Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

In the 19 th century, there was the added problem that any theory
that bases its view of reality on invisible particles responsible for
observable particles seemed to move science back into the realm of
alchemy. Atoms seemed to be a form of magic.
with the discovery of oxygen.
Joseph Priestly was a minister and scientist. He lived next door
to a brewery in England and was fascinated with the brewing
process, especially when he looked at the air around the grain
that was fermenting.
Recall that for Aristotle, air is an element—a single thing. What
Priestly did in his experiments was to isolate some air that had
different properties from normal air. If you had a burning piece
Priestly also found what he called “dephlogisticated air.” If
bottle, the mouse would come back to life—but only if you did
it in time.
Dephlogisticated air is what we now know as oxygen, and
All in all, Priestly was able to identify many different kinds of air,
which created a serious anomaly for the Aristotelian system. It set
experiment on. It was found that some substances combined with
others and could be derived from others but could never be broken
down any farther. The list of elemental substances grew throughout
the 19 th century. This meant that a new non-Aristotelian basis would
be needed to account for the observed behaviors.
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