![]() Thus, Lavoisier's work on combustion provided a better understanding of two of the elements of the ancients. According to the phlogiston theory, earths were simple bodies, and metals were obtained from them by addition of phlogiston in fact, metals are the simple bodies, and earths are obtained from them by reaction with oxygen. It also explained the relationship between metals and earths (or oxides as we now call them). Lavoisier's explanation of combustion extended to respiration as well-a process no less important to humans if much less dramatic. Control of the various gases produced in combustion, major and minor, has become one of the important scientific, technological, environmental, and political issues of our own time. ![]() Nor has the role of combustion diminished since Lavoisier: first coal and then oil powered the waves of industrialization which began in Lavoisier's day. Fire and combustibility played a central role in chemical theories from the ancients up to the time of Lavoisier: it was an element of the ancients ( chapter 1) sulfur, or the principle of combustibility was an elementary principle of the alchemists (see chapter 2) and the phlogiston theory of combustion dominated chemistry for most of the 18 th century. Controlling fire allowed early humans to keep warm, alter their food, and transform other aspects of their material surroundings (by smelting and working metals, for example). It would be difficult to overestimate the consequence to chemistry of an understanding of fire, for fire represents one of the most dramatic as well as one of the earliest symbols of chemical change. The explanation of combustion and respiration in terms of oxygen is surely one of the most important of the many important contributions of Lavoisier to chemistry. ![]() ![]() Fire and Earth: Lavoisier Elements and Atoms: Chapter 5 ![]()
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