Historical Prelude and the Treatment of the Periodic System and Table in the Philosophical Literature

Although the periodic system of elements is central to the study of chemistry and has been influential in the development of quantum theory and quantum mechanics, its study has been largely neglected in philosophy of science. The present article is a detailed criticism of one notable exception, an attempt by Hettema and Kuipers to axiomatize the periodic table and to discuss the reduction of chemistry in this context. 1. HISTORICAL PRELUDE AND THE TREATMENT OF THE PERIODIC SYSTEM AND TABLE IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE The Periodic Table of the elements has had a profound influence on the development of modern chemistry and physics. In chemistry its influence is well known and undeniable. The periodic system functions as a unifying principle which continues to guide the day-to-day research of chemists in many specialized areas. The influence of the periodic table on the development of physics and in particular quantum mechanics is not so well known but equally undeniable. Shortly after the turn of the century, J. J. Thomson, the discoverer of the electron, regarded the question of trying to explain the periodic table through atomic physics as one of the major unsolved problems. In 1904 he tried to account for the periodicity of the elements in terms of the arrangement of electrons in rings. Thomson proposed a detailed set of atomic configurations as part of his plumb pudding model in which electrons were embedded in the main body of the atoms and were held to circulate in concentric rings (Thomson, 1904). The particular arrangement of how many electrons should occur in each ring was adapted from the earlier work of an American physicist Mayer, who had experimented by floating small bar-magnets inside a circular basin of water and observed that stable rings required a particular number of magnets (Mayer, 1878). Although Thomson’s tables of electron rings do not show the periodicities at the atomic numbers which we now know them to occur at, it must be remembered that there was still a good deal of confusion as to the numbers of electrons contained by atoms of even low Erkenntnis 47: 229–243, 1997. c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.