What Happened When Chemists Came to Classify Elements by their Atomic Number?

TY - JOUR

T1 - What Happened When Chemists Came to Classify Elements by their Atomic Number?

AU - Wray, K. Brad

PY - 2022/7

Y1 - 2022/7

N2 - I respond to Scerri’s recent reply to my claim that there was a scientific revolution in chemistry in the early 20th Century. I grant, as Scerri insists, that there are significant continuities through the change about which we are arguing. That is so in all scientific revolutions. But I argue that the changes were such that they constitute a Kuhnian revolution, not in the classic sense of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but in the sense of Kuhn’s mature theory, developed in the 1980s and early 1990s.

AB - I respond to Scerri’s recent reply to my claim that there was a scientific revolution in chemistry in the early 20th Century. I grant, as Scerri insists, that there are significant continuities through the change about which we are arguing. That is so in all scientific revolutions. But I argue that the changes were such that they constitute a Kuhnian revolution, not in the classic sense of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but in the sense of Kuhn’s mature theory, developed in the 1980s and early 1990s.

KW - atomic number

KW - chemical elements

KW - scientific revolution

KW - Thomas Kuhn

KW - isotopes

KW - periodic table of elements

KW - theory change

U2 - 10.1007/s10698-022-09423-0

DO - 10.1007/s10698-022-09423-0

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1386-4238

VL - 24

SP - 161

EP - 170

JO - Foundations of Chemistry: Philosophical, Historical, Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies of Chemistry

JF - Foundations of Chemistry: Philosophical, Historical, Educational and Interdisciplinary Studies of Chemistry

IS - 2

ER -