"Phlogiston Theory and Chemical Revolutions" argues that, while Lavoisier clarified the concept of a chemical element, phlogiston theory was ahead of its time as a physical theory of chemical interaction. The author's idea is that phlogiston is now better understood as a property similar to energy ("the Gibbs chemical potential of a material with respect to its oxide"), rather than as a substance.
Joseph Priestley, the main defender of phlogiston theory against Lavoisier's new chemistry, was a religious and economic liberal who supported the French revolution, and eventually moved to America, after being targeted by conservative mobs in Britain. A few years after Priestley's move, at the age of 50, Lavoisier was guillotined by a French revolutionary tribunal, along with dozens of other aristocrats who had been supported by a hated royal taxation authority. The judge himself was executed three months later, and Lavoisier was posthumously rehabilitated a year after that. In his exile, Priestley outlived Lavoisier by ten years, but phlogiston theory was already considered outdated and wrong.
The entire debate surrounding phlogiston had unfolded without basic concepts that we now take for granted, like conservation of energy, or the idea that heat is "energy on the move". That all came decades later.
My immediate response to the quoted texts, without having read the originals or the history of phlogiston, is that they are anachronistic. Identifying phlogiston with electrons is little better than identifying it with "negative oxygen". At least there is such a thing as electrons. But when e.g. carbon burns in oxygen, there is not a flow of electrons from carbon to oxygen. Instead the carbon and oxygen both complete their electron shells by sharing electrons. None of this was known in 1876 or even 1926, but that just means that both Odling and Lewis were themselves wrong about combustion. There is nothing about electrons that can be matched to phlogiston, and even if carbon dioxide were correctly described as C++++ 2O--, well, since it isn't, it might equally well be speculated to be C---- 2O++ with the electrons going the other way. "Dephlogisticated air" is just oxygen, nothing to do with removing electrons from the air.
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.
Nonsense. The fact that you can see some vague parallels between phlogiston and electrons or energy doesn’t make phlogiston theory any good. The fact that you can’t decide whether phlogiston represents electrons or energy should be a hint here.
Scientific theory should give useful predictions about the world and help us compress information. Phlogiston one does neither.
Innovation and progress make the world a better place. They unlock new possibilities, correct past mistakes, and realize untapped potential. It’s not a coincidence that these words can have such positive connotations.
Yet to reap these benefits, progress must be carefully integrated into the old order. For innovators often turn their back on all that existed before, throwing away valuable past insights.
The best example I know of is the so-called Chemical Revolution at the end of the 18th century.
In most popular books and histories of science, this shift is presented as Lavoisier discovering oxygen, and with it the compositional approach to chemistry, replacing the old alchemy-imbued idea of phlogiston. The prevalent explanation of combustion at the time, phlogiston was a weightless fluid whose movement in and out of objects ruled combustion, respiration, and the properties of metals. But to the modern eye, it looks nothing like a scientific explanation — just a made-up fake substance, a fake explanation. It clearly couldn’t compete with Lavoisier’s composition of elements.
Or so we read in the modern treatment.[1]
On the other hand, a quick look at our current best models of combustion (so called oxido-reduction reactions) reveal a weightless “fluid” whose movements capture the essence of the reaction: electrons. Sure, electrons are not a fluid; but they’re not really particles either according to quantum mechanics, and the fluid/substance frame fits with the concepts available at the end of the 18th century. Properties of metals also emerge from free electrons, confirming a key prediction of phlogistonist chemistry that Lavoisierian chemistry couldn’t explain.
Gilbert Lewis, of the Lewis diagram fame, makes this point in 1926 in The Anatomy of Science:
What is more, these key aspects of the modern treatment were completely removed by the Lavoisierian approach. There everything had to be explained in terms of composition. In adding this constraint, this strand of chemistry missed not only the key role played by electrons, but also most energetic considerations.
So Phlogistonists and Lavoisierian both only held one part of modern chemistry. As chemist William Odling wrote in 1876 in The Revived Theory of Phlogiston:
Integrating the two perspectives is what modern chemistry does. Unfortunately, the Lavoisierian proved less sensible. Rather than looking for what phlogiston captured better than their new theory, they launched on of the most intense propaganda effort in the history of science, ensuring that for decades (and in most histories of chemistry to this day), no one could seriously invoke phlogistonian concepts and keep their scientific credibility.
They actually figured out a more satisfying form of modeling: where phlogiston was an unanalyzable substance, the Lavoisierian manipulated compositions whose structure and components could be investigated and amended. It’s obvious that phlogiston insights should have been integrated into the Lavoisierian model, not the other way around.
But blinded by their innovation, the Lavoisierian burned the whole history of combustion and salted the earth. In so doing they delayed the energetic and electronic understanding of chemistry by decades.
Here lies a lesson for champions of innovation: even though the point of progress comes in surpassing and replacing the past, we still must carefully integrate these new insights, or risk destroying hard won victories.
The main exception I’m aware of is Hasok Chang’s Is water H2O?, which is the initial read that made me realize this historical bias and parts of its groundlessness.