Richard Kirwan's Phlogiston Theory: Its Success and Fate

Abstract

First proposed in the early 1780s, Richard Kirwan's phlogiston theory was the most successful enunciation of the English pneumatic approach to phlogiston. Phlogiston was identified with a material substance, inflammable air. In this paper, I explore the nature of Kirwan's theory, its success in the mid-1780s, the unprecedented collective attack on Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston by Lavoisier and his colleagues, and Kinvan's ultimate abandonment of phlogistic explanation.