que existan profundas repercusiones al punto de que todo lo que se conoce como ciencia se puede reducir a la física; la idea es como sigue: la psicología puede reducirse a la biología, la biología a la química y la química a la física. Con el desarrollo de la mecánica cuántica, los filósofos de la ciencia y muchos físicos han desarrollado la idea de que la química puede ser reducida tanto epistemológica como ontológicamente a la física. Sin embargo, la pretendida reducción epistemológica y ontológica tiene un límite en lo que la física puede explicar de los fenóme...

This article presents how the philosophy of science has taken physics as the model of science, which has caused that, within the philosophy of science, all other sciences try to be reduced epistemologically and ontologically to physics. One of them, which following the development of quantum mechanics is intended to be reduced to physics, is chemistry, especially afterPaul Dirac stated that chemistry is a type of physics with highly complex mathematical equations. For chemists, understanding the structure of a chemical compound or molecule is fundamental. The molecular structure is the spatial representation of the chemical elements that make up that molecule. However, quantum mechanics cannot account for its structure, because in the quantum realm the concept of molecular structure would be nothing more than a “powerful and illuminating metaphor” with no real referent. In this artic...