The change from the traditional Western and Chinese view of the elements involving materials such as water, air, earth, wood, metal and fire, to the chemical elements making up the periodic table, to atoms, to particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons, and then to quarks was inevitable. The order of discovery of these ideas of the ultimate constituents of matter was necessary, in that they could not have been discovered in any other order. This was because nature has a particular structure and we have a particular place in nature. The traditional view of the elements could be obtained by naked eye observation, and the view of nature as being made up of the chemical elements in the periodic table was next discovered, as it involved the decomposition of traditional elements, such as air and water. This led to the idea there was a separate atom for each element which explained the differences between the elements. The sub atomic particles were discovered in a necessary order with the outer particles like the electron being discovered earlier, and inner particles such as quarks being discovered later. The order of discovery of particles was also affected by the properties of the particles. The charges of particles, their mass and ability to survive outside the particles they make up, and other properties will make a particle harder or easier to discover. The order of discovery is inevitable and set by the structure of the universe. The structure of the universe includes the structure of the atom, and of the particles making up the atom, and the properties of the atom, and of the particles making up the atom.
The Discovery of the Subatomic Particles : From Atoms to Quarks
