phlogiston

• “We decline entering into a minute examination of his experiments, as few of his recitals of them are free from the triune mystery of phlogiston, which exceeds the utmost stretch of our faith; for according to it, carbon is phlogiston, and hydrogen is phlogiston, and azote is phlogiston; and yet there are not three phlogistons, but one phlogiston!”

  Priestley in America 1794-1804

• “Yet it may not be altogether amiss to reflect that the physicist of to-day is no more certain of his ether than was his predecessor of the eighteenth century of the existence of certain alleged substances which he called phlogiston, caloric, corpuscles of light, and magnetic and electric fluids.”

  A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume III: Modern development of the physical sciences

• “With precipitated indigo, the orpiment doesn't create changes, Bergman continued, because the union of phlogiston is too strong — you need the heat and the alkali to relax it.”

  The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe

• “Does this mean a science fiction story cannot be set in a fantasy universe where the theory of phlogiston is true?”

  Author vs. Critic - A Fairy Tale

• “Stahl, the author of this theory, asserted that there is a principle of inflammability, to which he gave the name phlogiston, having the quality of uniting with substances.”

  History of the Conflict between Religion and Science

• “The same germ-idea underlying these doctrines is to be found much later in Stahl's phlogistic theory (eighteenth century), which attempted to account for the combustibility of bodies by the assumption that such bodies all contain "phlogiston" -- the hypothetical principle of combustion (see § 72) -- though the concept of "phlogiston" approaches more nearly to the modern idea of an element than do the alchemistic elements or principles.”

  Alchemy: Ancient and Modern

• “In Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, the TV documentarian Bill Moyers, quoting this poem, asked the author about the meaning of the unfamiliar word phlogiston.”

  Simon & Schuster: No Uncertain Terms

• “This was a forerunner of the phlogiston theory (1723), which claimed, before the discovery of oxygen, that a nonexistent chemical called phlogiston was released during combustion.”

  1669

• “A peculiarity of the strange thing called phlogiston was that it preferred to be concealed in something, hidden, imprisoned, combined; free phlogiston* was supposed to be always ready to become combined phlogiston.”

  The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

• “It is the so-called phlogiston-theory first proposed by the chemist Stahl (1660-1734).”

  Man or Matter

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