Perspective philosophique sur les relations entre structure, propriétés et fonctions Authors Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent Abstract For teaching purposes, of chemistry in particular, it is important to emphasize the relationships between structure, properties and functions in order to make the behaviour and reactions of individual substances intelligible, thus enabling the students to better memorize and master the load of knowledge they have to acquire about of individual substances. Rather than trying to provide a historical survey of the introduction of the notion of structure in chemistry, this brief article makes use of history to disentangle the preassumptions of the causal sequence «structure > properties > functions». These preassumptions usually remain implicit because they are integral part of the rational and explanatory approach, which is typical of science. By questioning what is usually taken for granted may in turn open up new perspectives. Downloads Text complet (Català) Published 2017-03-02 Issue No. 21 (2015) Section Monografia / Aprenentatge de conceptes i models License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Educació Química, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana de Química (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Educació Química.Authors answer to Societat Catalana de Química for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.Societat Catalana de Química declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Educació Química is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.