Edit Talpsepp

Eric Scerri is the world-leading expert on Periodic Table and was quite recently named the second-most influential academic in the field of chemistry over the last decade by Academic Influence. In this interview we discuss his main questions of interest in the philosophy of chemistry—the question of reduction of chemistry to physics and the dual sense of chemical element—in the context of his main study object, the periodic table of elements. Among other things, we touch upon the more specific issues related to chemical classification, such as pair reversal, the placement and order of certain elements, the structure and shape of periodic table, etc. We also discuss the status of chemical kinds as a traditional epitome of ‘natural kinds’, the relevance of philosophy of chemistry for chemical science, the implications of ‘turn to practice’ for philosophy of chemistry, and many other issues. Finally, Eric Scerri also discusses his most recent book, ‘What is a Chemical Element?’, co-edited with Elena Ghibaudi and published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Psychological essentialism is claimed to be a naturally selected and/or innate tendency to see certain kinds as essence-based natural kinds. In the context of folk biology, this essentialism allegedly applies to biological kinds (and especially on the folk taxonomic level of generic species). Some authors even suggest that we have an innate folkbiological module that involves certain biological concepts (such as biological inheritance, innate potential, etc.), relevant to folk-biological essentialism. Psychological essentialism and its purported innateness have long been quite extensively discussed, even in recent literature on philosophy of psychology and other relevant contexts, but the basic claims about psychological essentialism and about generic species as the most saliently essentialized folk-biological taxonomic level have remained largely the same over time. These claims are often assumed to derive support from a bunch of canonical studies that have also been frequently referred to in the literature about psychological essentialism.

It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinarity (ID) is very diverse. Our contribution is a demonstration that considerable diversity exists also on the level of understandings of ID that researchers working in the same ID field express. Specifically, we analyse qualitatively, building on the method of culture contrast, six interviews with researchers working in computational linguistics and language technology in Estonia. We identify six understandings of ID expressed by the interviewees: centred on an ID method; a disciplinary method in an ID field; an ID way of seeing and thinking; ID education; ID interests; one’s field as naturally ID. We show how understandings of ID are significant for analysing research practice, since they are involved in how researchers form a positive picture of themselves and their colleagues. We also show how an awareness of different understandings of ID is useful for discussing the significance of integration in ID.