Concept
Chemical property
Overview
A chemical property is any of a material's properties that becomes evident during, or after, a chemical reaction; that is, any attribute that can be established only by changing a substance's chemical identity. Simply speaking, chemical properties cannot be determined just by viewing or touching the substance; the substance's internal structure must be affected greatly for its chemical properties to be investigated. When a substance goes under a chemical reaction, the properties will change drastically, resulting in chemical change. However, a catalytic property would also be a chemical property.
Chemical properties can be contrasted with physical properties, which can be discerned without changing the substance's structure. However, for many properties within the scope of physical chemistry, and other disciplines at the boundary between chemistry and physics, the distinction may be a matter of researcher's perspective. Material properties, both physical and chemical, can be viewed as supervenient; i.e., secondary to the underlying reality. Several layers of superveniency are possible.
Chemical properties can be used for building chemical classifications. They can also be useful to identify an unknown substance or to separate or purify it from other substances. Materials science will normally consider the chemical properties of a substance to guide its applications.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Still more strongly will a similar presumption exist, when the object itself, as in the case of organized beings, is no primeval agent, but an effect, which depends on a cause or causes for its very existence. The Kinds, therefore, which are called in chemistry simple substances, or elementary natural agents, are the only ones, any of whose properties can with certainty be considered ultimate; and of these the…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Chemical property is.
Take such a property as being named Jones. If a man is named Jones, so is his son; we will therefore call the property of being called Jones hereditary with respect to the relation of father and son. If a man is called Jones, all his descendants in the direct male line are called Jones; this follows from the fact that the property is hereditary. Now, instead of the relation of father and son, consider the relation…
Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
States what Chemical property is.
Substance, in the truest and primary and most definite sense of the word, is that which is neither predicable of a subject nor present in a subject; for instance, the individual man or horse. But in a secondary sense those things are called substances within which, as species, the primary substances are included; also those which, as genera, include the species. For instance, the individual man is included in the…
Aristotle, The Categories
States what Chemical property is.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Naturalism (philosophy).