A visual of two famous experiments, namely the cannon boring experiment, performed by Benjamin Thompson (1798), and the ice rubbing experiment, performed by Humphry Davy (1799), which conclusively proved that the fire element (aka matter of fire, heat element, terra pinguis, phlogiston, or caloric) does not exist, therein laying out the basis for the science of thermodynamics, executed by Clausius (1865) and his entropy model of heat, which thus filled the "void" — a vacuum said to also be something that does not exist — left in the wake of the newly demonstrated evidence.

→ Oak burning experiment (Helmont, c.1620)

→ Sulfur burning experiments (Lavoisier, 1772) (Ѻ)

→ Cannon boring experiment (Thompson, 1798)

“I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light.”

— Humphry Davy (1799), “Letter to Davies Gilbert”, Feb 22

→ Ice rubbing experiment (Davy, 1799)

“If the vacuum cannot be recognized either by the senses or by the intellect, how have you managed to find out that it does not exist?”

— Galileo (c.1620), annotations, in his copy of Julius Galla’s On the Appearance of the Orbit of the Moon (De phaenomenis in orbe lunare), after the phrase ‘concerning the vacuum’; cited by William Middleton (1964) in The History of the Barometer (pg. 5)

→ Nature abhors a vacuum

→ Torricelli vacuum (Torricelli, 1643)
→ Magdeburg hemispheres (Guericke, 1657)

Left: the Torricelli vacuum experiment, conducted by Evangelista Torricelli (1643), in efforts to solve the pump problem, which gave evidence, contrary to the long-standing postulate that vacuums do not exist (or nature abhors a vacuum), proved that vacuums can exist (at least in part). Right: the Michelson and Morley experiment, conducted by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley (1887), which gave evidence suggesting that ether does not exist.

→ Michelson and Morley experiment (1887)
→ Disabused (Einstein, 1905)
→ Social eclipse expedition (Eddington, 1919) (Ѻ)

“I am now convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evidence of the discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The isolation and counting of gaseous ions, on the one hand, which have crowned with success the long and brilliant researches of J.J. Thomson, and, on the other, agreement of the Brownian movement with the requirements of the kinetic hypothesis, established by many investigators and most conclusively by J. Perrin, justify the most cautious scientist in now speaking of the experimental proof of the atomic nature of matter, the atomic hypothesis is thus raised to the position of a scientifically well-founded theory, and can claim a place in a text-book intended for use as an introduction to the present state of our knowledge of general chemistry.”

A 2015 Yahoo Answers query (Ѻ) about Thims’ version of the “life does not exist” view, intermixed with discussion of Spinoza's god; see: defunct theory of life (2009) + life terminology upgrades (2012); see also: Thims' “Lotka’s Jabberwock” (2016) talk given at BPE 2016.

“The poets, through the conjunction of fire and moisture, are indicating that the vis, ‘force’, which they have is that of Venus [Aphrodite]. Those born of vis have what is called vita, ‘life’, and that is what is meant by Lucilius (c.120BC) when he says: ‘life is force you see: to do everything force doth compel us’.”

— Marcus Varro (c.50BC), On the Latin Language

? Spark of life theory (Galvani | Shelley, 1771)

→ Seem so lifelike (Goethe, 1809)
→ Urea synthesis (Wohler, 1828)

→ Reymond-Brucke oath (Helmholtz school, 1842)
? Warm pond model (Darwin, 1871)
? Crystal model of life (Haeckel, 1882)

→ No thing endowed with life (Tesla, 1915)
? Primordial soup (Oparin, 1924)

→ Regarding definitions (Lotka, 1925)
? Virus life debate (Stanley, 1935) (Ѻ)(Ѻ)(Ѻ)
→ Life NOT recognized by physics and chemistry (Sherrington, 1938)
? Life feeds on negative entropy (Schrodinger, 1943)
→ Faculty of reaction (Lubicz , 1949)
? Miller-Urey experiment (1952)

→ Abandon the word alive (Crick, 1966)
? Clay substrate theory (Cairns-Smith, 1966)
? Thermodynamic origin of life theory (Gladyshev, 1978)
? RNA world hypothesis (Gilbert, 1986)
? Hydrothermal vent theory (Wachtershauser, 1988) (Ѻ)
? More alive / less alive theory (Arnopoulos, 1993)
? Auto-catalytic closure theory (Kauffman, 1995)
→ Stem cell debate (1998) (Ѻ)(Ѻ)
→ Top 13 things that do NOT make sense (Brooks, 2005)

→ To Have Done with Life (Brown, 2011)

→ Life terminology upgrades (Thims, 2012)

→ Abioism (Thims, 2015)

→ Aspiritism

→ Prisoner in holed cask soul detection experiment (Frederick II, 1230)
→ Soul weighting experiments (MacDougall, 1902)

→ Asoulism (Weisman, 2010)

→ Atheism (French etymology, c.1550) (Ѻ)
→ Disproofs of the existence of god [2]

→ Aluminum disproof (Lotka, 1925)