Eric Robert Scerri

• BSc, M.Phil, PhD
• Lecturer at University of California, Los Angeles

The article contrasts the way that laws are regarded by some philosophers of science with the way that they are regarded by scientists and science educators. After a brief review of the Humean and necessitarian views of scienfic laws, I highlight difference between scientists who regard laws as being merely descriptive and philosophers who generall...

In this article I examine several related views expressed by Robin Hendry concerning molecular structure, emergence and chemical bonding. There is a long-standing problem in the philosophy of chemistry arising from the fact that molecular structure cannot be strictly derived from quantum mechanics. Two or more compounds which share a molecular form...

Introduction Over a period of many years Robin Hendry has proposed a number of related views on the philosophy of chemistry. In the present article I intend to examine some of these views in detail. Like many other philosophers of chemistry before him, Hendry has worked on the question of molecular structure and its relationship with quantum mechan...

Many authors have suggested that chemistry should be taught from an 'atoms first approach'. Although such an approach has many advantages it misrepresents chemistry as though it were fully reduced to quantum mechanics. The author of the present article proposes a historical based approach which retains some of the advantages of an atoms first appro...

Editorial 71 for Foundations of Chemistry

Chemical bonding has been described as one of the two big ideas in chemistry in response to some philosophers of physics who deny to the field of chemistry any form of philosophical importance (Scerri, 2020). Molecular structure and bonding are among the most quintessential topics that have been considered by the new wave of philosophers of chemist...

This article begins by examining a recent claim by Brad Wray that the discovery of atomic number and isotopy constitutes a scientific revolution in the sense of the later writings of Thomas Kuhn. I argue that although Kuhn’s criteria may apply to the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican model of the universe, they do not apply in the above c...

The article begins with a response to a recent contribution by Jensen, in which he has criticized several aspects of the use of triads of elements, including Döbereiner’s original introduction of the concept and the modern use of atomic number triads by some authors including myself. Such triads are groups of three elements, one of which has approx...

For a period of several years the philosopher of science Hasok Chang has promoted various inter-related views including pluralism, pragmatism, and an associated view of natural kinds. He has also argued for what he calls the persistence of everyday terms in the scientific view. Chang claims that terms like phlogiston were never truly abandoned but...

Darwin's tree of life and Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements share a number of interesting parallels, the most meaningful of which lie in the central role that each plays in its respective domain. Darwin's tree of life, incidentally the only diagram of which appears in his book The Origin of Species, is a sketch of the central idea that all...

The relative virtues of 8- and 18-column periodic tables are discussed, followed by a brief mention of a 32-column table. Next, the left-step periodic table, as first introduced by Janet, is presented, as are the various attractive features of this representation. The advantages include what is termed here as the regularization of atomic number tri...

Metodologie didattiche e percorsi laboratoriali anche in contesti non formali ∠ Pagine di storia: non solo personaggi ∠ Il ricordo di un amico scomparso, ma anche buone notizie n. 4 anno 2021 ABSTRACT The article proposes the enhancement of college level general chemistry courses by integrating various historical and philosophical aspects of chemis...

This chapter provides a detailed account of how John Nicholson’s atomic theory of the early 20th century was spectacularly successful in accommodating as well as predicting some spectral lines in the solar corona and in the nebula in Orion’s Belt. The theory was soon shown to be completely mistaken in several respects, and yet it served to introduc...

The article examines a recent interventionist account of causation by Ross, in which electronic configurations of atoms are considered to be the cause of chemical behavior. More specifically I respond to the claim that a change in electronic configuration of an atom, such as occurs in the artificial synthesis of elements, causes a change in the beh...

The historical development of the theoretical account of the periodic table provided by theoretical physics is reviewed, beginning with discoveries made at the start of the twentieth century. The article highlights the attempts to theoretically explain several features of the periodic table including the well-known period doubling or Madelung rule...

In the accompanying article in this issue Neuss challenges the explanation that was first suggested by Schwarz for how to teach the relative occupation and ionization of atomic orbitals in the atoms of metals in the first transition series. The present article is a response to Neuss’ critique which includes a detailed examination of his claim that...

Interpreting Kuhn provides a comprehensive, up-to-date study of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy and legacy. With twelve essays newly written by an international group of scholars, it covers a wide range of topics where Kuhn had an influence. Part I deals with foundational issues such as Kuhn's metaphysical assumptions, his relationship to Kant and Kantian...

Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. But they have long faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that even strongly supported scientific theories can be overturned and left behind. In response, realists have developed new positions and arguments. Specifi...

