Nitrogen would be phlogiston-saturated air, in which nothing would burn. Coal would be full of phlogiston and burn easily in any air that isn’t phlogiston-saturated.
I went and read up on Phlogiston a little bit, and this makes sense to me now. The Nitrogen (absence of Oxygen) is a good analogy for what is a very weird theory (Phlogiston—I can see why Steam-Punks are so drawn to this esoteric and wildly insane theory—and I can see why at the time it made sense to Stahl even though it was wildly wrong… The terminology tends to sound really ludicrous: Phlogisticated or Dephlogisticated… Uh, huh...)
I can now see where my analogy with the proton is off, as well.
Do you mean that a bottle full of Nitrogen would be Phogiston, in the same way that a Hyrodgen Ion⁺ is a proton(Absence of an electron)?
Acknowledging, of course, that the nomenclature we are considering is among the most ridiculed of historical attempts of scientific explanation I don’t think the analogy would call the absence of electron a proton. A proton is a specific particle that has a positive charge but not all positive charges are considered to be protons (even if protons are usually involved somewhere underneath in conventional matter).
This seems like a really important point. Even this seemingly non-rational explanation pointed to important intuitions, that could later be implemented in the map that is “science”. However, before that, its’ not like the cataloging of these intuitions and attempting to label them held no information about the world.
Phlogiston exists. We call it “absence of oxygen”. Nobody acted like positive charge wasn’t real when they found out it was the absence of electrons.
This is a wrong reification in so many specific cases...
Do you mean that a bottle full of Nitrogen would be Phogiston, in the same way that a Hyrodgen Ion⁺ is a proton(Absence of an electron)?
Why is the “Absence of Oxygen” Phlogiston in this case?
Nitrogen would be phlogiston-saturated air, in which nothing would burn. Coal would be full of phlogiston and burn easily in any air that isn’t phlogiston-saturated.
I went and read up on Phlogiston a little bit, and this makes sense to me now. The Nitrogen (absence of Oxygen) is a good analogy for what is a very weird theory (Phlogiston—I can see why Steam-Punks are so drawn to this esoteric and wildly insane theory—and I can see why at the time it made sense to Stahl even though it was wildly wrong… The terminology tends to sound really ludicrous: Phlogisticated or Dephlogisticated… Uh, huh...)
I can now see where my analogy with the proton is off, as well.
Acknowledging, of course, that the nomenclature we are considering is among the most ridiculed of historical attempts of scientific explanation I don’t think the analogy would call the absence of electron a proton. A proton is a specific particle that has a positive charge but not all positive charges are considered to be protons (even if protons are usually involved somewhere underneath in conventional matter).
This seems like a really important point. Even this seemingly non-rational explanation pointed to important intuitions, that could later be implemented in the map that is “science”. However, before that, its’ not like the cataloging of these intuitions and attempting to label them held no information about the world.