"In 1774 he thought he had obtained nitrous oxide... in 1775 he saw the gas as dephlogisticated air... If we refuse the palm to Priestley, we cannot award it to Lavoisier for the work of 1775... Lavoisier insisted that oxygen was an atomic "principle of acidity"... formed only when that "principle" united with "caloric"... Ignoring Scheele, we can safely say that oxygen had not been discovered before 1774, and we would probably say that it had been discovered by 1777 or shortly thereafter. But... any attempt to date the discovery must inevitably be arbitrary because discovering a new sort of phenomenon is necessarily a complex event, one which involves recognizing both that something is and what it is."
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Thomas Samuel Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Experiments_and_Observations_on_Different_Kinds_of_Air
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Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774–86) was a six-volume work published by 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley. Later editions were "in three volumes: being the former six volumes abridged and methodized, with many additions." The work reports a series of Priestleys experiments on "airs" or gases, most notably his contributions to the discovery of oxygen gas (which he named "dephlogisticated air") and its properties. The book is an original source for study in
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