There is a long standing debate as to whether group 3 of the periodic table should consist of Sc, Y, La and Ac or Sc, Y, Lu and Lr. The author who is the chair of the IUPAC working group tasked with providing recommendations on this issue to IUPAC proposes a solution partly based on recent work in philosophy of science on natural kinds and interest...

The present chapter seeks to explore the change in Kuhn’s views on scientific revolutions in particular. My analysis of Kuhn’s understanding of scientific revolutions will be carried out by narrowing the scope of enquiry to consider the views of the editor of this volume, Brad Wray, who over recent years has developed an interest in the history and...

The article proposes the enhancement of college level general chemistry courses by integrating various historical and philosophical aspects of chemistry. This goal is explained in some detail in the case of selected main topics in a typical general chemistry curriculum. A second goal of the article is to restore the centrality of the periodic table...

The chapter examines Nicholson's atomic theory which was 'wrong' in almost every respect and yet highly successful in it's time. I also examine what this kind of episode can bring to the debate concerning realism.

I would like to begin this review by stating that this is an absolutely wonderful book that is full of gems about the elements and the periodic table. In my own 2007 book on the periodic table I concluded that we should perhaps think of the variety of tables that have appeared as spanning a spectrum running from the most abstract and 'perfect' tabl...

The article provides a detailed account of how John Nicholson's atomic theory f the early 20th century was spectacularly successful in accommodating as well as predicting some spectral lines in the solar corona and in the nebula in Orion's Belt. The theory was soon shown to be completely mistaken in several respects and yet it served to introduce t...

A critique of LaPorte's views on chemical kinds, like jade and ruby, is presented. More positively, a new slant is provided on the question of whether elements are natural kinds. This is carried out by appeal to the dual nature of elements, a topic that has been debated in the philosophy of chemistry but not in the natural kinds literature. It is c...

The article concerns various proposals that have been made with the aim of improving the currently standard 18-column periodic table. We begin with a review of 8-, 18- and 32-column formats of the periodic table. This is followed by an examination of a possible, although rather impractical, 50-column table and how it could be used to consider the c...

The article begins by asking whether contemporary chemists accept the dual meaning of the term “element” that has been discussed at various stages in the development of chemistry. It proceeds to review the key ideas in the contemporary philosophical debate, including the views of Mendeleev and Paneth and whether a microscopic interpretation of the...

Reassessing the Notion of a Kuhnian Revolution: What Happened in 20th C. Chemistry: A Commentary on Wray’s claim of the discovery of atomic number as a revolution in chemistry In a recently published article, philosopher of science, Brad Wray claims that chemistry underwent a significant change in theory in the 20th century and that this represent...

This is a draft of a chapter that has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the forthcoming book edited by T. Lyons and P. Vickers due for publication in 2020. The article provides a detailed account of how John Nicholson’s atomic theory of the early 20th century was spectacularly successful in accommodating as well as predic...

The article concerns various proposals that have been made with the aim of improving the currently standard 18-column periodic table. We begin with a review of 8, 18 and 32 column formats of the periodic table. This is followed by an examination of a possible, although rather impractical, 50-column table and how it could be used to consider the cha...

The following article is concerned with causation in relation to electronic configurations of atoms and the periodic table of the chemical elements. Some of these issues were recently discussed in this journal by Ross (Lauren Ross, Synthese, in press). In the this article Ross suggests that electronic configurations of atoms play a causal role in...

A critique of LaPorte's views on chemical kinds, like jade and ruby, is presented. More positively, a new slant is provided on the question of whether elements are natural kinds. This is carried out by appeal to the dual nature of elements, a topic that has been debated in the philosophy of chemistry but not in the natural kinds literature. It is c...

Having now examined attempts to explain the nature of the elements and the periodic system in a theoretical manner, it is necessary to backtrack a little in order to pick up a number of important issues not yet addressed. As in the preceding chapters, several contributions from fields outside of chemistry are encountered, and the treatment proceeds...

The trends within rows and columns of the periodic table are quite well known and are not repeated here. Instead, I concentrate on a number of other chemical trends, some of which challenge the form of reductionism that attempts to provide explanations based on electronic configurations alone. In the case of one particular trend described here, the...

The periodic system was not discovered by Dmitri Mendeleev alone, as is commonly thought, or even just by Mendeleev and Julius Lothar Meyer. It was discovered by as many as five or six individuals at about the same time, in the decade of the 1860s, following the rationalization of atomic weights at the Karlsruhe conference. It became apparent by th...

The periodic table consists of about 90 elements that occur naturally ending with element 92 uranium. This lack of precision is deliberate since one or two elements such as technetium were first created artificially and only later found to occur naturally on earth. This kind of occurrence provides a foreshadowing of things to come when we begin to...

