How This IMPOSSIBLE Theory Led to the Discovery of Oxygen

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#science #chemistry #history #oxygen #phlogiston
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[@Chemistorian]

Go to ground.news/chem for an objective, data-driven way to read the news. Subscribe through my link to save 40% off unlimited access!

[@Alfred-Neuman]

bro you talk like we are all supposed to know what is oxegen and you dont even explein correctly like come on bro do you think we are all nurds? lol like serious bro you should at least add some clips of fortnite or roblox while you talk to makes it inturesting.

[@keyrock177]

@@Alfred-Neuman This might be the dumbest comment I've ever read...

[@Alfred-Neuman]

@@keyrock177 Thanks! :D

[@ArcticNemo]

Their original logo was related to the electrical symbol for a common reference. I find this a much more positive image than the second logo being drawn to reflect a different meaning, worn down or cut to fine pieces. ...of course, this was accompanied by less utility and closer paywalls 😢

[@ewantaylor2758]

Phlogiston theory always makes me wonder which of our current scientific models is totally wrong, but explains things well enough that we still haven't caught it.

[@jacquiecotillard9699]

I feel the same way- that we aren’t missing some inexplicably huge gap in our understanding, but rather our overlapping systems obscure trends that oppose each other. Not to start a whole thing, but the most promising intersectional vector may be theory of mind and body. Scientific materialism’s denial of embodied attention counters the indefinable esoterica of systems like nei gong or qi gong to a standstill, both invalidating each other perfectly. Our limited mastery over the body by science is undeniable, but at no way seeks to enclose that knowledge for immediate use by the embodied. Without these technologies bettering each other collaboratively or even competitively, we are missing out on unimaginable lines of experimentation, for what seems like a simple lack of proper methodology.

[@Gary-o9t]

All of them are. We cant model anything to the precision of a femto-decimal. So in principle all our models are "wrong" but some are useful for our purposes. Engineers rise up! Praise be to the power of assumptions!

[@jacquiecotillard9699]

@@Gary-o9t have you seen the recent atto-microscopy developments? We’re getting somewhere, can’t say if that somewhere is “closer” to anything

[@mox3909]

​@@Gary-o9t The Axiom is Dead! Long Live the Axiom!

[@brain_snakes]

My money is on gravity being the primary force that holds together galaxies and solar systems.

[@evan5237]

It's always amazing to see how intelligent the scientists and philosophers of the past really were. Purely through logic and observation they created new knowledge that was remarkably close to the actual phenomenon, all without the tools and context we take for granted today. Simply incredible work.

[@scottydu81]

Our ancestors were not morons! They were just working with far less information

[@tippyc2]

>Purely through logic and observation they created new knowledge that was remarkably close to the actual phenomenon In a way, science has come full circle back to this. Thats basically what quantum mechanics is. Theorists have been creating and refining quantum theory for around a century, but only relatively recently have we built the kind of experiments like CERN that can actually test the theories. And it turns out they were pretty close.

[@nuru666]

@@tippyc2 Who'd have thought all that time in school would end up paying off... Oh, wait! ;)

[@adamk.7177]

Bro, they inhaled mercury gas. Sometimes they were intelligent, sometimes they were... too experimental.

[@tippyc2]

@@adamk.7177 And they stood around in rooms with fatally radioactive material. Whats your point?

[@jmchez]

The main proponent of executing Lavoisier was the revolutionary leader and newspaper publisher, Jean-Paul Marat. Marat had gone to visit Lavoisier to push some sort of pseudo-scientific idea. Lavoisier was offended and rudely kicked him out of the house. Marat was, in turn, humiliated and vowed to get revenge. It's interesting that the best known painting of Lavoisier is the one of him and his wife, painted by Jacques-Louis David. Ironically, David made an even more famous painting, "The Death of Marat".

[@Tinil0]

"For it could not remain united if its property were to repel and not to attract" Well, it's a good thing Ramsay died in '16, a year before the proton was discovered. He would be very angry that protons stick together!

[@tyruskarmesin5418]

Well, their property is to attract. They repel electromagneticly, but the strong force attracts them.

[@tylisirn]

And how protons do that would be another mystery for the next 50+ years! It was finally solved by theory of quantum chromodynamics developed over 1960s, early 70s and empirically verified in late 70s, early 80s.

