"Causes" in chemical explanations.
Chemists talk about causes and make frequent use of the verb "to cause." They use the verb "to cause" for its generality in identifying causal chains, whether all the details of those chains are established or some remain unclear. Most of these causal chains bottom out in attractions and repulsions. Attractions and repulsions are causal relations that are chemically basic; chemistry has no further story to tell about why attraction and repulsion are causal. If there is some further story to tell about the causal status of attraction and repulsion, it is left to physics to tell it, but it is not obvious that the absence of such a story would prevent chemists from using attractions and repulsions in their causal explanations.
Stemwedel
Janet D
JD
Department of Philosophy, San José State University, California 95192-0096, USA. jstemwed@email.sjsu.edu