Strange vapors and such

April 25, 2007, 20:52

<Asa Lovejoy>

Sunflower and I went to a museum in the old Oregon Territory (prior to statehood) capitol at Oregon City last weekend. They had a replica of a late 19th century pharmacy in it, with a bottle of some remedy that was called an "antiphlogistic." That got me to wondering just when the idea of phlogiston disappeared. Anybody know?

April 26, 2007, 00:03

Myth Jellies

Probably start here....

Antoine Lavoisier - French chemist known as the father of modern chemistry; discovered oxygen and disproved the theory of phlogiston (1743-1794)

April 26, 2007, 01:39

Richard English

I suspect that the phlogiston theory, like the flat earth theory, took a long time to die. We are now seeing a similar process with the creation theory, whose supporters are fighting vigorously against the the manifold facts of the theory of evolution.

April 26, 2007, 19:20

<Asa Lovejoy>

RE, here's an interesting (to me, at least) take on that subject: http://www.powells.com/review/2007_04_25.html

April 27, 2007, 20:33

shufitz

quote:
Antoine Lavoisier ... discovered oxygen

I thought it was Priestley?

April 28, 2007, 05:16

arnie

It was Michał Sędziwój, according to Wikipedia.

April 28, 2007, 07:50

shufitz

quote: It was Michał Sędziwój, according to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says, "Oxygen was first described by Michał Sędziwój, a Polish alchemist and philosopher in the late 16th century. Oxygen was more quantitatively discovered Scheele some time before 1773, but the discovery was not published until after the independent discovery by Priestley. Priestley published discoveries in 1775 and Scheele in 1777; consequently Priestley is usually given the credit."

Wonder what precisely is meant by "discovery"? There's a very large, 170-year gap between the Sędziwój "description" and the Scheele/Priestley "discovery". Anyone know the details?

April 28, 2007, 10:03

bethree5

quote:
Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
RE, here's an interesting (to me, at least) take on that subject: http://www.powells.com/review/2007_04_25.html

Asa, you might enjoy reading through some of the discussions on this forum: http://discussions.pbs.org/viewforum.pbs?f=152
The forum operated concurrently with Bill Moyers' "Faith and Reason" series last Fall, which hosted several of those authors, and the forum topics initiated during the autumn were lively. (By now it's dwindled down to a dreary and endless dialog between an Eastern Orthodox intellectual and a murky but brilliant spritualist, punctuated occasionally with peppery input by fundamentalist atheists...)

April 28, 2007, 12:07

<Asa Lovejoy>

Thanks, bethree. I'm registered on the NPR forums, but never check in! Guess I'd beter!

April 29, 2007, 01:46

Myth Jellies

This site here seems to indicate that Lavoisier was not above taking credit for other works.

quote:
Repeating the experiments of Priestley, he demonstrated that air is composed of two parts, one of which combines with metals to form calxes. However, he tried to take credit for Priestley's discovery. This tendency to use the results of others without acknowledgment then draw conclusions was characteristic of Lavoisier. In Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides (1778), he demonstrated that the "air" responsible for combustion was also the source of acidity. The next year, he named this portion oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). He also discovered that the inflammable air of Cavendish which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former), combined with oxygen to produce a dew, as Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water.

In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent. In Methods of Chemical Nomenclature (1787), he invented the system of chemical nomenclature still largely in use today, including names such as sulfuric acid, sulfates, and sulfites. His Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry, 1789) was the first modern chemical textbook, and presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the Law of Conservation of Mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. In addition, it contained a list of elements, or substances that could not be broken down further, which included oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, mercury, zinc, and sulfur. His list, however, also included light, and caloric, which he believed to be material substances.