True, but the vast majority of fire people normally deal with is oxygen-related. Only knowing about oxygen being an oxidizer would be almost as useful as knowing about all of them, at least when you’re thinking about fire. Only knowing about phlogiston would be exactly as useful.
“Emergence” or “quantum effects” to explain how the brain works might fall into this category.
I’m not sure that counts. We expect it to be explained away, but we still don’t understand it, and it still hasn’t been.
Whoops! I seem to have gotten my phlogiston theory mixed up with my caloric theory, which stated that fire was in fact made of particles of caloric, a near-weightless fluid that flowed between bodies in contact, explaining heat and cold. Sheesh, alchemists loved conjecturing fluids.
I think you could call that a fluid without stretching the definition too much. Still, heat is an excellent example of something being explained away. They thought it was its own substance, like static electricity, but it turned out to be something that can easily be predicted by Newton’s laws.
I’ve never heard of phlogiston being heat.
True, but the vast majority of fire people normally deal with is oxygen-related. Only knowing about oxygen being an oxidizer would be almost as useful as knowing about all of them, at least when you’re thinking about fire. Only knowing about phlogiston would be exactly as useful.
Whoops! I seem to have gotten my phlogiston theory mixed up with my caloric theory, which stated that fire was in fact made of particles of caloric, a near-weightless fluid that flowed between bodies in contact, explaining heat and cold. Sheesh, alchemists loved conjecturing fluids.
I think you could call that a fluid without stretching the definition too much. Still, heat is an excellent example of something being explained away. They thought it was its own substance, like static electricity, but it turned out to be something that can easily be predicted by Newton’s laws.
Surely you mean “easily in hindsight”?