Falsifiable or Not
In his highly informative book, The Most Powerful Idea in the World , on steam and how it shaped the Industrial Revolution, William Rosen made an interesting point about a long-debunked theory of heat. Called the phlogiston theory, it said that anything hot had more of something inside it – the eponymous phlogiston – that would get released as it cooled. The theory did seem to explain why what was left of the wood after burning (ashes) weighed less than the wood itself: because the phlogiston would have been released. But other observable phenomenon contradicted the theory: - Some substances (e.g. magnesium) became heavier after being burnt, contrary to what the theory predicted. - Other substances didn’t change weight even if they cooled e.g. a hot iron bar put in water weighed the same after it had cooled and was taken out of the water. Here’s the part about the theory that Rosen found interesting: “Though phlogiston theory is wrong, it is considerab