How Much History Can Chemistry Take?

Chemistry is typically considered to be a nomothetic science, i.e. science interested in general laws rather than historical facts (e.g. Pauling 1988: p. 16-19). Also, the unification of science is usually envisioned as an effort to connect particular scientific disciplines through their laws: e.g. laws of chemistry are derived from the laws of physics (Nagel 1979: p. 400). It is however equally sensible to combine the sciences through a single cosmic history and there is a large literature following this direction, albeit rarely focused on chemistry. In the paper some ideas concerning the possible role of a ‘historical ’ (or ‘idiographic’) chemistry are presented, with special attention paid to the notion of a ‘genetic ’ classification of chemical compounds, and to the counterintuivite proposition that many major branches of physics may in fact be explained by chemistry, not the opposite