Chemical Information Bulletin, Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2010 Page: 28
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Chemical Information Bulletin Vol. 62(1) Spring 2010
chemistry. Mendeleev certainly had profound views on the issue and referred to them even in the first of the two
volumes of the first edition of his famous book. He did this even before formulating the periodic table, which he
did while considering how to make a transition to the remaining elements that he wanted to discuss after those in
volume one.
SB: An excellent book on Mendeleev was written by Michael
Gordin (Gordin, M.D. (2004) A Well-ordered Thing: Dmitrii
Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table. Basic Books, New
York). Your book is the most comprehensive work entirely
devoted to the periodic table. I can admit that I read it like a
novel. How did you do the research for it and what is generally
your way of writing? What resources did you use?
ES: Thanks very much for saying so. It is the single most intensive
piece of work I have ever done and it involved a fair share of trials and
tribulations. The research for the book stretches back for a period of
about twenty years to my PhD thesis in history and philosophy of
science, which was on the reduction of chemistry to physics. But
rather than trying to deal with the whole of chemistry, I decided to
concentrate on one very central aspect of chemistry, which embodies
so much chemical knowledge and information-the Periodic Table-
and to ask how, or to what extent, it has been reduced to physics, in
general, and to quantum mechanics, in particular. As for my sources, I
Dmitrii Mendeleev would like to think that I have read everything published on the
AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives subject, in many cases a number of times.
The other 'source,' of inspiration at least, goes back to my childhood and the fact that I have always admired the
orderliness and compactness of the periodic table, the feeling that all of chemistry was somehow contained in this
elegant chart.
SB: I read somewhere that you had been involved with some TV productions. What did you do for TV and
what are the projects you have been working on now? What is in your future plans?
ES: I have been a consultant and interviewee in a couple of series on the periodic table, one in the UK and the other
one in the US, both of which are yet to air. I was also part of a one-hour radio show made by the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, called "The Music of Matter." It consisted of extended interviews with John
Emsley, Oliver Sacks and with me on the subject of the periodic table. I am very interested in getting more
involved in this kind of work, perhaps even on the production side, and I invite anyone reading this interview to get
in touch with offers or suggestions. As you know there is far too little on chemistry in popular science TV and
radio, and of course not enough popular science books centered on chemistry. I hope to do my bit to redress this
imbalance as much as possible.
SB: You are evidently very interested in predictions in chemistry, in general, and in the development of the
periodic system, in particular. You have a sub-chapter in your book, "Mendeleev's less successful
predictions." How do philosophers of science view the failed predictions of scientists, and how are such
predictions treated, especially if they have never been published? Should they be counted as failures?
ES: Thank you for raising the issue of predictions because I want to clear the record on this. When an article
describing my book appeared in the New York Times, the author claimed that I was trying to minimize the
achievements of Mendeleev and was claiming that many others had discovered the periodic table before him,
especially the Frenchman De Chancourtois. In fact I have the utmost respect for Mendeleev's work, although a
historian is obliged to lay-out the record of discoveries as he sees it. My reason for devoting a great deal of
attention to predictions is because of a long-standing debate in the philosophy of science which seeks to establish
whether scientific theories and developments are accepted mainly because of successful novel predictions orperhaps for their successful accommodations of already known facts.
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American Chemical Society. Division of Chemical Information. Chemical Information Bulletin, Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2010, periodical, Spring 2010; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc31514/m1/28/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .