Is the Higgs mechanism a modern-day phlogiston?

Can you detail the observations that make you believe that?

Yes. Sorry for reacting a bit late. I was on another forum. Look, the Higgs mechanism corresponds to the breaking of the symmetric Higgs potential. It is said that below a certain temperature (energy) the vacuum Higgs field (at the origin and corresponding to a non-zero energy...!)) Huh?) rolls down to a new field configuration with zero energy around which perturbation calculations are made. So the field on the brim is non-zero while the energy is zero! ???. Now, the whole point of the Higgs mechanism can be found in the attempt once made to unify the massless photon field and the massive, fundamenal conjectured weak boson fields (W and Z). I don't contest the Higgs particle. By the way, you want me to continue?

I assume yes. So, the mechanism:
Four firstly massless field transform to a masless one and three massive ones. The photon field (corresponding to electric charge) and the two W-fields (also electrically charged, very strange, though the math can achieve everything!), and the Z-field. It is said that a Goldstone boson has been eaten! (the Goldstone boson is a massless excitation along the brim, with no resistance) There is no weak charge. Just a weak hypercharge. All very superficial. And the neutrino is massive without Higgs! How DOES matter get mass? I wanna continue but I'm not sure you follow me.

So. Let's assume quarks and leptons to be composite. As hadrons and mesons once were. If we assume the preons to be massless, all problems in high-energy physics dissappear trule and naturally, so not apparently and superficially. The matter-antimatter asymmetry. Þhe problem of families and mass. An explanation of energy. The true Nature of the weak interaction, a residue force like the old strong pion interaction. Etcetera. And no HM needed!