Boyle, Robert early life

Boyle, Robert. (1627-1691). A native of Ireland, Boyle devoted his life to experiments in what was then called natural philosophy, i.e., physical science. He was influenced early by Galileo. His interest aroused by a pump that had just been invented, Boyle studied the properties of air, on which he wrote a treatise (1660). Soon thereafter, he stated the famous law that bears his name (see following entry). Boyle s group of scientific enthusiasts was known as the invisible college , and in 1663 it became the Royal Society of London. Boyle was one of the first to apply the principle that Francis Bacon had described as the new method —namely, inductive experimentation as opposed to the deductive method of Aristotle—and this became and has remained the cornerstone of scientific research. Boyle also investigated hydrostatics, desalination of seawater, crystals, electricity, etc. He approached but never quite stated the atomic theory of matter however, he did distinguish between compounds and mixtures and conceived the idea of particles becoming associated to form molecules. 

Traditional accounts of Robert Boyle s matter theory, such as Marie Boas Hall s 1952 Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy, explicitly view Boyle s mechanical philosophy as an importation from physics, which he grafted onto a radically rewritten chemistry. As Boas Hall puts it, Boyle s new chemistry was a chemistry in which was incorporated a physicist s view of matter. The physicist s matter theory refers, of course, to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life s work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. According to Boas Hall, this physicist s theory was radically opposed to the chymical theory that predated Boyle and that he sometimes criticized—particularly the theory of three principles, mercury, sulfur, and salt, invented by Paracelsus in the early sixteenth century. The Paracelsian concept of the tria prima was, to paraphrase Boas Hall, a theory of forms and qualities, an animistic rewriting of Aristotle in the language of alchemy. A brief glance at Steven Shapin s 2996 The Scientific Revolution will show that the approach of Boas Hall is alive and well, hr his treatment of the mechanical philosophy as a whole. 

This notion seems quite similar to Hooke s except that Willis appears to entertain the notion of a combination by the collision between the sulphureous particles of the combustibles and the nitrous particles of the air. It is interesting to note that Robert Hooke, Dr. Willis, and Robert Boyle were intimate friends and co-workers in Oxford and later in London, and were alike early members of the newly founded Royal Society. Thomas Birch, in his life of Boyle, for instance, referring to the air pump which Boyle made in 1558-1559 and which was perfected by Mr. Robert Hooke, says ... 

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