Restructuration Of Science Essay

Structuring Science
“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.” A quote from Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist and historian of science, explains that science does not consist of facts, but statements that are waiting to be corrected. In science there has been and always will be continuous reorganization of theories, evidence, experiments, and facts. Looking through different scientific topics, theories, and thought processes, a specific tool gives great cases of why science continuously needs restructuration. The periodic table, an arrangement of chemical elements, organized on the source of their atomic number, electron configurations, and frequent chemical properties, has been depicted as many iterations. Some of these iterations are still viable to this day while others have been obsolete. The periodic table, like many other scientific tools, needs constant organization

We look forward to that change in science.” There have been multiple ideas of how to organize the chemical elements, some that are contradicting, whereas others are just another perspective of looking at the standard, typical periodic table. There have been multiple alternate structures of the periodic table and one example of this popular yet not quite identical structure would be Theodor Benfey’s periodic table. Unlike the standard organization, the elements are arranged in a continuous spiral, starting off with hydrogen at the center and transitions towards metals, lanthanides, and actinides. Still applicable but just gives different perspectives such as Courtines’ Periodic Classification, Wringley’s Lamina System, Dufour’s Periodic Tree,