Concept
Organic chemistry
Overview
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials (i.e. matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms). It involves studying the structure of organic material to determine the structural formula, analyzing physical and chemical properties, and evaluating chemical reactivity to understand the behavior of organic compounds. The study of organic reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products, drugs, and polymers, and study of individual organic molecules in the laboratory and via theoretical (in silico) study.
The range of chemicals studied in organic chemistry includes hydrocarbons (compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen) as well as compounds based on carbon, but also containing other elements, especially oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus (included in many biochemicals) and the halogens. Organometallic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon–metal bonds.
Organic compounds form the basis of all known life and constitute the majority of known chemicals. The bonding patterns of carbon, with its valence of four—formal single, double, and triple bonds, plus structures with delocalized electrons—make the array of organic compounds structurally diverse, and their range of applications enormous. They form the basis of, or are constituents of, many commercial products including pharmaceuticals; petrochemicals and agrichemicals, and products made from them including lubricants, solvents; plastics; fuels and explosives. The study of organic chemistry overlaps organometallic chemistry and biochemistry, but also with medicinal chemistry, polymer chemistry, and materials science.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
I make this statement because, in its absence, one or other of these gentlemen might be held responsible for some error which is not his but mine. Yet another explanation is called for. Beyond the exposition of those general truths constituting the Principles of Biology as commonly accepted, the original edition of this work contained sundry views for which biological opinion did not furnish any…
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
States what Organic chemistry is; opens on Organic chemistry.
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 Organic chemistry is.
When we pass to the compounds of organic chemistry, we find this general law still further exemplified: we find much greater complexity and much less stability. A molecule of albumen, for instance, consists of 482 ultimate atoms of five different kinds.
Herbert Spencer, Essays
Opens on Organic chemistry; names Organic chemistry.
Philosophers who discussed Organic chemistry
Related ideas
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Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of chemistry.