The philosophical significance of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table

The article reviews the main milestones of the creation of the Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Law of the Elements. It is demonstrated how he came to his great discovery and why Mendeleev was given the priority of formulating the periodic law. This is due to the ideas that he laid at the foundation of his table. His first predictions turned out to be revolutionary, and the principles laid down in the classification of elements had deep philosophical significance. In the system under consideration, many universal characteristics of the world around us converge, since it directly founds them. The concepts of “element”, “structure”, “system”, and “function” acquire global significance. The elements under consideration are the building blocks of the universe for molecules and all those structures formed on their basis (organic compounds, amino acids, proteins, etc.). This made it possible to explain the properties of the basic chemical elements, structures and systems, as well as a significant part of matter. The Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Law contributed to the emergence of many new areas of research, among which, first, one should highlight the spread of the key ideas of this system of elements to the related fields of knowledge and the study of transuranic elements. It can be argued that the Periodic Law of chemical elements is a vivid example of a phenomenological theory, the truth of which was brilliantly confirmed by subsequent discoveries in physics at the end of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The periodic table suggested the existence of a subatomic structure and foresaw the mathematical apparatus that underlies the rules for controlling atoms, which in the future proved themselves in quantum theory. The study of the periodic law has been the subject of many studies by both Russian and foreign authors. B.M. Kedrov and his followers made a significant contribution to these studies. The Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Law is the fundamental law of the universe, the foundation of modern science and science as a whole.

system, law, natural sciences, atom, structure, element, transuranic, idea, prediction, table

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