Scientific Rationality: Phlogiston as a Case Study

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 identification, 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.

Dangerous epistemology

“…V následujícím textu si mechanizmus vzniku nové hypotézy probereme na klasickém příkladu z chemie. Jako emblematický příklad si vybereme teorii flogistonu, která je dodnes ve středu zájmu filosofů vědy a historického bádání (Conant 1920, Hricko 2016, Vihalemm 2000.…”