Levi clarifies

In an update to his last post:

“UPDATE: Over at object-oriented philosophy Graham got the impression that I was suggesting that his withdrawn objects are like phlogiston. This is my fault. I wrote this post in haste while cooking dinner and watching a documentary on dark matter, so I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. Two distinct things are going on in this post. On the one hand, I’m raising questions about whether or not something like dark matter actually exists and what reason we have for believing that it exists. To my eyes it looks a lot like an ad hoc scientific hypothesis reflective of serious problems at the heart of our physics. However, on the other hand, if dark matter does exist, and if it has the properties physicists attribute to it, then 1) it would not be equivalent to phlogiston, and 2) it would be an excellent example of Graham’s withdrawn objects. Apologies to Graham. I did not mean to give the impression that I was lampooning his withdrawn objects as phlogiston. Quite the contrary.”

It’s almost too bad. The blogosphere would probably have loved to see me and Levi fall out in “the great September phlogiston controversy.” Perhaps we should have staged it that way, in the manner of professional wrestling.