Fwd: Re: phlogisten

[paul davidson <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>]

As a result of a posing of mine on the pktnet,  I have had some email
correspondence with Marc-Andre Pigeon of the Levy Institute on the
fallacious theory of phlogiston.  I had first heard about this theory when
I was a biochemist some 49 years ago and had forgotten the names of the
"scientists" involved.  But Marc- Andre followed up my suggestions for
looking it up and discovered the following:

> I looked it up and found the following:
>
> Phlogiston theory, advanced by Johann Becher late in the 17th cent.,
> postulates the
> presence in all flammable material of phlogiston, a substance that is
> without color, odor,
> taste, or weight and that is given off in burning. The ash of the burned
> material is held
> to be the true material. The theory was popular until the late 18th cent.,
> when it was
> refuted by the work of Antoine Lavoisier.

As Marc-Andre points out , this is

> an intriguing example of blind empiricism.

Thanks Marc-Andre for doing the literary search!

Paul

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