On Monday, 26 September 2016 18:59:32 UTC+1, Col wrote:
On 26/09/2016 09:05, David Mitchell wrote:
I have every sympathy with Alistair on this. Science, physics, whatever have their place and can't be argued with on this issue. (But should really, as that's what science is about).

However, sometimes in life there are ways of explaining things that challenge the accepted definition and I totally understand his point and it's actually a very interesting idea. Wrong but interesting. But it actually gets the point across well.

I'm pretty sure that last time this was discussed I drew an analogy with
phlogiston:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory
Quite an elegant theory that explained the experimental results but
ultimately turned out to be back to front, when materials burned they
didn't lose phlogiston, but *gained* oxygen!

Yes and your thinking is still dominated with the idea that heat is like caloric. The theory that had to be abandoned when Pictet discovered cold radiation.