The author is the editor-in-chief of Foundations of Chemistry, the leading journal in the field. He has recently gained worldwide success with his book on the periodic table of the elements titled The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance. This volume provides an in-depth examination of his more philosophical and historical work in this area and further afield.

Contents:

• Philosophy of Chemistry and the Question of Reduction:
• The Case for Philosophy of Chemistry
• Prediction of the Nature of Hafnium from Chemistry, Bohr’s Theory and Quantum Theory
• Has Chemistry Been at Least Approximately Reduced to Quantum Mechanics?
• Reduction and Emergence in Chemistry
• The Periodic Table, Electronic Configurations and the Nature of the Elements:
• Has the Periodic Table Been Successfully Axiomatized?
• The Periodic Table: The Ultimate Paper Tool in Chemistry
• Naive Realism, Reduction and the ‘Intermediate Position’
• How Ab Inito is Ab Initio Quantum Chemistry? Foundations of Chemistry
• Some Aspects of the Metaphysics of Chemistry and the Nature of the Elements
• Realism and Anti-Realism, and Educational Issues in Philosophy of Chemistry:
• Constructivism, Relativism and Chemistry
• The Recently Claimed Observation of Atomic Orbitals and Some Related Philosophical Issues
• Normative and Descriptive Philosophy of Science and the Role of Chemistry

“Eric Scerri's new book is a most appropriate work to mark the centenary of the death of Dimitri Mendeleev. The title — The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance — gives a fair idea of the book's contents, and the author's approach and perspective are captured by his statement that he is concentrating on ‘the fundamental scientific and philosophical ideas that underpinned the evolution of the system.’ This, then, is a book about scientific ideas. Scerri does provide brief biographical sketches of each of his scientific protagonists, but biographical, social and cultural context rarely intrude into the narrative.”

“Eric Scerri is something of a rara avis. Scerri's philosophical orientation enriches the text by raising a number of thought-provoking issues ... The book under review here is clearly and engaging written and meticulously researched with 42 pages of notes.”

“The quality is not merely skin deep, there is a real scholarship inside ... I would have been proud to have written this book rather than just contributing one image.”

“'This is undoublty a book that every practising chemist and chemistry educator should read because of it's far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of the periodic law and the challenges it presents to contemporary portrayals of the Periodic Table.”

“The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance should be of great interest and value to chemists and particularly to those chemists who teach about what makes up us, our world, and our science.”