Elements within a vertical group on the periodic table share certain chemical similarities, but the modern periodic system is not derived purely from descriptive characteristics. If chemical similarities were the sole basis for their classification, there would be many cases where the order and placement of the elements would be ambiguous. The deve...

The term “infra-uranium,” meaning before uranium, is one that I have proposed by contrast to the better-known term transuranium elements that are discussed in the following chapter. The present chapter concerns the last seven elements that formed the missing gaps in the old periodic table that ended with the element uranium. After Moseley developed...

In ancient Greek times, philosophers recognized just four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—all of which survive in the astrological classification of the 12 signs of the zodiac. At least some of these philosophers believed that these different elements consisted of microscopic components with differing shapes and that this explained the various...

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev is the undisputed champion of the periodic system in at least two senses. First of all, he is by far the leading discoverer of the system. Although he was not the first to develop a periodic system, his version is the one that created the biggest impact on the scientific community at the time it was introduced and thereaf...

J.J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron is one of the most celebrated events in the history of physics. What is not so well known is that Thomson had a deep interest in chemistry, which, among other things, motivated him to put forward the first explanation for the periodic table of elements in terms of electrons. Today, it is still generally beli...

Although periodic systems were produced independently by six codiscoverers in the space of a decade, Dmitri Mendeleev’s system is the one that has had the greatest impact by far. Not only was Mendeleev’s system more complete than the others, but he also worked much harder and longer for its acceptance. He also went much further than the other codis...

The periodic table of elements is among the most recognizable image in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of science. In this new edition, Eric Scerri offers readers a complete and updated history and philosophy of the periodic table. Written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested l...

Given the advances in explanations of the periodic system provided by physicists in the first quarter of the twentieth century, described in chapter 7, it is interesting to consider what advances, if any, chemists achieved during the same period. Unlike physicists, chemists were working largely inductively with experimental data on the elements and...

A good deal has been said about the periodic table in previous chapters, but one important aspect has not yet been addressed. This is the question of why so many different periodic tables have been published in textbooks, articles, and on the Internet. One may also wonder whether there exists an “optimal periodic table” and whether such a question...

Theories of the atom were reintroduced into science by John Dalton and were taken up and debated by chemists in the nineteenth century. As noted in preceding chapters, atomic weights and equivalent weights were determined and began to influence attempts to classify the elements. Many physicists were at first reluctant to accept the notion of atoms,...

In chapter 7, the influence of the old quantum theory on the periodic system was considered. Although the development of this theory provided a way of reexpressing the periodic table in terms of the number of outer-shell electrons, it did not yield anything essentially new to the understanding of chemistry. Indeed, in several cases, chemists such a...

Chemistry lecturer and historian talks about his love of the table and why debate still rages over it

‘Forms of the periodic table’ discusses some of the different periodic tables that have been published and asks whether there is an ‘optimal’ periodic table. Meaningful differences only occur when one changes the order of the elements. Examples include moving the positions of hydrogen and helium to better reflect their chemical properties, or the s...

‘The Russian genius: Mendeleev’ covers the life and work of Dmitri Mendeleev, who not only discovered the periodic system, but also recognized that it pointed to the periodic law. Mendeleev was rejected by Moscow University on race grounds, so studied at St Petersburg before moving to Germany. Mendeleev differed from rival chemists in that he rejec...

‘Modern alchemy: from missing elements to synthetic elements’ explores the science behind the synthesis of elements. Rutherford and Soddy were able to transmute elements by bombarding nuclei with particles. This only worked up to calcium, and it took the invention of the cyclotron in the 1930s to enable the transmutation of heavier elements. This e...

The periodic table of elements provides an arrangement of the chemical elements, ordered by their atomic number, electron configuration, and recurring chemical properties. The Periodic Table: A Very Short Introduction considers what led to the table’s construction and shows how the deeper meaning of its structure gradually became apparent with the...

‘Physics invades the periodic table’ assesses the impact of key discoveries in physics on the understanding of the periodic table. Ernest Rutherford provided evidence for the nuclear structure of atoms, and also determined that the charge of an atom is equal to half its atomic weight. Anton van den Broek linked this principle to the number of proto...

‘The elements’ outlines the history of the study of elements. Ancient Greeks had just four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—which they believed possessed the shape of the platonic solids. They also believed that the four elements each possessed abstract qualities, a belief which later evolved into the concept of periodicity. Some elements have...

