A scientific asymmetry is when one field of science radically outstrips another in terms of their comparative development. Consider 1858, the year before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species; at the time, biology lay in what was effectively a pre-paradigmatic state. Meanwhile, chemistry was rocketing ahead—the first recognizably modern textbook was already a century old, the concept of a periodic table was known and many common elements had been filled in, and elements could already be ordered by what we now know is atomic weight, etc.
Read Full Article »
