Periodic table Filling the gaps Fact and ritual Commentary

Dmitri Mendeleev chemistry periodic table

Periodic table

• Many miracles of modern medicine derive
• from application of the patterns of atomic properties.
• If that’s not true, at least it alliterates.
• Against the tendency of the universe toward disorder
• is the child’s fascination with stacks of wooden blocks
• and the poet’s liking for repeated vowels and consonants.
• Dmitri Mendeleev arranged cards describing the known elements
• as in a game of Patience
• in columns by chemical property and rows by atomic weight.
• Putting himself into a trance,
• he found “all the elements fell into place as required.”
• Against the tendency of the universe toward disorder
• is the inherent order of the elements themselves.
• In this fairy tale, as sunlight pours over chaos,
• antientropic forces take advantage
• of tendencies in the elements themselves to recombine
• into shapes useful for the perpetuation of life.

Filling the gaps

• Mendeleev’s tabular arrangement of the elements
• made sense only when he left gaps.
• He was thus able to predict
• the properties of 22 elements then unknown.
• Ezra Pound praised ancient cartographers
• because they left blank areas on their maps
• for parts of the world they didn’t know.
• We are performing an experiment
• whose result is not determined.
• Go find the missing elements.

Fact and ritual

• We memorize our multiplication tables
• (the familiar rote learning of childhood),
• but we are uneasy with the periodic table.
• Uneasy with the lies we tell ourselves,
• uneasy with the hint of damning truth,
• the shock of realizing all our knowledge,
• if not wrong, is at least misleading.
• We can explain the effects of gross manipulations
• but the essence is still pristine and unknown.
• Touch that and it might explode in our faces.

Elements

• The element of ornament
• The element of elements
• Could be one
• Could be many
• The element of suspense
• The element of surprise