Well, the BBC’s Radio 4 does it again. There’s an excellent series of short spots on the radio station throughout the day today called “Periodic Tales”. It is (by some reckoning) the 200th annniversary of the discovery of foundations of what would become the modern Periodic Table of the Elements. They have several familiar (to many UK listeners) voices talking about various elements from the table. “From Silver to Selenium”, and it is rather nice. As they say on the site:
Familiar Radio 4 voices introduce elements from the Periodic Table and the unique roles they play in human existence – with a little help from the irreverent Tom Lehrer.
-cvj
(Thanks cmj!)
November 7th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
You’ve probably seen this:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7598/302/1600/chemical%20galaxy.jpg
It’s an interesting alternative representation.
November 7th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
I like your picture Garrett.
Again the historical perspective of it’s creator is always nice. His name is Mendeleev, Dmitri (1834-1907)
Sometimes it’s interesting that such foundational perspectives would have us see these things quite differently then in their normal state of affairs.
Garretts’s example for sure in how cosmologicy mght attain their informtaion about some aspect of the early universe. Signatures?
If strings are to be the harmony then what music do such laws of chemistry sing? What is the mind of God? Kaku saids,”According to this picture, the mind of God is Music resonanting through ten- or eleven dimensional hyperspace which of course begs the question, If the Universe is a symphony, then is there a composer to the symphony.”
But imagine for a moment, Kaku’s statement here. The alteration of views we give the table. Is there a predictive functionabiity here by such foundational perspectve change, that “predictive abilities” would have us describe places within spaces of Mendeleev’s model?
November 7th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Periodic Tales from the BBC
The BBC is doing a wonderful radio series on the periodic table called Periodic Tales. So far only ten elements have been profiled (He, Ag, Co, Se, O, As, Hg, I, Ni), but it looks like a great way to get excited about the elements.
(Found via Cos…
November 7th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
I’m sorry to be down here, but, really, WTF is wrong with chemists?
They seem pathologically unable to write popular material that explains any sort of unity in their science. EVERY pop chemistry book (or radio/TV show or whatever) has this same moronic “story of the elements” or “story of some molecules” format, which basically tells you that chemistry is nothing more than stamp-collecting. I mean, damn, the two stamp-collecting science per excellence, biology and geology, don’t do things this way.
Where is the chemistry book that actually talks about the *patterns* in the science? That explains not just that pH measures the concentration of protons in water, but tells me why the hell anyone should care. That doesn’t just spout some happy words about photosynthesis turning light energy into chemical energy but that actually explains what is going on in the electron transport part of the process and why humans can’t duplicate it to their advantage. That explains why some reactions are called redox and others are not, and, again, why would anyone care.
November 8th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Boy, Maynard Handley, you are really passionate about this. I feel your frustration. Thanks for sharing it. It’s something that has needed to be articulated for a long time. We all have felt it, welling up in us over the years, as year after year, what we unconsciously felt was coming, eventually, never comes, ultimately. We wade through all the stuff that they want to explain to us, thinking that, if we do, it will prepare us to understand the final answer, and then one day, if we still care enough to even remember why we are there, we realize, the answer is not ever going to come out, because they don’t know the answer, but the jerks didn’t tell us that they didn’t know it. They led us on, as if they had run the gauntlet themselves, and found out the hard way, and we just needed to follow their course, if we wanted to know for ourselves.
Well, you can’t blame the chemists, Maynard. Like geometry, chemistry depends on “principles brought from without.” The principles of mechanics that teach us how to draw “right lines and circles,” are not part of geometry, and the principles of physics that teach us how to draw electrons and atoms, are not part of chemistry. The fact is, Maynard, quantum mechanics can’t tell chemists how to draw the periodic table, or what is the same thing, why physics draws it the way it does for chemists. Mendeleev had to go get himself up into the cabin and play with his cards to figure it out. Theoretical physics has never been able to do it. That’s why no one ever tells you why the heck those gaps are there, or why the lower rows are so doggone long that they have to cut those two sections out and present them below the rest like that to keep the table size manageable.
But good news old boy! The explanation has been found: here it is, are you ready? The gaps aren’t really there in nature; they are only there because we haven’t understood the fact that the periodicity of the elements is related to the periodicity of the ancient Greek harmony; that is, the first four numbers, and the sacred tetraktys of Pythagoras! The corresponding four rows of Pascal’s triangle! The corresponding normed division, Clifford, algebras! The octonions! Bott periodicity! The four octaves! Oh, the mystery of it all! The doggone siren song of mathematics teases us out of our minds, as if the Greeks were mocking us for our condescending modern egalitarianism (if I seem a little too much like Plato here, rest assured, it’s me, Doug, writing, not Plato).
But here’s the lowdown, Maynard. The signed integers seduced us! If we had listened to the financial gurus, we wouldn’t have had to invent imaginary numbers, and we wouldn’t have been perplexed by the non-commutative nature of the 3D spatial reference system either. Indeed, we would have understood, like the ancients, that in nature, balance is everything. As it stands, though, we learned a lot, which will probably always be useful (though the math of the ancient epicycles are mostly forgotten today, aren’t they?) You see the signed integers and zero are impostors. The negative numbers are only a tipping of the balance in the “direction” opposite to the only other way it can be imbalanced, in the positive “direction.” The balance here is the rational numbers, and the “zero” balance is the unit ratio, like 1/1, or 2/2, or 3/3, or 4/4 (those sacred numbers again.)
Anyway, take those four scalars, expand their two “directions” exponentially, and lo and behold you will find the periodic table. Of course, there’s much more to it than that, but I’ll guarantee you one thing: if you bother to learn it, you will find understanding at the bottom line. In the meantime, have a look at the periodic order of the elements from the perspective of this new understanding. It will be therapeutic, I think:
Wheel of Motion
Warm regards,
Doug
November 8th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Rest assured Doug, that Plato likes this diagram
It has a “odor” of a long ago time, when so and so past it on in Gurdieffian thoughts processes…
But if one looks further, even the stance behind RST would and could be refuted?
November 8th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
Plato, you are as cryptic as I am verbose. There are lots of cultic associations with those 4 numbers, but only the Greeks associated 4 ratios with them, and that makes all the difference.
I seldom read Lubos’ blog because it periodically fires off something – I don’t know what it is, but it bugs me.
November 10th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Yes but Doug, as cryptic as I am, the meaning is quite substantial.
Let me say this, that having passed through information on this Gurdjieffian philosophy, I was taken back some by the “insinuation” that they would have recognized my creation model in Timaeus. Or, that String Theory might try and model from it:)
I did not see this before, as to what it could become in such conversation, as a foundational perspective might reveal in Mendeleev’s model. Thalean views about mother’s womb(bubbles), and what is born from fluid, as children? It would be hard but this is a progressive view? What geometry would emerge from such a bossum?
Quasi modes and dispersals against blackhole? Who would of thought each distinction feature would leave it’s trace? Create a model for how we see things on earth develope in stages like a onion?
From a fifth dimensional perspective and you would have had to know how you got there? “Pascal’s triangle” had to exist somewhere else first?
Could the Ramanujan function have recognized the “many divisilble parts” as a harmonic signature part and parcel of this larger symphony(whole)? Oh, there is so much here. Layman sighs.