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Hasok Chang's short summary of his "Is Water H2O" book is picking my interest, hope the read the complete thing. Some highlights follow, prepare for history & philosophy of science and some advice for the present! The setting is roughly 1780s - 1860s 1/N
There is a competition between Lavoisier's oxygen theory (Hydrogen + Oxygen -> Water) and the phlogiston theory (Phlogisticated water + Dephlogisticated water -> Water). Turns out the phlogiston theory was actually quite successful in explaining some important phenomena 2/N
On the other hand Lavoisier's theory had a bunch of gaps that were only filled-in much later... 3/N
But Lavoisier did win, so the phlogiston must have been proven wrong in some way, right? 4/N
In fact the phlogiston theory could (somewhat) unify the theory of chemical reactions with electrical phenomena in a way Lavoisier's theories couldn't. And we today know that electric charge is _important_ in chemistry! 5/N
Chang concludes that rejection of phlogiston was premature at the time and science was not better for it. 6/N
This brings us to lessons for today (yay!). Chang argues that we should try to maximize the surface between our theories and reality as this is where learning occurs. And that implies that it is perfectly OK to hold to multiple theories/approaches/... simultaneously! 7/N
And not only it is OK to have multiple conflicting theories, we might learn faster if we do. (somewhat ties in with https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216125). But pluralism != everything goes. 8/N
So that's what I've found interesting. You can read the whole paper (or the book) for a bit more details and also how we came to know there is "2" in "H2O" https://revistas.pucsp.br/circumhc/article/download/13401/9934 9/10
I really hope to get my hands on the whole book one day, because Chang's "Inventing Temperature" was a _great_ read - see @zerdeve's notes https://twitter.com/zerdeve/status/1099815636652371968
That's it for today, thanks for reading! 10/10
That's it for today, thanks for reading! 10/10
