Metachemical

The greater part of this is in comparative thermal equilibrium, and so we should not expect metachemical change to occur.

Alfred Nordmann, in Chapter 19, draws on the work of Emile Meyerson and Gaston Bachelard — two philosophers with some genuine chemical knowledge — to articulate a more general, a richer, and a metachemical notion of substance.

This is by no means reducing chemistry to a sub-division of physics, and even less making it a defenceless victim of Don Quixote-like pseudomathematical and metachemical theorists; a fundamental knowledge of natural history is still an essential condition for any further progress in an understanding of chemical bonding.