ABSTRACT
Philosopher of science George Canguilhem once wrote that: “Nature does not independently carve out and provide scientific objects and phenomena. Science constructs its object as soon as it has invented a method in order to form, by way of propositions capable of integral coherence, a theory controlled by the attempt to falsify it.” 1 In the late nineteenth century, historian of science and chemist Marcellin Berthelot argued:
Chemistry creates its own object. This creative faculty, akin to that of art, distinguishes it essentially from other natural or historical sciences, the object of which is given in advance and is independent of the scientist’s will and action. Thus the general relations they can recognize or establish rely on more or less likely inductions or sometimes simple conjectures, which are impossible to verify beyond the external domain of observable phenomena. Those sciences do not possess their own objects. Therefore, they are often condemned to an eternal impotence in their search for truth or have to contend themselves with possessing some scattered and mostly uncertain fragments. By contrast, the experimental sciences are able to realize their conjectures. 2
