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Phlogiston

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Phlogiston 

the hypothetical principle of combustion in the view of 18th-century chemists. According to the phlogiston theory, proposed by G. E. Stahl, all flammable materials, such as wood and oils, and non-noble metals, such as copper, iron, lead, and tin, are composed of ash and phlogiston, which is released on burning or roasting. Despite its erroneousness, the phlogiston theory played a major role in the establishment of chemistry as a science; it was the first “to generalize many reactions (of oxidation), and this was already a very important step in science” (D. I. Mendeleev, Izbrannye lektsii po khimii, 1968, p. 60). The phlogiston theory was refuted by A. Lavoisier at the end of the 18th century.



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Eighteenth-century phlogiston theory is just one example: for years it distracted chemists from discovering oxygen.
For numbers once were nature's edge and domes of glass revolved the stars while goats and asphodels were made from water, air, raw earth and fire and blood, black bile and phlegm preset the moods and whims of serf and king, and phlogiston smoked off in fumes when fire burnt wood or rust ate steel and draining patients of their blood cured stomach upsets and despair.
Some neuroscientists and philosophers say the "free will" that appears to lie behind traditional legal notions of responsibility and blame is nonsense, that belief in it is as outmoded as belief in phlogiston or a flat Earth.
 
 
 
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