Skip to main content

What is an element?

I know it's Friday, but pay attention, we're going to do a bit of philosophy. I'm dredging this up from memory, so feel free to correct me if I've got the details wrong, but the essence is there, which I think will prove significant.

I suspect it was Plato who suggested that there are types and shadows (I just love the medieval terminology) - types or archetypes are the 'real thing', the ultimate essence of the concept, while shadows are the physical world entities corresponding to those types. So, for instance you might have the type of 'cat' which embodies all catness, while the moggy down the street is just a shadow, embodying parts of the ultimate concept.

I was interested to see a very similar idea emerging from a discussion of the philosophy of chemistry (no, really). Eric Scerri of the University of California, Los Angeles (general nice guy and author of an interesting book on the periodic table) suggested we need a similar approach to the elements. Sodium, for instance. Yes it's a grey-silver metal that does exciting things when you drop it in water. But 'It is more proper, perhaps, to think of elemental sodium as that thing that gives properties not just to the metal but also to NaCl and other compounds. Sodium may be best described as that abstract thing that you point to on the periodic table, defined only by its atomic number...'

In this picture, the abstract thing on the periodic table is surely a type, with the lump of metal, or the component of salt, a shadow.

Whatever, I think it's fascinating - and for those who think chemistry is all test tubes and fume cupboards, a bit of an eye-opener. Click here to read more about a recent discussion on the philosophy of chemistry.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Clare Dudman9 October 2009 at 10:17

    Interesting way of reclassifying chemical knowledge - but still think the conventional thinking on the periodic table is more practically useful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. dave bartram9 October 2009 at 10:31

    close -Plato posited that all things in the material world are like shadows cast on a cave wall to people who never leave the cave (us). These shapows are to the real world outside the cave as real objects are to the 'ideal' forms of things.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brian Clegg9 October 2009 at 13:34

    Clare - I don't think the idea is to dispose of conventional thinking, but to supplement it.

    Dave - that's the fellow. I think the 'types and shadows' version is a medieval development on Plato's cave.

    This comes through, for example, in the medieval hymn 'Now, my tongue, the mystery telling' which has the lines: 'types and shadows have their ending/for the newer rite is here.'

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
122 comments
Read more

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...
6 comments
Read more