MENDELEEV’S PERIODIC LAW: IS IT A GENUINE SCIENTIFIC LAW?

The aim of this paper is to analyze and assess the validity of Mendeleev’s Periodic Law as a scientific law and to gain understanding of its implications to the nature of science. Upon its entrenchment as a fundamental law in discovering the yet undiscovered elements starting 1875, the Periodic Law gained its reputation as a basic tool in the succeeding attempts to determine the existence of predicted elements. The high accuracy of its predictive nature following the establishment of the physicochemical data derived from the methods of Mendeleev on the periodicity of elements had resulted into a high confidence of its utility and its bold acceptance within the scientific community at the time. However, the Periodic Law was under scrutiny due to its lack of law-like character. By tracing the history of the Periodic Law, its subsequent accomplishments and the reactions of the scientific community and philosophers of science, it became apparent that this law lacks some merits of a scientific law. The rather dubious functionality of its predictive nature gave rise to skepticism because it does not possess the qualities of a scientific law, i.e., empirical proofs of its processes. Moreover, many of the first attempts of Mendeleev involved many errors which resulted into few more attempts in modifying the Periodic Table. Analysis of its nature indicated that the Periodic Law appeared to have a descriptive nature in contrast to the empirical nature of exact sciences such as Chemistry and Physics. Further analysis showed that it failed to express its functionality against the philosophical standards of a scientific law. Since some of its merits do not qualify in the realm of scientific laws, it is likely that the Periodic Law may violate the nature of science.