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! ❋ Edgar Fahs Smith (1891)
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. ❋ Unknown (1904)
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. ❋ Unknown (2006)
Does this mean a science fiction story cannot be set in a fantasy universe where the theory of phlogiston is true? ❋ Unknown (2004)
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. ❋ Unknown (1881)
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. ❋ Unknown (1922)
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. ❋ William Safire (2003)
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. ❋ Unknown (2001)
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. ❋ M. M. Pattison Muir (N/A)
It is the so-called phlogiston-theory first proposed by the chemist Stahl (1660-1734). ❋ Ernst Lehrs (N/A)
Such, for instance, was one of the mistakes committed in the celebrated phlogistic theory; a doctrine which accounted for combustion by the extrication of a substance called phlogiston, supposed to be contained in all combustible matter. ❋ John Stuart Mill (1839)
Priestley succeeded in removing from air, so he thought, the substance called phlogiston which was thought to be what put fires out, and dubbed his ❋ Unknown (1998)
If we are prohibited from teaching ID in science class because it's obsolete science, why is nobody complaining about learning theories that the sun revolves the earth, that metals when heated give off "phlogiston," or that maggots arise spontaneously from decaying meat? ❋ Unknown (2007)
This assessment, entirely predictable, remained true during the introduction of conjectured substances such as phlogiston, of concepts such as affinity, and the new concepts developed by Antoine Lavoisier and his colleagues. ❋ Unknown (2006)
The phlogiston in a combustible substance was supposed to be so intimately associated with something else that our senses cannot perceive it; nevertheless, the theory said, it is there; we can see only the escaping phlogiston, we can perceive only the phlogiston which is set free from its combination with other things. ❋ M. M. Pattison Muir (N/A)