[@fellinuxvi3541]

​@@tyruskarmesin5418 That's the point, you could theoretically conceive such an explanation to bind phlogiston with earth.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

@@fellinuxvi3541 What differentiates Phlogiston from proton is that, for proton, those properties were put to test as soon as it became technologically possible. The flaw in Phlogiston hypothesis is that, people back then didn't feel the need to experimentally verify so rigorously.

[@fellinuxvi3541]

@@aniksamiurrahman6365 That's not a problem with the theory itself though. Precisely the problem I have is that these guys are trying to disprove phlogiston a priori or by first principle, when experimentation is the only way and you can't just deduce from the get-go that phlogiston has to be false.

[@acenutella1196]

historical chemistry is so interesting

[@LendriMujina]

If coal is almost pure phlogiston, and phlogiston has levity instead of gravity, therefore coal should fly around. You can really tell they were grasping at straws with that explanation, even without taking into account modern knowledge.

[@MP-te3bt]

Your clear voice and graphics make all of your videos so easy and interesting to watch. How amazing that you have all of those historical books?! To have all of that evidence and information in your hands must be an incredible feeling. Thanks for another great video and all of the hard work you must put in to it. Looking forward, as always, to the next one!

[@dominictarrsailing]

being able to restore the calx by heating with pure phlogiston must have seemed very compelling. I guess the oxygen moves over from the metal oxide to the carbon The phlogiston antigravity bit made me imagine the lifting power of a phlogiston blimp! probably MUCH more dangerous than just hydrogen. However, if phlogiston is negative mass but coal, which is (almost?) pure phlogiston, is curiously heavy. Thanks for the great video. It's really interesting to learn about the thought process people went through to produce modern science. For me personally, knowing about the history helps me to actually understand that science, a lot more than just learning about what we know now.

[@ewantaylor2758]

The weight of coal was my first thought, too. Even if the other elements gave it some weight, surely it must have been suspicious that the stuff which had the purest amount of negative-weight matter was not wieghtless or at least incredibly light? Goes to show the willingness to overlook a detail in order to make a theory fit neatly.

[@Plan-xb1hs]

Phlogiston truthers gonna be mad when they hear this

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

I'm waiting for the revival of Phlogiston theory and to hear how Oxygen is an evil conspiracy of the deep state. I'm hearing this kind of thing not only for flat earth, but luminiferous aether as well.

[@an_asp]

That was excellent, and I loved the inclusion of so many contemporary sources. I love seeing the reasoning of people from the past, many of whom were quite smart but were missing essential information. Not to mention, for every "phlogiston", you can also find examples of people making surprisingly correct conclusions much earlier in history than one would expect, just from clever reasoning about their observations. It really gives you a window into how a lot of the knowledge we take for granted was learned.

[@lwaldron9745]

Dark energy and dark matter are the phlogiston of today.

[@silentdrew7636]

I was going to say String Theory but that works too

[@xostler]

My money is on quantum gravity but idk if I’ll make it 300 years to collect

[@tristanridley1601]

Absolutely! They keep finding conflicting data.

[@terrestrialTerror]

Dark matter isn't a theory, it's a series of observations. There are theories of dark matter but dark matter itself is not a theory.

[@lunatickoala]

​@@terrestrialTerror The name "dark matter" is misleading because the observations are gravitational anomalies. They could be the result of particle dark matter, they could be the result of needing to modify our understanding of gravity, and there's also the nightmare scenario in which both are true. But the name implies that it's particle dark matter and theories like Lambda-CDM have "dark matter" in the name. One suggestion I've heard is that the series of observations be called "Dark Gravity" to clearly differentiate the observations from the theories. To someone who isn't well aware of the distinction, it sounds absurd for someone to first claim that "dark matter" (the observations) has been seen over and over and is irrefutable while "dark matter" (any of the particle theories) is unproven. And undoubtedly some people who are aware of the distinction still think it's a lousy if not absurd name.

[@BradleyCathcart]

I'm totally on board with this historical-focused approach to science education

[@zionent8392]

Imagine living in a time where people didn't even knew what they were breathing.

[@gljames24]

Lots of people don't know of all the particulates and pollutions in the air they are breathing.

[@HappyGingerWolf]

I love that priestly decided to inhale this new mystery fire mercury gas basically as soon as he discovered it

[@is9893]

I always get so excited when I see you’ve posted a new video! This one didn’t disappoint :)

[@renegade1520]

Great video! Thanks for covering this topic.

