Oh, this is actually a perfect example of the arbitreity of mapping systems!
A looong time ago on reddit, I got into an argument with someone who was doing that thing where you confuse the map for the object itself. We were mostly talking about the chemistry table. But anyway, he just could not see how a change in motivation, that is what the map designer finds useful, could change how the map is arranged.
I mean, I don’t think this would convince him: he would just say the culinary version isn’t real. But still, I really like it.
Like, the periodic tables mapping isn’t arbitrary or alternate.
Like you can’t actually map the periodic a different way and it’s in a sense “self evident” in a way arbitrary mappings aren’t.
The periodic table itself is a kind of proof of quantum theory, or at least, strong supporting evidence. While it can be displayed differently, actually couldn’t be arranged differently and the things we know about physics hold true.
Like, the periodic tables mapping isn’t arbitrary or alternate.
Neither the biology nor culinary mappings are arbitrary, they have their rhyme and reason. Also biology would be the alternate one? Because the culinary definitions were definitely first.
Did you know that there’s quite extreme disagreements on what metals are? Chemists will tell you one thing and not be particularly unified in their response around the topic of semimetals, while astrophysicists have a very simple definition of metals: Anything that has more protons than helium.
Who is right? This has nothing to do with metaphysics (I’ve read a bit down the thread) as in “what is beyond physics, god, and stuff”, but how we interpret our (scientific) observations. Neither definition of metals is more correct than the other, they’re both maps drawn by scientists caring about vastly different things. Neither side says that the other is wrong – they just don’t care for it.
Back to the periodic table itself: Defining elements by protons has quite some predictive power but at the same time it’s a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on, ask any quantum chemist. It is rooted in quite hard science, but that doesn’t make it ground reality. Actual reality is something we can’t observe because to observe anything we first have to project it into our minds. All perception is modelling: Ask any neuroscientist. Or, for that matter, Plato.
The extreme usefulness of the one periodic table as we know it is why this is so hard to talk about. Philosophically, it isn’t any different: it is arranged by human values for human consumption. I think there is likely a strong reason that alien values would converge here, but that doesn’t really affect its arbitreity. The elements don’t have value unto themselves, they just are.
And there are plenty of different ways to arrange it. For one, if all you care about are the metals for some reason, you can arrange the nonmetals out of it completely. You could keep a linear, alphabetical list because whatever work you’re doing is derived from chemistry but does not actually care about atomic values.
yeah. you don’t understand the periodic table. this is the same cliff that both post-modernists and fascists have pushed themselves off of.
You are mistaking relativity for subjectivity and the two things are not equal. Human experience is not the arbiter of truth, and you couldn’t have picked a possibly worse example than the periodic table. To put a finer point on it: No. There aren’t other ways to construct the periodic table. Its construction has nothing to do with human perception.
You should’ve spend the time to go read about it before you use it as an example.
It’s okay, man. You majored in some science field, you don’t care much for philosophy; we don’t have to be at each other’s throats here. I’m not questioning the validity of the periodic table, it’s simply a way of thinking about it.
Dude I understand what you think you are saying and you are quite simply wrong. You don’t understand what the periodic table is if you think it could be constructed in some other way or that it’s organization is arbitrary or subjective.
You are also wrong in the basic philosophy of it.
No wonder you got the piss taken out of your in that other place.
It can be constructed in other ways. I gave you two of them. Those other presentations are not “less correct,” they’re just less useful. It just so happens that the most useful, scientific depiction of the table to us is also the one that contains the most facts.
You are also wrong in the basic philosophy of it.
Keep in mind, this argument I had was several proxy-arguments downstream of whether or not transwomen are women. So, be aware of what waters you’re treading into.
Isn’t the rejection of post-modernism like a very Jordan-Peterson–like thing to do? I’m pretty sure I heard him whining about it when he was also whining about jews cultural marxists.
Neither of the two constructions you listed would result in a periodic table. You don’t know this because you don’t actually know what a periodic table is. Try again.
To help you along, please explain to me: why the elements in the periodic table are ordered as they are? Or more readily, what determines the ordering of the periodic table? I’ll give you two huge hints, and a name to help you. Search the name Mendeleev, and orbital and proton.
Keep in mind, this argument I had was several proxy-arguments downstream of whether or not transwomen are women. So, be aware of what waters you’re treading into.
So your telling me that I need to be cautious of you derailing the conversation away from it’s original premise?
Isn’t the rejection of post-modernism like a very Jordan-Peterson–like thing to do?
And there we are.
