The Chemist's Concept of Molecular Structure

In this article, based on the proceedings of recent Symposia of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry, I relate the concepts of molecular similarity, representations and descriptors with philosophical ideas on models and metaphors and argue that going beyond the Born–Oppenheimer approximation introduces new paradigms, bringing fresh insight into the chemistry of fluxional molecules, proteins, superconductors and macroscopic dielectrics, thus opening up new avenues for exploration.

N. Sukumar, "The Chemist's Concept of Molecular Structure" Foundations of Chemistry, in press, 2008. Online First DOI