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Immanuel Kant has built up a dualistic epistemology that seems to fit to the peculiarities of chemistry quite well. Friedrich Paneth used Kant's concept and characterised simple and basic substances which refer to the empirical and to the transcendental world, respectively. This paper takes account of the Kantian influences in Paneth's philosophy of chemistry, and discusses pertinent topics, like observables, atomism and realism.

Recently, philosophers have come forth with approaches to chemistry based on its actual practice, imparting to it a proper aim and character of its own. These approaches add to the currently growing movement of pluralist philosophies of science. We draw on recent pluralist accounts from (the philosophy of) chemistry and analyse three notions from modern chemical practice and theory (acidity, electronegativity and the concept of element) in terms of these accounts, in order to complement the so far more general pluralist approaches with specific evidence. Our survey reveals that the concept of element indicates conceptual pluralisms in chemistry. that electronegativity illustrates methodological pluralism in determining one and the same concept, and that acidity is an instance of plurality hidden behind 'one notion'.

This paper provides an account of early historical developments in the characterization and quantification of acidity, which may be considered preliminary steps leading to the measurement of acidity. In this "pre-history" of acidity measurement, emphasis is laid on the relative independence of the rich empirical knowledge about acids from theories of acidity. Many attempts were made to compare and assess the strengths of various acids, based on concrete laboratory operations. However, at least until the arrival of the pH measure, the quantification attempts failed to produce anything qualifying as a measurement scale of a recognizable type. It is doubtful whether even pH qualifies as a true measure of acidity, when the full meaning of acidity is taken into account.