‘Quantum mechanics’ shows how Bohr’s quantum theory was a stepping stone for the development of quantum mechanics. Bohr’s quantum theory worked well in single electron systems, but not in multi-electron systems. Quantum mechanics allowed the development of Schrödinger’s equation, which could theoretically predict the determination of electron energ...

‘Atomic weight, triads, and Prout’ discusses the shift in chemical thinking from qualitative analysis to quantitative analysis. John Dalton, drawing on the work of Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Richter, was the first to put forward the ideas of modern atomic theory. Avogadro realized that gases could exist as diatomic molecules, and Von Humboldt a...

‘A quick overview of the modern periodic table’ explains the arrangement of elements in the periodic table, and introduces the concept of periodic law. Elements were originally ordered by their equivalent weight, but this was superseded by atomic weight, and then atomic number. There are many versions of the periodic table, but all obey periodic la...

‘Electronic structure’ examines the work that went into determining the properties of electrons in atoms. Quantum theory was devised by Max Planck in 1900, and was applied to hydrogen atoms by Niels Bohr in 1913. Bohr hypothesized that electrons existed in set shells around a nucleus and then extrapolated this theory, using chemical rather than phy...

The philosopher of chemistry Andrea Woody has recently published a wide-ranging article concerning the turn to practice in the philosophy of science. Her primary example consists of the use of different forms of representations by Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Mendeleev when they presented their views on chemical periodicity. Woody believes that this dis...

The article concerns five traditionally difficult issues that chemical educators encounter and how they should be resolved. In some cases I propose the examination of necessary and sufficient conditions in order to cast light on the relationships under discussion. The five educational issues are, the notion that a pH value of seven implies a neutra...

How many candles?! The year 2019 has been named as the International Year of the Periodic Table in accordance with Mendeleev's work from 1869. In line with other celebratory events and articles to be found this year in Chemistry—A European Journal, here, Eric R. Scerri provides an historical account of the development of the periodic table and some...

is one of the leading contributors to the growing literature on the foundations of the periodic table. Among other publications he has promoted the writings of Charles Janet and his advocacy of the left-step periodic table (Stewart 2010). Stewart's article in the present issue consists of a close examination of Mendeleev's predictions other than th...

Latest news on the status of the periodic system in terms of quantum physics. Misconceptions concerning aufbau, explanation for anomalous electronic configurations.

Simplistic assumptions about the periodic table lead us astray, warns Eric Scerri. Simplistic assumptions about the periodic table lead us astray, warns Eric Scerri.

The periodic table turns 150 years old in the year 2019, which has been appropriately designated as the International Year of the Periodic Table by the UNESCO Organization. To many scientists the periodic table serves as an occasional point of reference, one that is generally considered to be something of a closed book. Of course they, and the gene...

Since the periodic table has reached the ripe old age of 150 years it may be an appropriate time to look back at the development of this unique scientific icon. It is also an opportunity to look forwards to any changes that the periodic table may undergo in view of the ever-growing list of new elements that continue to be synthesized. The way that...

A response to Vogt's review of my book, "A Tale of Seven Scientists" which appeared in the journal Hyle

span>The very nature of chemistry presents us with a tension. A tension between the exhilaration of diversity of substances and forms on the one hand and the safety of fundamental unity on the other. Even just the recent history of chemistry has been al1 about this tension, from the debates about Prout's hypothesis as to whether there is a primary...

editorial 59

But another scientist who was publishing articles at about the same time as Bohr and Moseley has been almost completely forgotten by all but a few historians of physics. He is the English mathematical physicist John Nicholson, who was in fact the first to suggest that the momentum of electrons in an atom is quantized. Bohr openly acknowledges this...

Abegg had the good fortune of studying and working with Lothar Meyer, Ladenburg, A.W. Hoffman, Ostwald, Arrhenius, and Nernst before his life was tragically cut short at the age of 41 when he died in a ballooning accident. But before this untimely end Abegg provided what was perhaps the most important step in valence theory between the discovery of...

The main thing that drew me to the history and philosophy of science was the simple desire to understand the nature of science. I was introduced to the exciting ideas of Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend, but it soon became clear that there were serious problems with each of these views and that those heydays were long gone. Professionals in th...

This blog post concerns a virtually unknown chemist, John David Main Smith, who contributed a significant piece of research in atomic physics in the early 1920s at the time when knowledge of the field was undergoing very rapid changes. Main Smith is so little known that I had to search far and wide for a photograph of him before finally obtaining o...

The recent announcement of the official ratification of four super-heavy elements, with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118, has taken the world of science news by storm. It seems like there is an insatiable appetite for new information about the elements and the periodic table within the scientific world and among the general public. Maybe it’s...