Scroll down for a selection of my academic publications.

In Klaus Ruthenberg & Pieter Thyssen (eds.), Chemistry without Atoms, Königshausen and Neumann. forthcoming.

▸ Preprint

The heated debates and severe conflicts between the atomists and the anti-atomists of the latter half of the nineteenth century are well known to the historian of science. The position of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev towards these nineteenth century debates on atomism will be studied in this paper. A first attempt will thus be offered to reconcile Mendeleev’s seemingly contradictory comments and ambiguous standpoints into one coherent view.

With Sylvia Wenmackers, Synthese 198 (11): 10207-10235. 2021.

▸ DOI: 10.1007/s11229-020-02714-z
▸ Published version (Open Access)

Human freedom is in tension with nomological determinism and with statistical determinism. The goal of this paper is to answer both challenges. Four contributions are made to the free-will debate. First, we propose a classification of scientific theories based on how much freedom they allow. We take into account that indeterminism comes in different degrees and that both the laws and the auxiliary conditions can place constraints. A scientific worldview pulls towards one end of this classification, while libertarianism pulls towards the other end of the spectrum. Second, inspired by Hoefer, we argue that an interval of auxiliary conditions corresponds to a region in phase space, and to a bundle of possible block universes. We thus make room for a form of non-nomological indeterminism. Third, we combine crucial elements from the works of Hoefer and List; we attempt to give a libertarian reading of this combination. On our proposal, throughout spacetime, there is a certain amount of freedom that can be interpreted as the result of agential choices. Fourth, we focus on the principle of alternative possibilities throughout and propose three ways of strengthening it.

With Arnout Ceulemans, Substantia 4 (1): 7-22. 2020.

▸ DOI: 10.13128/SUBSTANTIA-671
▸ Published version (Open Access)
▸ Video

To this day, a hundred and fifty years after Mendeleev's discovery, the overal structure of the periodic system remains unaccounted for in quantum-mechanical terms. Given this dire situation, a handful of scientists in the 1970s embarked on a quest for the symmetries that lie hidden in the periodic table. Their goal was to explain the table's structure in group-theoretical terms. We argue that this symmetry program required an important paradigm shift in the understanding of the nature of chemical elements. The idea, in essence, consisted of treating the chemical elements, not as particles, but as states of a superparticle. We show that the inspiration for this came from elementary particle physics, and in particular from Heisenberg's suggestion to treat the proton and neutron as different states of the nucleon. We provide a careful study of Heisenberg's last paper on the nature of elementary particles, and explain why the Democritean picture of matter no longer applied in modern physics and a Platonic symmetry-based picture was called for instead. We show how Heisenberg's Platonic philosophy came to dominate the field of elementary particle physics, and how it found its culmination point in Gell-Mann's classification of the hadrons in the eightfold way. We argue that it was the success of Heisenberg's approach in elementary particle physics that sparked the group-theoretical approach to the periodic table. We explain how it was applied to the set of chemical elements via a critical examination of the work of the Russian mathematician Abram Ilyich Fet the Turkish-American physicist Asim Orhan Barut, before giving some final reflections.

Foundations of Physics 49 (12): 1336-1354. 2019.

▸ DOI: 10.1007/s10701-019-00294-8
▸ Published version (Open Access)
▸ Preprint
▸ Video

The debate on the conventionality of simultaneity and the debate on the dimensionality of the world have been central in the philosophy of special relativity. The link between both debates however has rarely been explored. The purpose of this paper is to gauge what implications the former debate has for the latter. I show the situation to be much more subtle than was previously argued, and explain how the ontic versus epistemic distinction in the former debate impacts the latter. Despite claims to the contrary, I conclude that special relativity leaves the debate on the dimensionality of the world underdetermined.

With Arnout Ceulemans, in Eric Scerri & Guillermo Restrepo (eds.), Mendeleev to Oganesson: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Periodic Table, Oxford University Press. pp. 104-121. 2018.

▸ DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190668532.003.0008
▸ Preprint

With Koen Binnemans, in Eric Scerri & Lee McIntyre (eds.), Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline, Springer. pp. 155-182. 2015.

▸ DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9364-3_11
▸ Preprint (PhilArchive | PhilSci-Archive)

Since its inception in 1869, the periodic system — icon of modern chemistry — has suffered from the problematic accommodation of the rare-earth elements. The substance of this paper intends to retrace Mendeleev’s shifting attitudes with regard to the rare-earth crisis during the period 1869–1871. Based on a detailed examination of Mendeleev's research papers from that period, it will be argued that the rare-earth crisis played a key role in inducing a number of important changes in Mendeleev’s philosophical viewpoints with regard to the epistemological concept of a chemical element and the nature of elementary groups. Many of Mendeleev's most cherished beliefs got endangered by the nature of these elements. Their mystifying properties forced him to revise his ideas about primary and secondary groups, the elements as basic and simple substances, and the use of short and long form tables. They made him question the validity and universality of the periodic law, and led him into hypothesizing about the internal structure of matter and constitution of atoms.

With Koen Binnemans, in Karl A. Gschneidner Jr, Jean-Claude G. Bünzli & Vitalij K. Pecharsky (eds.), Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths, Elsevier. pp. 1-93. 2011.

▸ DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-444-53590-0.00001-7
▸ Published version

This chapter gives an overview of the evolution of the position of the rare-earth elements in the periodic system, from Mendeleev’s time to the present. Three fundamentally different accommodation methodologies have been proposed over the years. Mendeleev considered the rare-earth elements as homologues of the other elements. Other chemists looked upon the rare earths as forming a special intraperiodic group and therefore clustered the rare-earth elements in one of the groups of the periodic table. Still others adhered to the intergroup accommodation of the rare earths, according to which the rare-earth elements do not show any relationship with the other elements, so that they had to be placed within the periodic table as a separate family of elements. The intergroup accommodation became the preferred one in the twentieth century. The advantages and disadvantages of the different representations of the modern periodic table are discussed.