[@DanteGabriel-lx9bq]

It's always amazing to study the history of chemistry science. It's just beautiful, in my opinion.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

A concept that used to exist in the past, that always resonated with me, is Ether. The concept of The Ether and that the universe consists of an Ether is just a cool concept that i feel could be expanded upon & adapted in creative ways. Giving us ways to explain what make up the different regions of so called emptiness throughout our universe

[@Arbyjar]

I agree, but I actually like the experiment disproving it as a medium for light even more. There’s no reason to say that ether can’t exist, but not in the way it has been described historically. On a more physics-esque note, ether could be the new name for the fabric of space-time, or maybe the Higgs field?

[@benmcreynolds8581]

@Arbyjar Exactly! You get it! It's refreshing to read your reply. That's exactly how I've liked to ponder about this. Taking the classic concept & converting it into a new accurate realm instead of all that previous inaccurate alchemist type stuff. This is just a fun thought experiment but I feel like it'd be possible to create multiple types of accurate categories of Ether.. I know that's a loose way to describe it.. but here's some vague examples: There's the category you already mentioned, then there could be separate layers of Ether. Like a way of describing different regions with different particle densities. Maybe even to describe different atmospheric contents. All I'm trying to say is there is different amounts of particle densities throughout space. Even in the so called vacuum of space. We recently learned there is a "bubble" around our Sun, around our solar system consisting of solar wind, charged particles in the Heliosphere. Just imagine what we have yet to discover around galactic clusters, nebulas, etc. etc. I just think there's depth to this niche and ways to utilize an old inaccurate term and turn it into a new accurate useful term

[@cipaisone]

Fairytale believers

[@Arbyjar]

@@cipaisone ? What

[@scottydu81]

I keep coming back to the idea that the ether and the higgs field are kinda similar

[@elchamyto64]

Awesome video! I read a book some months ago about chemistry history where phlogiston and other associations of many elements yet unknown to the time appeared, you should talk more about them and how they were debunked. Understanding how the great minds of those times managed to do it is always interesting to see! :)

[@douro20]

Apparently Priestley defended phlogiston theory to his death.

[@scottydu81]

Lysenko defended his bullshit too

[@grimwaltzman]

It takes some strong convictions to believe in things that were proven wrong time and time again. You won't make it as a pseudoscientist if you are not determined till the end.

[@BoomRoomFive]

Awesome video, you have a new sub :) It really puts our held beliefs about our world in perspective. I'm sure we have many phlogistones!

[@ArkadiBolschek]

23:43 Wait, is that why oxygen is called _Sauerstoff_ in German??

[@Luke-cv7bg]

French and English create new words from Latin and Greek roots. German (sometimes) just compounds Hydro = water (Greek) Hydrogen = water maker Wasserstoff Tele = far (Greek) Vision = seeing (Latin) Fehrnsehe Etc etc. (et cetera Latin and the others) und so weiter

[@herosstratos]

23:58 Oxygen was assumed to be the basic component for the formation of acids. 24:18 Therefore, in 1779, Lavoisier proposed the term oxygenium ("acid former") for oxygen. Therefore German: "Sauer" (acidic) + "stoff" (substance).

[@Seele2015au]

@@Luke-cv7bg Oxygen is called "sanso": "acid-element" in Japanese. By the way, hydrogen in Japanese is "suiso": "water-element".

[@ArkadiBolschek]

@@Luke-cv7bg Yeah, I knew German scientists traditionally prefer not to use Latin or Greek roots. But I always wondered what their rationale was for calling Oxygen "Sour stuff".

[@stefanjohansson1234]

Aha, and in Swedish oxygen is named Syrgas or Syre, "acidifier" maybe since acid is named Syra.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

I didn't even know about Michał Sędziwój!

[@phpART]

Great video. One of my favorite channels on KZbin!

[@trevorhaddox6884]

Old science books are awesome. It's cool to find sometimes lost or little known bits of science history, or to see old fashioned terms used in original contexts. For example, the ether theory of electromagnetism was still common even in the start of the broadcast radio era in the early 1920s, well after the discovery of electrons and the start of quantum physics.

[@perguto]

It's interesting to see how phlogiston theory works surprisingly well as you can roughly equate it with "negative oxygen" or low oxidation states, allowing most statements of oxygen theory to be translated to phlogiston theory and vice versa, e.g. "absorbing phlogiston"="emitting oxygen/getting reduced", "oxygen has positive mass"="phlogiston has negative mass" etc.. Kinda reminds me of how, in electrical engineering, it rarely matters whether current truly flows from + to - or - to +, or of how positrons can be described as holes in the Dirac sea of negative energy electron states

[@craiglee3253]

the "4 elements" view was on the correct track. The three phases (solid, liquid, gaseous) and the energy released or required in the phase changes.

