Why not a blogiston?


Some of you may have noticed that the title of my blog is "Phlogiston". I chose it for several reasons:

first, I thought that I might try to use the term "blogiston" as a title, then decided against it since it sounded a little too much like the name of a central asian republic.

Second, one of my historical interests is the history of science. My main field of study is the history of medicine, but the two subjects tend to share alot of the same material. Especially before nineteenth century (*arguably). The "Phlogiston" theory was a particularly interesting philosophical theory during the eighteenth century. Notice that it was a philosophical theory. Simply put, "science" as we practice it today was markedly different from what was done in the past. Before the modern era, alot of the experimental research of the past was categorized as "natural philosophy". I'll post more on the specifics of the phlogiston theory later.

Lastly, I chose the title of my blog because I thought that it sounded cool.