Scientific Rationality: Phlogiston As a Case Study
Scientific Rationality: Phlogiston as a Case Study Jonathon Hricko∗ Penultimate Draft | Please cite the published version, which appears in Tzu-Wei Hung & Timothy Lane (Eds.). (2017). Rationality: Constraints and Contexts. Elsevier Academic Press, London. Abstract: I argue that it was rational for chemists to eliminate phlogiston, but that it also would have been rational for them to retain it. I do so on the grounds that a number of prominent phlogiston theorists identified phlogiston with hydrogen in the late eighteenth century, and this identification became fairly well-entrenched by the early nineteenth century. In light of this identi- fication, I critically evaluate Hasok Chang's argument that chemists should have retained phlogiston, and that doing so would have benefited science. I argue that these benefits would have been unlikely, and I go on to consider some more likely benefits and harms of retaining phlogiston. I conclude that there is a sense in which scientific rationality concerns what is permissible, as opposed to what is required, so that retention and elimination may, at least sometimes, both be rationally permissible options. Keywords: Scientific Rationality, Chemical Revolution, Phlogiston, Hydro- gen, Humphry Davy 1 Introduction The Chemical Revolution, to a first approximation, was an event that took place in the late eighteenth century, and involved chemists embracing Antoine ∗Education Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, email: jonathon [dot] hricko [at] gmail [dot] com. 1 Lavoisier's oxygen theory and abandoning phlogiston-based explanations of various phenomena. The phenomena in question included combustion and the transformation of metals into oxides. For some time, chemists explained these phenomena by appealing to a substance they called phlogiston, which they posited as a component of inflammable substances and metals.
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