Prediction and Accommodation: The Acceptance of Mendeleev’s Periodic System

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Eric Scerri

Published:

2019

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

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 codiscoverers in publicly demonstrating the validity of his system by using it to predict the existence of a number of hitherto unknown elements. According to the popular story, it was Mendeleev’s many successful predictions that were directly responsible for the widespread acceptance of the periodic system, while his competitors either failed to make predictions or did so in a rather feeble manner. Several of his predictions were indeed widely celebrated, especially those of the elements germanium, gallium, and scandium, and many historians have argued that it was such spectacular feats that assured the acceptance of Mendeleev’s periodic system by the scientific community. The notion that scientific theories are accepted primarily if they make successful predictions seems to be rather well ingrained into scientific culture, and the history of the periodic table has been one of the episodes through which this notion has been propagated. However, philosophers and some scientists have long debated the extent to which predictions influence the acceptance of scientific theories, and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that successful …

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