Comment on Strawberries are nuts đ
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone â¨1⊠â¨day⊠agoOh, 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 donât think this would convince him: he would just say the culinary version isnât real. But still, I really like it.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world â¨1⊠â¨day⊠ago
I mean thatâs a pretty big difference right?
Like, the periodic tables mapping isnât arbitrary or alternate.
Like you canât actually map the periodic a different way and itâs in a sense âself evidentâ in a way arbitrary mappings arenât.
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 couldnât be arranged differently and the things we know about physics hold true.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone â¨1⊠â¨day⊠ago
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 isnât 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 doesnât really affect its arbitreity. The elements donât 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 youâre doing is derived from chemistry but does not actually care about atomic values.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world â¨1⊠â¨day⊠ago
yeah. you donât understand the periodic table.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone â¨1⊠â¨day⊠ago
Wow, there he is. Like, for real.
Itâs okay, man. You majored in some science field, you donât care much for philosophy; we donât have to be at each otherâs throats here. Iâm not questioning the validity of the periodic table, itâs simply a way of thinking about it.
borf@lemmynsfw.com â¨1⊠â¨day⊠ago
Hey, that guy is a troll and a pretty good one. Block and move on, youâre worth it
barsoap@lemm.ee â¨22⊠â¨hours⊠ago
Neither the biology nor culinary mappings are arbitrary.
Did you know that thereâs quite extreme agreements 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 (Iâve read a bit down the thread) as in âwhat is beyond physics, god, and stuffâ, but how we interpret our (scientific) observations. Neither definition of metals is more correct than the other, theyâre both maps drawn by scientists caring about vastly different things.
Back to the periodic table itself: Defining elements by protons has quite some predictive power but at the same time itâs a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on, ask any quantum chemist. It is rooted in quite hard science, but that doesnât make it ground reality. Actual reality is something we canât 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.