Chemical Reactions: Topological Reorganization and Memory-Field Dynamics — Volume III of the Axiomatization of Chemistry in the Global-Realism Framework

This manuscript is Volume III of the program to axiomatize chemistry within the established global-realist framework. Its purpose is to derive the thermodynamic, kinetic, catalytic, acid–base, redox, photochemical, and solvent-mediated structures of chemical reactions without introducing reaction, activation, catalysis, acidity, or oxidation state as primitive chemical notions. Building directly upon the atomic theory of Volume I and the molecular and condensed-matter theory of Volume II, a chemical reaction is defined as a dynamical topological reorganization of shared electronic disturbance fields along a controlled path on a many-center energy surface. From this definition, the first and second laws of thermodynamics arise as reduced bookkeeping statements for substrate-coupled molecular dynamics, and state functions including internal energy, entropy, and free energies descend from the retained canonical generator. Equilibrium constants and chemical potentials are derived as constrained variational conditions on admissible composition manifolds rather than as independent postulates. On the kinetic side, activated rate laws, transition-state theory, and memory-corrected reaction dynamics are shown to be asymptotic reductions of a generalized Langevin equation projected onto a reaction coordinate, with Arrhenius, Eyring, Kramers, and Marcus formulas emerging as controlled limits of the same underlying dynamics. Catalysis is formulated as the deformation of the reaction free-energy landscape and dissipative kernel, unifying homogeneous, enzymatic, and heterogeneous mechanisms under one corridor-creation principle. Acid–base, redox, photochemical, and solvent-controlled processes are subsequently derived as sectorial variants of a single reaction-path architecture, distinguished only by their dominant collective coordinate or environmental renormalization, thereby recovering pKa relations, Nernst and Butler–Volmer equations, Stern–Volmer quenching, Michaelis–Menten enzyme kinetics, and Marcus electron-transfer theory as lawful specializations. Throughout the volume, definitions are separated from derived propositions, effective approximations from exact ontological claims, and thermodynamic driving from kinetic accessibility, so that no circular definition, hidden postulate, or backward dependence is required.