Why was the kinetic theory of gases rejected by many scientists at first?

The kinetic theory of gases was not immediately accepted; in fact, it was rejected or ignored for more than a century. Several factors contributed to this initial resistance:1

• Scientific Preferences: During the 18th and early 19th centuries, chemistry was more popular than physics among scientists, and the kinetic theory relied heavily on mathematics, which was less favored.1
• Competing Theories: Isaac Newton’s reputation bolstered a more comprehensible theory that gas atoms repelled one another. Additionally, the caloric theory—which proposed that heat was an invisible, weightless fluid—was widely accepted. Because heat could be transmitted by light, many scientists believed heat and motion were unrelated.1
• Professionalization: As the scientific community became increasingly professional during the 19th century, the work of amateur physicists like John Herapath and John James Waterston was often dismissed or went unpublished.1

The theory eventually gained acceptance in the late 1850s after James Prescott Joule demonstrated that heat is a form of energy, leading to the collapse of the caloric theory.1