The mantra of modern physics is that Chemistry fundamentally is a branch of Quantum Physics based on Schrödinger's equation of Quantum Mechanics QM as Standard QM, which appears to be accepted in principle by a majority of chemists as reductionists, under the agreement that the reduction is yet to be realised, the big obstacle being that Schrödinger's equation is uncomputable.
There are some prominent chemists who have expressed clear anti-reductionist views pointing to inabilities of QM to describe fundamental aspects of chemistry:
- Hans Primas: emergence
- Guy Woolley: molecular structure
- Norman Hunter: chemical bonds and reactivity
and Roald Hoffman viewing chemistry as creative science beyond QM. It may be that in fact most chemists share such views and think of chemistry rather in terms of molecular structure in 3d with chemical bonds formed under chemical reactions, than as abstract StdQM.
RealQM is based on a new form of Schrödinger's equation, which has direct physical interpretation in terms of non-overlapping charge densities, closely connects to chemists conception of molecules as formed by atomic kernels surrounded by electrons carrying individuality by occupying different regions of space. RealQM thus opens to a form of Real Quantum Chemistry explored under this tag, where there is no gap between theory and chemistry reality since the Schrödinger equation of RealQM is readily computable.
- Quantum chemistry is but a narrow subfield of theoretical chemistry and numerical quantum chemistry is nothing but a powerful tool. (Hans Primas in Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism).
- All that has happened (in the 20th century) is that the 19th century rupture between chemistry and physics has been patched over in framework of quantum chemistry. (Guy Woolley in Foundations of Molecular Quantum Electrodynamics)
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