You’re giving phlogiston qualities no one who held that theory gave it. If you want to call the absence of oxygen phlogiston, okay, but you aren’t talking about the same phlogiston everyone else is talking about. Moreover, thinking about fire this way is clumsy and incompatible with the rest of our knowledge about physics and chemistry.
We already had a conception of matter when phlogiston was invented… and phlogiston was understood as a kind of matter. To say the phlogiston is really this other kind of thing, which isn’t matter but a particular kind of absence of matter is both unhelpful and a distortion of phlogiston theory. The whole point of the phlogiston theory was that they thought there was a kind of matter responsible for fire! But there isn’t matter like that.
Now by defining phlogiston as the absence of oxygen you might be able to model combustion in a narrow set of circumstances—but you couldn’t fit that model with any of your other knowledge about physics and chemistry.
In short neither the original kind nor your kind of phlogiston exist.
It was at one point theorized to have negative mass. If it’s matter, and you make everything else weigh more, it works out the same.
I fail to see why you think it can’t fit it with other knowledge of physics and chemistry. You can think of electricity as positively charged particles moving around with virtually zero loss of predicting power.
“you can’t use phlogiston in any model that also includes oxygen”
You also can’t use oxygen in any model that also includes phlogiston. Oxygen and phlogiston both describe the same phenomena. They’ve been looking at it from both ends, and found out they were the same thing. Oxygen was slightly more accurate then phlogiston, but they were both about the same accuracy.
“Nor can you do any work at the molecular or sub-molecular level.”
It’s also incompatible with much of quantum physics.
Every physical theory we’ve come up with, when examined close enough, is completely and utterly wrong. If we’re going to have any useful definition of accuracy, you can’t just throw it out of the window because of that.
It worked perfectly for almost everything they did at the time. For that matter, it works perfectly for almost everything we’re doing now.
Sigh. Oxygen has properties that have nothing to do with fire. You need it to properly model cellular respiration, water electrolysis, air currents, buoyancy, the properties of compounds of which the element is a part etc. Give me a coherent periodic table of elements that includes phlogiston instead of oxygen and we can talk.
Every physical theory we’ve come up with, when examined close enough, is completely and utterly wrong. If we’re going to have any useful definition of accuracy, you can’t just throw it out of the window because of that.
Some theories are less wrong. So yes, you absolutely can throw a physical theory out the window if it is wrong. You might save the equations so you can make quick, approximate calculations (i.e. Newtonian mechanics) but that doesn’t mean you include all the entities in the theory in your ontology.
It worked perfectly for almost everything they did at the time.
This is essentially a truism for all outdated scientific theories.
For that matter, it works perfectly for almost everything we’re doing now.
Sure unless you want to make sense of combustion and anything that requires knowledge of modern chemistry or atomic theory at the same time!
You’re giving phlogiston qualities no one who held that theory gave it. If you want to call the absence of oxygen phlogiston, okay, but you aren’t talking about the same phlogiston everyone else is talking about. Moreover, thinking about fire this way is clumsy and incompatible with the rest of our knowledge about physics and chemistry.
We already had a conception of matter when phlogiston was invented… and phlogiston was understood as a kind of matter. To say the phlogiston is really this other kind of thing, which isn’t matter but a particular kind of absence of matter is both unhelpful and a distortion of phlogiston theory. The whole point of the phlogiston theory was that they thought there was a kind of matter responsible for fire! But there isn’t matter like that.
Now by defining phlogiston as the absence of oxygen you might be able to model combustion in a narrow set of circumstances—but you couldn’t fit that model with any of your other knowledge about physics and chemistry.
In short neither the original kind nor your kind of phlogiston exist.
It was at one point theorized to have negative mass. If it’s matter, and you make everything else weigh more, it works out the same.
I fail to see why you think it can’t fit it with other knowledge of physics and chemistry. You can think of electricity as positively charged particles moving around with virtually zero loss of predicting power.
For example, you can’t use phlogiston in any model that also includes oxygen. Nor can you do any work at the molecular or sub-molecular level.
Similarly, thinking of electricity in terms of positively charged particles would be incompatible with atomic theory.
“you can’t use phlogiston in any model that also includes oxygen”
You also can’t use oxygen in any model that also includes phlogiston. Oxygen and phlogiston both describe the same phenomena. They’ve been looking at it from both ends, and found out they were the same thing. Oxygen was slightly more accurate then phlogiston, but they were both about the same accuracy.
“Nor can you do any work at the molecular or sub-molecular level.”
It’s also incompatible with much of quantum physics.
Every physical theory we’ve come up with, when examined close enough, is completely and utterly wrong. If we’re going to have any useful definition of accuracy, you can’t just throw it out of the window because of that.
It worked perfectly for almost everything they did at the time. For that matter, it works perfectly for almost everything we’re doing now.
Sigh. Oxygen has properties that have nothing to do with fire. You need it to properly model cellular respiration, water electrolysis, air currents, buoyancy, the properties of compounds of which the element is a part etc. Give me a coherent periodic table of elements that includes phlogiston instead of oxygen and we can talk.
Some theories are less wrong. So yes, you absolutely can throw a physical theory out the window if it is wrong. You might save the equations so you can make quick, approximate calculations (i.e. Newtonian mechanics) but that doesn’t mean you include all the entities in the theory in your ontology.
This is essentially a truism for all outdated scientific theories.
Sure unless you want to make sense of combustion and anything that requires knowledge of modern chemistry or atomic theory at the same time!