"Phlogiston" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and facts. Have not many discussions arisen about the Atomic theory in which a point has been confused with a material atom? Have not the natures of things been explained by imaginary entities, such as life or phlogiston, which exist in the mind only? Has not disease been regarded, like sin, sometimes as a negative and necessary, sometimes as a positive or malignant principle? The 'idols' of Bacon are nearly as common now as ever; they are inherent in the human mind, and when they have the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... the most important things, proposes thus: Ubicunque (sayes he) pluribus eaedem affectiones & qualitates insunt, per commune quoddam Principium insint necesse est, sicut omnia sunt Gravia propter terram, calida propter Ignem. At Colores, Odores, Sapores, esse [Greek: phlogiston] & similia alia, mineralibus, Metallis, Gemmis, Lapidibus, Plantis, Animalibus insunt. Ergo per commune aliquod principium, & subiectum, insunt. At tale principium non sunt Elementa. Nullam enim habent ad tales qualitates producendas potentiam. Ergo ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... mercury of Basil Valentine and Paracelsus three earths—the mercurial, the vitreous and the combustible—and he explained combustion as depending on the escape of this last combustible element; while Stahl's conception of phlogiston—not fire itself, but the principle of fire—by virtue of which combustible bodies burned, was a near relative of the mercury of the philosophers, the soul or essence of ordinary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to a calx by this process, I once concluded, that it is phlogiston that fixed air wants, to make it common air; and, for any thing I yet know this may be the case, though I am ignorant of the method of combining them; and when I calcined a quantity of lead in fixed air, in the manner which will be described hereafter, it did not seem to ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley |
