Philosophy of Chemistry (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)First published Mon Mar 14, 2011; substantive revision Wed Jan 16, 2019 Chemistry is the study of the structure and transformation of matter. When Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatises on chemistry in the 4th century BCE, his conceptual grasp of the nature of matter was tailored to accommodate a relatively simple range of observable phenomena. In the 21st century, chemistry has become the
