Boyle Effluviums

The first two propositions deal with the physical structure of matter. There are two levels of organization—minutest particles, Boyle s corpuscles, which may associate into coalitions of minute masses or clusters. Microscopes, invented around the start of the seventeenth century, provided direct evidence of the ex-tream littleness of even the scarce sensible parts of concretes. " Boyle s associate Hooke published his masterpiece, Micrographia (see the next essay), just four years after The Sceptical Chymist. Boyle noted further that quicksilver could be distilled, dissolved in acids and filtered, and converted to amalgams that could be finely ground, but all finely divided forms could eventually be recovered as the shiny, metallic liquid. One of Boyle s most wonderful works is his Effluviums essay (1673) (see Figure 170), in which he imagines the smallest physically measurable... 

Becher was aware, as was Boyle (see effluviums discussion on pp. 248-251), that calxes were heavier than the corresponding metals. He too attributed these observations to igneous ( fiery ) particles small enough to move through glass and join the metal inside. 

Boyle believed in a corpuscular theory of matter—something of a fore bear-er to atomic theory. In this pretty little Effluviums book (Figure 170) he conducts gedanken (thinking) experiments to calculate the upper limits to the measurable masses of effluvia. But before we illustrate some of these, let Boyle define the contemporary debate ... 

---