%0 Journal Article
%T Mathematical Thinking in Chemistry
%A Guillermo Restrepo
%A Jos¨¦ L. Villaveces
%J Hyle : International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry
%D 2012
%I HYLE Publications, Karlsruhe and University of Karlsruhe
%X Mathematical chemistry is often thought to be a 20th-century subdiscipline of chemistry, but in this paper we discuss several early chemical ideas and some landmarks of chemistry as instances of the mathematical way of thinking; many of them before 1900. By the mathematical way of thinking, we follow Weyl's description of it in terms of functional thinking, i.e. setting up variables, symbolizing them, and seeking for functions relating them. The cases we discuss are Plato's triangles, Geoffroy's affinity table, Lavoisier's classification of substances and their relationships, Mendeleev's periodic table, Cayley's enumeration of alkanes, Sylvester's association of algebra and chemistry, and Wiener's relationship between molecular structure and boiling points. These examples show that mathematical chemistry has much more than a century of history.
%K philosophy of chemistry
%K mathematical chemistry
%K mathematical way of thinking
%K functional thinking
%K chemical graphs
%K QSAR
%U http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/18-1/restrepo-villaveces.pdf