Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Disappearing Spoon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Storytelling and Science
Experimentation, Accidents, and Discovery
Nature vs. Culture
Science for Good vs. for Evil
The Expansion and Limits of Human Knowledge
Summary
Analysis
Kean proposes that “the history of the periodic table is the history of the many characters who shaped it.” One of these characters is Robert Bunsen, who didn’t actually invent the Bunsen burner but instead improved its design. Before that, however, Bunsen had a passionate interest in arsenic: he worked with arsenic-based chemicals that smelled horrific, caused hallucinations, and left black residue on his tongue. Although this led him to develop the best antidote to arsenic toxicity, he still paid the price of his arsenic obsession when a glass beaker in his lab exploded and caused him to lose most of his eyesight.
These stories from the life of Robert Bunsen show how dangerous working with elements can be. At the same time, there is something admirable—if a little alarming—about Bunsen’s fearlessness in the face of chemical danger.
Themes
At this point, Bunsen developed a fixation with natural explosions and he spent time researching geysers and volcanoes. He then invented the spectroscope, a tool that uses light to examine the elements by heating them and looking at the specific colors of light they produce. After this, he developed a version of the Bunsen burner to use within the spectroscope in order to heat the elements inside. These innovations led to a rapid acquisition of knowledge about the elements. At this point, the periodic table did not yet exist. The person credited with developing this organizational framework was Dmitri Mendeleev, although he didn’t do it alone.
Kean jumps back and forth in time between before and after the periodic table was invented. While at times this might be a little confusing, it also highlights a sense of continuity between scientific understanding of the elements before and after the invention of the periodic table. This, in turn, shows that the table originally developed by Mendeleev is not the only way to know the elements—other frameworks have been used and might be used again in the future.
Themes
Mendeleev was born to a large family in Siberia, and studied in St. Petersburg, Paris, and Heidelberg, where he was briefly the student of Bunsen. He became a professor in St. Petersburg in the 1860s. At this point, several scientists had already proposed tables of elements, and Mendeleev even shared a prize with a German chemist for both separately discovering what was called “periodic law.” Bizarrely, later in life, Mendeleev refused to believe in things he couldn’t see, including atoms and electrons. Before this point, however, he made enormous contributions to human understanding of the elements, such as the fact that elements are defined by their atomic weight.
Mendeleev is one of several scientists Kean mentions who combined profound insight with strange or objectionable views (recall Shockley and his advocation of eugenics). Some of the scientists who made the most important contributions to the periodic table turned to spiritualism, were deeply or sexist, or—as in Mendeleev’s case—ended up refuting basic scientific principles. This serves as a useful reminder that even scientific geniuses are humans and they are thus capable of being highly irrational.
Themes
Mendeleev was able to accurately sort what were, at the time, the 62 known elements in the universe, and also had the foresight to realize more elements would be discovered. He was even able to predict the properties of these unknown elements based on the properties of those that were known. Significantly, the discovery of noble gases in the 1890s did not contradict Mendeleev’s table, and they could be added without jeopardizing the existing structure. Mendeleev was an extraordinary character: he completed his major achievement in the final hours before a deadline and married a second wife while the tsar turned a blind eye due to his scientific achievements. He was, however, eventually fired due to his anarchist political beliefs.
Another important motif in the book is the way in which science has been continually thwarted by politics throughout human history. Scientists like Mendeleev may have been permitted to have eccentric personalities and even break fundamental social laws. Yet embracing radical anti-authoritarianism was considered one step too far, no matter how great his achievements.
Themes
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Mendeleev’s speculations annoyed Paul Emile François Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who was the scientist to actually discover gallium (which Mendeleev had called eka-aluminum)—not just predict that it existed. Gallium melts at 84ºF, making it one of the only liquid metals humans can touch. A popular trick is to make spoons out of gallium and watch them “disappear” (in reality, melt) when they come into contact with a cup of tea. After hearing about Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s discovery, Mendeleev tried to take credit for it, which in turn led an irritated Lecoq de Boisbaudran to falsely claim that the periodic table had actually been invented by a little-known French scientist.
Again, it might be a little confusing what Kean means when he refers to “discovering” or “producing” a new element. As this passage shows, a scientist (like Mendeleev) can predict an element exists, but without being able to prove its existence, they have not actually discovered it. Moreover, discovery doesn’t necessarily take the form of finding the element in the wild—it often involves producing it a lab.
Themes
Mendeleev then responded by claiming that there was an error in Lecoq de Boisbaudran’s data. While at first glance this seemed like brash and baseless speculation, he was actually correct, and Lecoq de Boisbaudran was forced to retract his initial data before publishing a correct version. In this case, a theory proved an experiment wrong, not the other way around. Still, trying to decide whether theories or experiments are more important in driving scientific innovation is a fruitless endeavor, as both are vitally important. Although Mendeleev outlined the initial version of the periodic table, this has been subject to much revision over the years. For example, Mendeleev conceded that at the time, little could be known (or predicted) about a group of elements called the lanthanides.
The relationship between theory and experimentation is another important aspect of the book. These two methods of doing science often work together—indeed, scientific inquiry would not be possible without the involvement of both of them—but sometimes they can clash. It is more often the case that experiments prove a theory wrong, but as this passage shows, sometimes it can work the other way around.
Themes
Back in 1701, a German teenager named Johann Friedrich Böttger performed a trick of making two silver coins “disappear.” King Augustus of Poland arrested Böttger and tried to force him to perform the trick in his castle, which he couldn’t do. However, Böttger promised that he could make porcelain, which was something of an obsession for the European elite ever since Marco Polo first brought some back from China in the 13th century. Europeans tried to make it themselves with little success. King Augustus had already assigned Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus to develop a porcelain-making technique, and now he gave Böttger the role of Tschirnhaus’s assistant.
Again, this passage provides yet another leap back in time to a point not only prior to the invention of the periodic table, but before the establishment of chemistry as it exists today. In the West, the antecedents of modern chemists were alchemists. While alchemists worked with elements, they didn’t necessarily understand them very well and they often relied on magical or superstitious explanations for what they were doing.
Themes
Working together, Tschirnhaus and Böttger successfully discovered a porcelain recipe which soon spread across Europe. Mining of feldspar, a key ingredient in making porcelain, took off—including in the Swedish village of Ytterby. The Ytterby quarry, as scientists would soon discover, was filled with lanthanides. In the 18th century, Sweden experienced its own particular age of Enlightenment, leading to a proliferation of scientists including Johan Gadolin, who was born in 1760. While living in Turku (now part of Finland), he imported and studied rocks from the Ytterby quarry. There, he discovered a remarkable six of the 14 lanthanides, all of which he named after Ytterby or Sweden in some way.
Again, while many elements have been found by scientists sitting around making calculations and performing experiments in the laboratory, some have been discovered in a more classic sense, in that they were literally found existing in their natural state.
Themes
