I‘m afraid you’ll have to do more to convince me of the argument that Lavoisierian theory held up the development of chemistry for decades by denying the role of energy. Can you provide some evidence? Until the discovery of the atomic model, chemistry by necessity had to be an empirical science where practitioners discovered phenomena and linked them together and drew parallels, and progressed in that manner. Great progress was made without a deep underlying theory of how chemistry worked. It was well known that some reactions gave out heat, and some required heat to proceed and not much more was needed as regards the role of “energy”. Alloys and dyes and such were all first discovered without much deep understanding of chemical reaction theory. Once quantum theory came along we understood how chemistry works and a lot of observations and linkages made sense. But for a long time quantum theory didn’t help as much as you might expect in pushing chemistry in new directions because the equations were too hard to get any real numbers out. So, much of chemical research carried on quite happily following well tried and tested paths of empirical research (and still does to quite a large extent). It was only really with the advent of computers that we started to make heavy use of calculation to help drive research. You make the very good point that the Phlogistonists didn’t deserve to be pilloried, because they had a theory that was self consistent enough to model the real world as we know it now. But until electrons were actually discovered, it is hard to see how any Phlogistonist could seriously compete with the Lavoisierian point of view. It could scarcely be otherwise.
I‘m afraid you’ll have to do more to convince me of the argument that Lavoisierian theory held up the development of chemistry for decades by denying the role of energy. Can you provide some evidence? Until the discovery of the atomic model, chemistry by necessity had to be an empirical science where practitioners discovered phenomena and linked them together and drew parallels, and progressed in that manner. Great progress was made without a deep underlying theory of how chemistry worked. It was well known that some reactions gave out heat, and some required heat to proceed and not much more was needed as regards the role of “energy”. Alloys and dyes and such were all first discovered without much deep understanding of chemical reaction theory.
Once quantum theory came along we understood how chemistry works and a lot of observations and linkages made sense. But for a long time quantum theory didn’t help as much as you might expect in pushing chemistry in new directions because the equations were too hard to get any real numbers out. So, much of chemical research carried on quite happily following well tried and tested paths of empirical research (and still does to quite a large extent). It was only really with the advent of computers that we started to make heavy use of calculation to help drive research.
You make the very good point that the Phlogistonists didn’t deserve to be pilloried, because they had a theory that was self consistent enough to model the real world as we know it now. But until electrons were actually discovered, it is hard to see how any Phlogistonist could seriously compete with the Lavoisierian point of view. It could scarcely be otherwise.