Oxygen theory of combustion and "Réflexions sur le phlogistique"

1777-1786 Fire and matter theory

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A theory explaining combustion and the calcination of metals by the joining of a part of the air (oxygen) to a substance: the weight gained by the calx equals the weight of the absorbed air. It replaced phlogiston.

The French chemist Antoine Lavoisier set it out in Réflexions sur le phlogistique (read to the Academy in 1783, published in the Mémoires for 1783 in 1786) and attacked phlogiston as a notion under which 'the same name is given to very different things'.

By 1800 almost all chemists had accepted the oxygen theory.

Why this date

the Mémoires volume for 1783, printed in 1786 (the date of reading at the Academy is not established by the sources). exact for the publications; the theory itself took shape in 1772-1777

What it grew from

• Weight gain of metals in calcination as a general fact (Guyton de Morveau)

  influenced · Confidence: high

  Guyton's book, which appeared before June 1772 and proved the generality of the weight gain in calcination, was, according to Guerlac and Smeaton, one of the factors that led Lavoisier to take up combustion and calcination; Lavoisier saw at once that the fixation of air might be the cause.

  Dispute: Guerlac's reconstruction (1961), in which Guyton's book triggers Lavoisier's experiments of 1772, was revisited by Perrin (BJHS 22, 1989, Document, Text and Myth: Lavoisier's Crucial Year Revisited) on the basis of Lavoisier's drafts and sealed notes; moreover, the absorption of air in calcination was asserted independently by Bayen (Blumenthal, Ladyman 2017). Guyton himself explained the weight gain by phlogiston, while the oxygen theory rests on Lavoisier's own experiments with phosphorus, sulfur and lead, and Guyton's result only posed the question.

  Link sources

  • Guerlac H. «Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent», Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) (1973) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Early in 1772, at all events before June of that year, there appeared a book by the provincial lawyer and chemist Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, which conclusively proved that the well-known gain in weight of lead and tin when they are calcined is not a peculiarity of those metals.

  • Guerlac H. «Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent», Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) (1973) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Guyton sought to explain these results by invoking a fanciful variation of the phlogistic hypothesis, but Lavoisier saw at once that the fixation of air might be the cause.

  • Smeaton W. A. «Guyton de Morveau, Louis Bernard», Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1972) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    The experimental part of Guyton's essay, however, was influence for his proof of the gain in weight was one of the factors that led Lavoisier to investigate combustion and calcination.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

  Further reading

  Not evidence: these carry no quotation and support nothing we wrote. They are books and scans to read next.

  • Guerlac H. «Lavoisier: The Crucial Year. The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772», Cornell University Press, 4 «The Mysterious Calcination of Metals» (1961)

What grew out of it

• Chlorine bleaching: a gas instead of a meadow and the sun

  influenced · Confidence: high

  The experiments of 1785 on dephlogisticated marine acid, in which the bleaching action of chlorine appeared, were performed by Berthollet in order to test the correctness of Lavoisier's oxygen theory, and as a result of the same experiments became the first major chemist to accept the oxygen theory, and then for the first time himself declared phlogiston a useless hypothesis.

  Dispute: Kapoor says that the chlorine experiments were undertaken to test the oxygen theory, and separately that chlorine turned out to have bleaching properties, but does not join the two statements in one sentence. Moreover Berthollet did not accept oxygen as the principle of acidity, and chlorine itself was misunderstood within the oxygen theory as oxygenated muriatic acid: the theory supplied the occasion and the name, not the explanation.

  Link sources

  • Kapoor S. C. «Berthollet, Claude Louis», Dictionary of Scientific Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    In 1785, after he had set out to test its correctness by performing a large number of experiments on 'dephlogisticated marine acid' (chlorine), Berthollet explicitly stated for the first time that 'this principle, which Stahl had ingeniously imagined in order to explain a large number of phenomena...had at last become a useless hypothesis.'

  • Crosland M. «Berthollet, Claude Louis», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (via Encyclopedia.com) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    He was the first major convert to Lavoisier's oxygen theory (1785) despite justifiable disagreement on the idea of oxygen as the principle of acidity.

