ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how late eighteenth-century chemists revealed as their most cherished assumptions when the deep changes to their discipline forced them to reconsider and reformulate what used to be self-evident. In exchange for what Kirwan dubbed a 'false shew of simplicity', the traditional chemists were forced to abandon ontological, epistemological, and experimental commitments that were essential to the science of chemistry. Torbern Bergman's 'Table of Affinities', published in his Treatise on Elective Affinities, and included a column for phlogiston, accompanied by a lengthy entry exploring its nature and chemical functions. In 1787 Kirwan published his much-anticipated EP, mentioned above, in which he presented his own phlogistic experiments and analyzed Lavoisier's findings in phlogistic terms. Kirwan referred to Lavoisier as 'a philosopher of great eminence, who was the first that introduced an almost mathematical precision into experimental philosophy'.