No it’s a very Noam Chomskey thing to do. Jordon Peterson, like most fascists, draws largely on the principles of post-modernists. For all intents and purposes, he is one, in that he relies on the idea that truth and reality are relative to justify his arguments. I agree with Chomskey in his critiques of both post modernism and fascism, especially in their arbitrary use of language and sophistry to disguise the hollowness of their arguments.
That being said, i’ll be keeping you to the premise and the periodic table for this discussion. It need not go further.
If the ordering of the periodic table were arbitrary, it couldn’t be a periodic table. It is only a periodic table by this very reason. When ordering by orbital and atomic weight, Mendeleev not only came up with a diagram that effectively predicted all of the observable properties of the elements, but also predicted elements which were not yet known to human kind.
And therein lay the difference.
Imagine a person is coming up with a dictionary for English. And in a dream they came up with some alternative ordering. And in that alternative ordering, suddenly, they not only had a dictionary for English, but also Farsi, and Cantonese. Every language became interpretable through this reordering. In fact, the ordering even predicted languages that were not yet known to the person who developed the order. But the order stated that they should be there, or at least be possible. And when looked for in those places the languages were found. The ordering even gives the recipe for languages that don’t exist.
Neither of the two constructions you listed would result in a periodic table.
I… didn’t say that they would? If you change the map, it’s obviously a different map. You’d call it “Metallica’s table of metals,” or something.
So your telling me that I need to be cautious of you derailing the conversation away from it’s original premise?
No… I just don’t think you realize how anti-intellectual you’re being.
i’ll be keeping you to the premise and the periodic table for this discussion. It need not go further.
Okay, dad. But, you were the one who brought up fascists.
Very rude, by the way.
Uh, to anyone reading, I guess: Look up Jordan Peterson’s wikipedia. He is not a fan of whatever his meat-addled brain thinks Post Modernism is.
If the ordering of the periodic table were arbitrary, it couldn’t be a periodic table.
It is arbitrarily a periodic table because the periodic table has utility. That utility is why we don’t arrange them a different way. This isn’t complicated.
If you want an example of different motivations: Do these periods tell you how beautiful each element is? Does beauty rise in each column and row? You might need a different map for that.
In fact, the ordering even predicted languages that were not yet known to the person who developed the order.
That would be very insightful. I would say we should arbitrarily prefer that ordering because of how useful it would be to us.
Or we could arbitrarily choose not to because just the one language is good enough, innit?
Oh, this is actually a perfect example of the arbitreity of mapping systems!
A looong time ago on reddit, I got into an argument with someone who was doing that thing where you confuse the map for the object itself. We were mostly talking about the chemistry table. But anyway, he just could not see how a change in motivation, that is what the map designer finds useful, could change how the map is arranged.
I mean, I don’t think this would convince him: he would just say the culinary version isn’t real. But still, I really like it.
I mean that’s a pretty big difference right?
Like, the periodic tables mapping isn’t arbitrary or alternate.
Like you can’t actually map the periodic a different way and it’s in a sense “self evident” in a way arbitrary mappings aren’t.
The periodic table itself is a kind of proof of quantum theory, or at least, strong supporting evidence. While it can be displayed differently, actually couldn’t be arranged differently and the things we know about physics hold true.
Neither the biology nor culinary mappings are arbitrary, they have their rhyme and reason. Also biology would be the alternate one? Because the culinary definitions were definitely first.
Did you know that there’s quite extreme disagreements on what metals are? Chemists will tell you one thing and not be particularly unified in their response around the topic of semimetals, while astrophysicists have a very simple definition of metals: Anything that has more protons than helium.
Who is right? This has nothing to do with metaphysics (I’ve read a bit down the thread) as in “what is beyond physics, god, and stuff”, but how we interpret our (scientific) observations. Neither definition of metals is more correct than the other, they’re both maps drawn by scientists caring about vastly different things. Neither side says that the other is wrong – they just don’t care for it.
Back to the periodic table itself: Defining elements by protons has quite some predictive power but at the same time it’s a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on, ask any quantum chemist. It is rooted in quite hard science, but that doesn’t make it ground reality. Actual reality is something we can’t observe because to observe anything we first have to project it into our minds. All perception is modelling: Ask any neuroscientist. Or, for that matter, Plato.
Ah, there he is!
Just kidding.
The extreme usefulness of the one periodic table as we know it is why this is so hard to talk about. Philosophically, it isn’t any different: it is arranged by human values for human consumption. I think there is likely a strong reason that alien values would converge here, but that doesn’t really affect its arbitreity. The elements don’t have value unto themselves, they just are.