[@luipaardprint]

Actually plasma is considered a phase nowadays. 🤓

[@stephenhawking9781]

There are many phases, go learn some thermodynamics

[@ninjireal]

Craig is right, nerds are on a 5th phase called copium

[@MySerpentine]

I guessed that they were going to think of antigravity before you said it.

[@10xGeneration]

Ridiculously amazing video. Please never stop!

[@joshuab4586]

I can’t believe that Lavoisier guy invented oxygen and cursed us all

[@ptonpc]

What always gets me is how *close* some of those ideas were to what we understand of reality now. They were not correct but you can see *why* they thought.

[@luipaardprint]

Just consider this comment 300 years in the future about today

[@battleoid2411]

​@@luipaardprintI'll set an alarm but im not sure I'll wake up to it

[@pingnick]

Wow has a feel similar to Kathy Loves Physics and History Channel-thanks!🎬🚀

[@Т1000-м1и]

"This sounds like lame sci-fi" type old science is always somewhat entertaining

[@xostler]

People 400 years from now: “can you believe the knuckledraggers believed in _quantum gravity?”_

[@RafaCB0987]

It is really fascinating to see how much things that we take for granted today have come to be

[@charlesmanning3454]

Thank you for such a detailed history of ideas!!!

[@Т1000-м1и]

I somehow guessed that alchemists tried to invent exotic matter with this one

[@AsmodeusMictian]

Thanks for the awesome video!!

[@BruhMan-m3r]

Amazing video!!

[@smileyp4535]

13:02 why is it in the books all the "S"s in words are replaced with "f"s? (Except at the end) "almoft", "comfuftability", "refins", "fufibility", "fuppofes", etc (they obviously had the letter 's' since they use it at the end and at the beginning of the name "Stahl" so what gives?

[@landrypierce9942]

They aren’t ‘f’ they’re long ‘s,’ written ‘ſ.’ We don’t use that letter today, but the point is it’s the standard ‘s’ sound but longer.

[@smileyp4535]

@@landrypierce9942 oh but wouldn't a "long s" always sound like "ess" like in "suc-cess"

[@irasponsibly]

​@@smileyp4535it was just a style thing, and putting long s at the end of the word didn't look as good, so it wasn't done.

[@niikasd]

​@@smileyp4535 no it's just an s, it was used to save space. Long refers to it's shape.

[@smileyp4535]

@@niikasd hmm I wonder why it went out of style

[@thequeenofswords7230]

Fire-air! Oh my God, watching Chemistry develop out of Alchemy is so adorable.

[@jeffallen3382]

How were you able to pronounce all those names? Wow!

[@deathracoffee]

I love this, you are doing such a great job delivering these stories! Have you read Sam Kean's Disappearing Spoon? Similar stories to your content

[@cipaisone]

Excellent video. If you haven’t done yet, I would like a video about vitalism, and how it was disproved ( despite to this day many people still believe in it, or in more sophisticated fairytales)

[@fariesz6786]

my compliments for the pronunciation of the German names. small advice: a ‹v› in German is, for all intents and purposes, always pronounced like an ‹f› so the word «von» should sound like "fonn"

[@Chemistorian]

Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll try and remember that for next time!

[@Taskforce1]

damn it's super interesting to think through this evolution of discovery as they woulda thought about it. thinking about the flame as substance bleeding out of the log rather than a chemical reaction. its cool to see the different layers of reality being discovered. wonder what comes after quantum.

[@jacksonwilliams8971]

Excellent video, love your research and writing style! Onnnnne lil nitpick: “Aristotelian” is pronounced like “uh-wrist-uh-TEE-lee-in”

[@Chemistorian]

Thanks for pointing this out! That’s the one pronunciation I didn’t think I needed to look up, so of course I managed to get it wrong 😅

[@Mmouse_]

Tbf... Lacking the knowledge the air, fire, water and earth theory is a good stab at what's going on.

[@Yora21]

In German, Oxygen is still called Sauerstoff, which means "acidifying matter". (And Nitrogen is called Stickstoff, "suffocating matter".)

[@randydewees7338]

Old Priestley should have kept at it! He seemed to have a sense of humor too.

