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?