  • Kapoor S. C. «Berthollet, Claude Louis», Dictionary of Scientific Biography Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Having observed that chlorine had bleaching properties, he wanted to find a simple technique for introducing it as a bleaching agent for textiles.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

Other links

• Phlogiston theory (Becher, Stahl)

  refuted by · Confidence: high

  Lavoisier's oxygen theory explained the weight gain in calcination by absorption of air and deprived phlogiston of its main empirical support.

  Dispute: Chang (Is Water H2O?, 2012) holds that phlogiston was rejected prematurely and "brought back under different names" (Chemistry World review: "Chang concludes that the phlogiston theory was rejected prematurely but was then, in effect, brought back under different names"). Kim (HYLE 2008) stresses that Lavoisier attacked phlogiston because it "His vision of rational chemistry was based on metric measurements and expressed in algebraic terms. Phlogiston offered a unique resistance to this vision and had to be eliminated." (p. 51), that is, the motive was programmatic, not only empirical.

  Link sources

  • Blumenthal & Ladyman, «Theory comparison and choice in chemistry, 1766-1791», Foundations of Chemistry 20(3), 169-189 (2018) Verified 5 Oct 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    had shown experimentally that as a general phenomenon, calcination involved the absorption of air, that this fully accounted for the gain in weight during calcination ... removed the key available evidence that had previously been held to support a theory of phlogiston.

  • Britannica, «Phlogiston» (2024) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    The phlogiston theory was discredited by Antoine Lavoisier between 1770 and 1790.

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, «Philosophy of Chemistry», §3.2 (2023) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    As reactants and products came to be routinely weighed, it became clear that metals gain weight when they become a calx. But according to the phlogiston theory, the calx involves the loss of phlogiston.

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, «Philosophy of Chemistry», §3.2 (2023) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    Lavoisier simplified this explanation by removing the phlogiston from this scheme.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

Links under review

• Mass balance and the conservation principle

  prerequisite for · Confidence: medium

  The only source so far is a Wikipedia article (citing Best 2015 and Ihde 1964); a verbatim quotation from Best, Found. Chem. 17, 137-151, or from Ihde 1964 is needed.

  Without the oxygen theory (accounting for the weight of the absorbed gas) the weight balance of reactions did not close, so the Traité of 1789 rests on it.

  Link sources

  • Wikipedia «Phlogiston theory» Best 2015 Ihde 1964 (The Development of Modern Chemistry) (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    combustion requires a gas that has mass (specifically, oxygen) and could be measured by means of weighing closed vessels ... culminated in the principle of mass conservation.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

Node sources

• Best N. W. «Lavoisier's 'Reflections on phlogiston' I: against phlogiston theory», Foundations of Chemistry 17(2), 137-151 (2015) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  it would be wise to give a more literal reading to Lavoisier’s accusation that “the same name has been given to very different things”, which he makes repeatedly throughout the first half.

• Best N. W. «Lavoisier's 'Reflections on phlogiston' I: against phlogiston theory», Foundations of Chemistry 17(2), 137-151 (2015) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  Réflexions sur le phlogistique, pour servir de suite à la théorie de la combustion et de la calcination, publiée en 1777. Mém. Acad. R. Sci. Paris année 1783, pp. 505–538 (1786).

• Best N. W. «Lavoisier's 'Reflections on phlogiston' I: against phlogiston theory», Foundations of Chemistry 17(2), 137-151 (2015) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  This seminal paper, which marks a turning point of the chemical revolution, is presented for the first time in a complete English translation. In this first half Lavoisier undermines phlogiston chemistry by arguing that his French contemporaries (particularly P.-J. Macquer and Baumé) had replaced Stahl’s original theory with radically different systems that conceptualised the phlogiston principle in completely incompatible ways.

• Britannica, «Phlogiston» (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  The phlogiston theory was discredited by Antoine Lavoisier between 1770 and 1790. He studied the gain or loss of weight when tin, lead, phosphorus, and sulfur underwent reactions of oxidation or reduction (deoxidation); and he showed that the newly discovered element oxygen was always involved. Although a number of chemists—notably Joseph Priestley, one of the discoverers of oxygen—tried to retain some form of the phlogiston theory, by 1800 practically every chemist recognized the correctness of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory.

• Donovan A. L., «Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier» Britannica (2024) Verified 24 Sep 2026

  While other chemists were also looking for conservation principles capable of explaining chemical reactions, Lavoisier was particularly intent on collecting and weighing all the substances involved in the reactions he studied.

"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

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