The "Revolution in Chemistry and Physics": Overthrow of a Reigning Paradigm or Competition between Contemporary Research Programs?

Abstract

Recent revisionist interpretations of the chemical revolution have left intact the core of the traditional view that its central feature was the overthow of the phlogiston theory by the oxygen theory of combustion of Antoine Lavoisier. The central confrontation has been seen as that between the adherents of the chemical system that Lavoisier built around his theory and the form of the phlogiston theory defended by Joseph Priestley. This essay contends that Priestley's use of phlogiston was so loosely connected with the older phlogiston theories descended from that of Georg Ernst Stahl that the events at the heart of the chemical revolution should be viewed more as a competition between two rival new research programs than as the replacement of a reigning paradigm.

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