You might know very well what the phlogiston is, or at least what it's supposed to be. You might be well aware of the miasma theory of disease or of the hollow earth or the geocentric universe. There are a lot of false ideas that were once relevant and you might know a lot about them because they make their way into fantasy & fiction pretty easily.
When a supposition like, say, hermeticism, alchemy, takes hold there's a lot of labor & thought that goes into enriching it as a concept, into making it more substantial. We talk about earth elementals & fire elementals & if we want we can carry forward this simplistic image of monsters that do something interesting to a whole cosmic & mystical realm of interpretation & investment. There's a wealth of valuable background material that exists just waiting to be plucked & chosen for the purpose of enriching your game or your setting. Part of what makes This Thing We Do Together great is the deep dives into imagination & conjecture that it allows.
And it lives in this realm of the fictitious & false - it's fantasy & dreams & it's none of it real. So you can play with notions of discredited scientific theories & make them the basis of a system of magic or a type of wondrous element or...
What about a species of creature? A kind of person? Here I have questions that I don't have answers for - these are ideas that I use, but that I can't be certain I aught to use - they're old discredited tools - like Alchemy & Phlogiston - but they're potentially more dangerous & there's a good chance that this type of subject is reasonably avoided. That said I'm interested in thinking about it, and I do use it - maybe more than I should - I'm open to correction here!
But so - discredited tropes & sciences and what they bring to the table. Some ideas fester in the mind & flourish full blown, they may have been the source of untold troubles in the past & they may be erroneous in the world & yet, maintain a certain fictive gravity - a mythological quality that lends itself to use alongside other fictions. I'm thinking of the Noble Savage & of Orientalism - misused in the past & to wicked ends & yet - there are stories built into these notions - these fictional notions - that call out & ask to be used, can they be redeemed as ideas & used for good when applied to a fictional world?
I think about species in a setting, Elves, let us say - or Orcs or some other thing - a race of beings unlike people, but also like people. You've seen this before - they want for nothing & they lack any understanding of money. They lack greed & are open & loving with all others but ferocious & deadly as well. Noble - they are free of the mores of the corrupt & civilized world but they are never-ever to be thought of as incapable. More they are like blithe but preternaturally skillful children. Capable of hunting & taming beasts - even as they lack any understanding of corrupt concepts like religion.
In actual history this was nonsensically applied to the native peoples of the Americas & to terrible effect. But I'm sure you recognize it from your game. I'm sure this trope has come up here and there for you - the woodland people who are purely innocent by virtue of their wildness.
What I wonder is this - can you include that - conscientiously - can you play with these discredited ideas like you do with alchemy? Can you do so conscientiously?
And what about the orientalist bent? What about vast bureaucratic empires built of cruelty & inhumane subjugation? What about these courts of intriguing eunuchs and mysterious otherness?
In Tolkien there's that germ of orientalism too - the evil east comprised of slaves against the free west - where freedom is defined as simply: not being a slave. Does discrediting this concept in the world at large mean that fiction that carries it is likewise invalid? Is Tolkien really an apologist for colonialism?
What other troubling notions that once guided societal thinking are out there and useful for fiction? And is it right to use them this way when they've caused so march harm in the world? It's a conundrum for me.
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