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DanielLC comments on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions - Less Wrong
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Do you mean that a bottle full of Nitrogen would be Phogiston, in the same way that a Hyrodgen Ion⁺ is a proton(Absence of an electron)?
Why is the "Absence of Oxygen" Phlogiston in this case?
Nitrogen would be phlogiston-saturated air, in which nothing would burn. Coal would be full of phlogiston and burn easily in any air that isn't phlogiston-saturated.
I went and read up on Phlogiston a little bit, and this makes sense to me now. The Nitrogen (absence of Oxygen) is a good analogy for what is a very weird theory (Phlogiston - I can see why Steam-Punks are so drawn to this esoteric and wildly insane theory - and I can see why at the time it made sense to Stahl even though it was wildly wrong... The terminology tends to sound really ludicrous: Phlogisticated or Dephlogisticated... Uh, huh...)
I can now see where my analogy with the proton is off, as well.