[@kujojotarostandoceanman2641]

Human's knowledge really got a huge progress

[@zile8869]

The ancient Greeks weren't technically wrong about their "4 elements". Earth, water, air and fire, are eerily close to solids, liquids, gases and plasma. And yes, you may say "fIRE isn't PLASMa". And I may say in return, "shut the hell up" Cause the whole idea behind the 4 states of mater is that as you move from solids to plasma, the amount of "matter" that makes up the substance, decreases in comparison to the amount of ENERGY that makes up the substance. And vice versa. Not only is fire predominantly energy rather than matter, but it also often contains small amounts of plasma. So in conclusion, the ancient Greeks were right in a way!

[@seekvapes9641]

But the states of matter are not the elements that matter is made of. And one substance can change the states with temperature, like ice/water/steam etc... You could not build any material by combining different ammount of ice water and steam. So while states of matter exist, thinking they were elements that stuff was made of was totally wrong.

[@zile8869]

@@seekvapes9641 but they were right that all matter is in a sense "made up" of these 4 phases. And with just raw energy and matter, you CAN build any material. Just not in the way that they thought.

[@seekvapes9641]

@@zile8869 It's not made up of these phases, those are states any matter can take, not components. States and components are two completely different concepts. Made up would imply that there are liquids inside solids etc. If you just put ice water and steam together, you just get water, not a bread or something.

[@AricGardnerMontreal]

It was the first time there was even a theory that was trying to be sensible. Something to pull apart to find the truth, cool video

[@blueheartorangeheart3768]

We making it out of Natlan with this one

[@Basement_crusader]

This reminds me a lot of dark matter theories where what we have discovered is the inverse of its presence. Phlogiston is like inverse oxygen in a way.

[@RonSparks2112]

How dd Scheel know that the gas he produced constituted approximately 1/3 of the mass of "common air"?

[@ANIME_AFFINADO]

Make a video about History of Madame marie Curie and her discovery of radioactive substance..

[@osvaldodomingos9041]

Holding a Book with that value without Gloves should be considered a Crime!!

[@moonsterdark5255]

Fascinating.

[@whirl3690]

To give some credit to the theory of phlogiston having "anti-gravity properties," it *would* explain why flames rise.

[@alexwang982]

So good

[@organobot]

phlogiston was mentioned off-handedly in a science textbook i read as a kid and i've been curious about it ever since :)

[@Napoleonic_S]

I know this would not fit into this channel but it would be interesting to compare this phlogiston theory with the aether theory... For one both involves "the air".

[@atzuras]

Short version: Ramsay got high with oxygen and his first thought was : "I can sell this drug as a luxurious good. "

[@joels310]

The thing about people is that no one wants to be the one who disagrees with the masses and there are likely many theories that are widely accepted which are grossly errant but no one even questions as it seems sensible enough, so why question the narrative?

[@tedwalford7615]

I think aether was prematurely rejected. We know that light travels at different speeds in different media. Therefore a medium can slow light. We've long known the speed of light in "empty" space, but we now know that space is not empty. Might light speed be instantaneous were it not for some limiting substance or energy in so-called empty space? Might the just-discovered Higgs Field, or something else not quite yet discovered, be that aether that was once conjectured? Otherwise, why should there be any limit on the rate of propagation of electromagnetic waves?

[@tedwalford7615]

"Dark matter" and "dark energy" seem like today's phlogiston.

[@blapty]

In many ways the philosophers of old were right in those are some of the most common phases of matter. Earth, solid; Air, gaseous; Water, liquid; and fire, plasma. Others phases are far more exotic and are not immediately obvious to the casual observer. One could see how they would come to such of an insightful conclusion.

[@Superbrains]

The death of Antoine was so tragic. It was not fair😢

[@mario0de7]

Ah the beauty of science its often wrong but it never says its right, it only says what the best theory is

[@m.streicher8286]

I love 'Fire Air' .. Lesser men would've been trying to name the stuff before they even knew what it was.

[@johnnzboy]

I've encountered references to phlogistan before and wondered about it - thank you for the comprehensive explanation and history of it, very informative and enjoyable.

[@ananz9233]

I've become interested in science history because its history is akin to real-life magic (literally alchemy)

[@Davidbirdman101]

I wish I could go back,(yes I know but I grew up dirt poor) and experience what it was like to wonder what "AIR" was . What was space composed of, what caused mountains to rise up from the sea. It must have been mysterious and enchanting to think about these things. Today it seems like no one has much curiosity or a sense of wonder.

[@joshuab4586]

Despite how wrong they were with the 4 elements theory, it’s not any more insane or stupid or even that far off in concept from the periodic table, you have 100+ elements that combine in different ways and decompose and combine creating and absorbing energy

[@poimon5607]

were all these scientists amazing at drawing or did they have some guy that drew all their experiments?

[@Palisade5810]

In an alternate reality phonons were named phlogiston.

[@balazsvarga1823]

Flogiston? The volcanic scifi crystals used by the Imperium? I thought they made it up.

[@stanleydodds9]

It's worth noting that having "phlogiston" be the absence of oxygen or oxidation makes total sense, in the same way that we talk about electron holes as if they are real. They are real, but from some perspectives they are not "fundamental" to what is happening. But, until you actually care about the fundamental things going on, there is no problem talking about holes as real particles when they certainly behave like them. For example: saturation of air with phlogiston is the saturation of air with the absence of oxygen; that is, it is when there is no oxygen at all. Phlogiston having negative mass is equivalent to oxygen having positive mass and oxidation increasing mass - reduction / deoxydation decreases mass as it "adds" the absense of oxygen. Coal is almost pure phlogistan because it can almost entirely be oxidised; it is almost entirely absent of oxygen / oxidation. When you heat calx (oxidised metal / metal with no phlogiston) alongside coal (completely unoxided / purely phlogiston), the calx is reduced and the coal is oxidised, in other words, the oxygen moves from the calx to the coal, and equivalently, the phlogiston (the absence of oxygen) moves the other way, from the coal to the calx. Now, what this simple interpretation doesn't explain is why the coal is more reactive than the calx, that is, why is coal able to reduce calx, but not vice versa, and why are some metals able to reduce others and not vice versa. For that it does of course help (or require) understanding electron configurations and orbitals, which means you need to realise that oxygen atoms are the more "fundamental" thing moving around. But you wouldn't get this deeper understanding just from saying that oxygen is the real thing rather than phlogiston.

[@SerunaXI]

13:00 I am glad I've seen enough videos on old english words and spellings. All them long s letters look like fs.

[@metal87power]

How did people breathe before discovering oxygen?

[@JohnLynch-b7e]

24:33. And we love it!!! Can't get enough of it. But too much? Watch out!

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

Phlogiston, Luminiferous Aether, 10 dimentional string, dark matter may be.

[@metal87power]

It would be funny if someone discovered oxygen during making BBQ.

[@DavidFMayerPhD]

Phlogiston was NOT a crackpot idea, but was a rather clearly defined scientific theory that was empirically testable. It was carefully tested and failed the tests, leading to its rejection.

[@gcewing]

Dark oxygen -- or dark phlogiston?

[@tux_duh]

Hate the use of the long s in that book😭😭 i kept reading it as F

[@slouch186]

i would be so annoyed if i didn't know about oxygen.

[@tomjewett5839]

Well, the Ancients were right in a way they didn't understand. They described the three different states of matter. Solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

[@Sugar3Glider]

There is no oxygen, does that mean my lungs are like the motors that pump my blood?? Is that why I backfire if I try to hold still and will drown if they fill with water?

[@bluewhalestudioblenderanim1132]

altho fire is not an element and there are A LOT More elements than 4 Plasma whithin fire it IS the 4th of the Main States Of Matter . . . whitch does sound somewhat similar to those early theories well . . technicly there is also the "superfluid" as a 5th state of matter but that's mostly in a lab and under extreme conditions so not much of a presence there

[@Flesh_Wizard]

"terra pinguis" Terror Penguin 😂

[@earth4212]

I'd argue eating is the first chemical reaction known to man 😂

[@laerbear6760]

It's so funny to see how close some of these theories are but get debunked because they tried too hard to make everything homogenized. Occam's Razor is one of the most over applied ideas in history. It's not even a principle. It's a method for deciding which order to test theories. In fact, Occam's Razor is inherently a dead-end for research and learning. It goes out of its way to make differential testing more difficult. All progress in human learning is achieved by throwing out Occam's Razor.

[@vinniepeterss]

great!

[@reaty05]

The studys of alchemy would be interesting to go over people spent their entire lives studying that but its now very clearly false but a few aspects of it is accurate

[@jonathanhughes8679]

The 4 elements wasn’t a bad idea in Greece 500 BC. BC

[@davidkaplan2745]

"Dark Energy" is our Phlogiston.

[@rogerscottcathey]

So the sale on phlogiston going on at the flea market is bogus? Huh?