Article ID: CBB857890487

The Periodic Table as an Icon: A Perspective from the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (2019)

unapi

The aim of this essay is to examine the iconic nature of Mendeleev's periodic table in light of the philosophy of the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Mendeleev and Peirce lived at approximately the same time during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They both trained as chemists and, in 1869, the year of Mendeleev's first arrangement of the chemical elements, Peirce published his own arrangement, also based on atomic weights. Peirce developed a theory of iconicity as part of his wider semiotics, an important characteristic of an icon being its epistemic fruitfulness. The periodic table proved to be epistemically fruitful in predicting new relations—new knowledge—such as revised atomic weights and novel elements. By viewing the periodic table through the lens of Peirce's iconicity, I will show how Mendeleev was able both to reveal and to make perspicuous the relations between the chemical elements.

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Authors & Contributors
Scerri, Eric R.
Pulkkinen, Karoliina
Orna, Mary Virginia
Boeck, Gisela
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette
Maar, Juergen Heinrich
Concepts
Periodic system of the elements; periodic table
Chemistry
Chemical elements
Atomic weights
Theory of the elements
Classification
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
21st century
17th century
Places
Russia
Portugal
Germany
Institutions
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
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