Mirror of Matter: Lessons in Epistemology and Chemistry

The article analyzes the history of chemistry as a mirror of the human cognitive process, moving beyond the simple division between the darkness of alchemy and modern science. The author indicates that the development of knowledge about matter is actually an epistemological evolution—a change in the ways evidence is interpreted and truth criteria are defined. Invoking the concepts of Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Imre Lakatos, the text explains the mechanism of paradigm shifts: from phlogiston theory to Mendeleev's periodic table. It emphasizes that the human mind is not a dispassionate recorder of data, but a system prone to heuristics and expectations, meaning that scientific progress results from the competition between theoretical models and their ability to generate accurate predictions, rather than just the accumulation of facts.