Bacon's and Descartes' idea of submitting the mechanism of science simultaneously to experiment and reasoning has been fully realised in the case of chemistry, it having become not only possible but always customary to experiment.
Owing to the possession of laboratories, modern science now bears a new character, quite unknown not only to antiquity but even to the preceding century.
While science is pursuing a steady onward movement, it is convenient from time to time to cast a glance back on the route already traversed, and especially to consider the new conceptions which aim at discovering the general meaning of the stock of facts accumulated from day to day in our laboratories. The high honour bestowed by the Chemical Society in inviting me to pay a tribute to the world-famous name of Faraday by delivering this lecture has induced me to take for its subject the Periodic Law of the Elements-this being a generalisation in chemistry which has of late attracted much attention. (FARADAY LECTURE delivered before the Fellows of the Chemical Society in the Theatre of the Royal Institution, on Tuesday, June 4th, 1889.) Professor Mendeléeff, Journal of the Chemical Society (London) 55, 634-656 (1889) The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements The selection reproduced below, then, represents a review of the periodic system by its foremost proponent after its validity and utility had been established but before its foundations had been explored. There had even been time for questions of priority and credit to arise (See, for example, Newlands 1878 and van Spronsen 1969a.), questions which are still debated. The Chemical Society had already recognized its importance by awarding the Davy medal to Mendeleev and Julius Lothar Meyer in 1882 and to J. Yet the periodic system had become widely accepted during the intervening years, during which time several elements predicted by Mendeleev predicted by Mendeleev had been discovered. The periodic table of that day differed in several respects from that of 1869 and that of the present day. In 1889 no physical basis for the periodic system of chemical elements was yet known.
Mendeleev's later reflections Elements and Atoms: Chapter 13
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