And there are plenty of different ways to arrange it. For one, if all you care about are the metals for some reason, you can arrange the nonmetals out of it completely. You could keep a linear, alphabetical list because whatever work you’re doing is derived from chemistry but does not actually care about atomic values.
yeah. you don’t understand the periodic table. this is the same cliff that both post-modernists and fascists have pushed themselves off of.
You are mistaking relativity for subjectivity and the two things are not equal. Human experience is not the arbiter of truth, and you couldn’t have picked a possibly worse example than the periodic table. To put a finer point on it: No. There aren’t other ways to construct the periodic table. Its construction has nothing to do with human perception.
You should’ve spend the time to go read about it before you use it as an example.
Wow, there he is. Like, for real.
It’s okay, man. You majored in some science field, you don’t care much for philosophy; we don’t have to be at each other’s throats here. I’m not questioning the validity of the periodic table, it’s simply a way of thinking about it.
Dude I understand what you think you are saying and you are quite simply wrong. You don’t understand what the periodic table is if you think it could be constructed in some other way or that it’s organization is arbitrary or subjective.
You are also wrong in the basic philosophy of it.
No wonder you got the piss taken out of your in that other place.
It can be constructed in other ways. I gave you two of them. Those other presentations are not “less correct,” they’re just less useful. It just so happens that the most useful, scientific depiction of the table to us is also the one that contains the most facts.
Keep in mind, this argument I had was several proxy-arguments downstream of whether or not transwomen are women. So, be aware of what waters you’re treading into.
Isn’t the rejection of post-modernism like a very Jordan-Peterson–like thing to do? I’m pretty sure I heard him whining about it when he was also whining about
jewscultural marxists.Peterson is kinda the embodiment of post-modernism, that is, he does all his ideology building by questioning everything else into oblivion.
Of course, not knowing what he’s talking about is also something very Jordan-Peterson-like so that all tracks.
Neither of the two constructions you listed would result in a periodic table. You don’t know this because you don’t actually know what a periodic table is. Try again.
To help you along, please explain to me: why the elements in the periodic table are ordered as they are? Or more readily, what determines the ordering of the periodic table? I’ll give you two huge hints, and a name to help you. Search the name Mendeleev, and orbital and proton.
So your telling me that I need to be cautious of you derailing the conversation away from it’s original premise?
And there we are.
No it’s a very Noam Chomskey thing to do. Jordon Peterson, like most fascists, draws largely on the principles of post-modernists. For all intents and purposes, he is one, in that he relies on the idea that truth and reality are relative to justify his arguments. I agree with Chomskey in his critiques of both post modernism and fascism, especially in their arbitrary use of language and sophistry to disguise the hollowness of their arguments.
That being said, i’ll be keeping you to the premise and the periodic table for this discussion. It need not go further.
If the ordering of the periodic table were arbitrary, it couldn’t be a periodic table. It is only a periodic table by this very reason. When ordering by orbital and atomic weight, Mendeleev not only came up with a diagram that effectively predicted all of the observable properties of the elements, but also predicted elements which were not yet known to human kind.
And therein lay the difference.
Imagine a person is coming up with a dictionary for English. And in a dream they came up with some alternative ordering. And in that alternative ordering, suddenly, they not only had a dictionary for English, but also Farsi, and Cantonese. Every language became interpretable through this reordering. In fact, the ordering even predicted languages that were not yet known to the person who developed the order. But the order stated that they should be there, or at least be possible. And when looked for in those places the languages were found. The ordering even gives the recipe for languages that don’t exist.
This is the difference.
I… didn’t say that they would? If you change the map, it’s obviously a different map. You’d call it “Metallica’s table of metals,” or something.
No… I just don’t think you realize how anti-intellectual you’re being.
Okay, dad. But, you were the one who brought up fascists.
Very rude, by the way.
Uh, to anyone reading, I guess: Look up Jordan Peterson’s wikipedia. He is not a fan of whatever his meat-addled brain thinks Post Modernism is.
It is arbitrarily a periodic table because the periodic table has utility. That utility is why we don’t arrange them a different way. This isn’t complicated.
If you want an example of different motivations: Do these periods tell you how beautiful each element is? Does beauty rise in each column and row? You might need a different map for that.
That would be very insightful. I would say we should arbitrarily prefer that ordering because of how useful it would be to us.
Or we could arbitrarily choose not to because just the one language is good enough, innit?