caloric

No pessimist claims that since the caloric theory is refuted, the kinetic theory and then the old pessimistic induction will be refuted.

When it was considered that water could be made to boil by putting the pot on hot rocks, this concept was replaced by the caloric theory of heat as a conserved fluid that flowed from hot to cold bodies.

The final narrative chapter outlines Sadi Carnot's description of the working of a perfect heat engine, and William Thomson's use of that heat cycle to develop three theoretical definitions of temperature, the first (1847) grounded in Caloric theory, the second (1851) in the mechanical theory of heat, and the last (1881) in thermodynamics.

Focusing on but one standard and dimension of success ("novel predictions"), Psillos can plausibly argue that a successful theory (for example, the caloric theory of heat) had components (for example, the existence and causal role of the caloric) that did not play any essential role in producing its success (the novel prediction of calorimetric laws such as the conservation of heat (115-19)).

His later writings indicate he was dissatisfied with the caloric theory and, had he not died in 1832, Carnot might have preempted Joule in rejecting it.