Boyle, Robert qualities

Boyle, Robert. Of the Imperfection of the Chemists Doctrine of Qualities (1675). In Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle, ed. M. Stewart (Manchester University Press, 1979). 

More specifically, the very dual quality of gold—as a color or tint and as a metal (both potentially applicable to a canvas)—forms the basis of various alchemical logics. In his Sceptical Chemist, a text that has been widely misread as a purely anti-alchemical diatribe, Robert Boyle refers to the ambi-valent nature of gold in its capacity for separation into a sulfuric essence and a mercurial essence ... 

For further elaboration of the relationship between the corpuscles of various sizes and shapes and chemists principles, see Robert Boyle, The Origin of Forms and Qualities, according to the Corpuscular Philosophy, Works, volume 3, 1-137 idem, Experiments, Notes, c. about the Mechanical Origin or Production of diverse particular Qualities, Works, volume 4,230-354. See also Clericuzio, A Redefinition of Boyle s Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy, Annals of Science 47, 1990, 561-589. 

Robert Boyle, Experiments and Notes about the Producibleness of Chymical Principles, being Parts of an Appendix designed to be added to The Sceptical Chymist, Works, volume 1, 587-661. Boyle s continuing preoccupation with the problem of principles can be discerned in Of the Imperfection of the Chemists Doctrine of Qualities (1675), in Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle, ed. M. Stewart (Manchester University Press, 1979). This work recapitulated more succinctly and powerfully his earlier criticisms in The Sceptical Chymist. 

Robert Boyle, Sceptical Chymist (London, 1661) The Producibleness of Chymical Principles (Oxford, 1680) Experiments, Notes, c. About the Mechanical Origine or Production of Divers Particular Qualities (London, 1675). On Boyle s Sceptical Chymist and his critique of chymical principles, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1998), 27-62 and Debus, Fire Analysis. ... 

For a description of the Summa s assaying tests, see Newman, Summa perfections, 769—776. For Bacon s similar definition of gold, see Francis Bacon, Sylva sylvarum in Bacon, Works, experiment 328, vol. 2, p. 450 see also Bacon, Novum organum, in Bacon, Works, aphorism 5, vol. 4, p. 122. For Boyle s definition, see Robert Boyle, the Origin of Forms and Qualities, in Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, The Works of Robert Boyle (London Pickering Chatto, 1999), 5 322—323. 

Hie Aristotelian theory dominated scientific thought until the time of Robert Boyle in the middle of the seventeenth century. Its implication of the possibility of changing, or transmuting, one element into another was particularly important. As an example of this conception, it appeared that water, the cold-wet clement, could be transmuted by the application of heat into air, the hot-wet clement, through the displacement of the cold quality by the hot one. In modem terms, of course, this process of vaporisation is considered as a purely physical one. Solid water (ice), liquid water, and gaseous or vaporised water... 

Robert Boyle, Experimental Notes Co. about the Mechanical Origin of Qualities, 1675 Michael E. W. Hunter and Edward B. Davis, The Works of Robert Boyle, 1999ff., vol. 8, 2001, 367 (for sharp tastes). R. Boyle, The History of Fluidity and Firmness , in Certain Physiological Essays, 1661. Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle, in five volumes, London, 1744, vol. I, 263 (for buttons and loops). Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles a Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2000. 

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. 

I intentionally avoid the use of the terms primary qualities and secondary qualities here. As Peter Anstey points out in his recent study of Boyle s philosophy, these terms had a specific sense in scholastic natural philosophy that was quite different from Boyle s. In addition, Boyle himself employed the terms in ways that do not always correspond to the modem usage, which is descended from John Locke. See Anstey, The Philosophy of Robert Boyle (London Roudedge, 2000), pp. 21-30. 

See Anstey, Philosophy of Robert Boyle, pp. 153-154. Anstey argues, I believe correctly, that Acre is no prospect of unearthing a coherent physics in Boyle s works... Boyle was first and foremost a philosopher of the qualities, not motion, space or time. ... 

Virtually every survey of the Scientific Revolution highlights the importance of Boyle s mechanical philosophy, but the precise relationship of this doctrine to the immediate matter theory that it replaced has until now received uniformly short shrift. Few historians have appreciated the fact that the mechanical philosophy, as formulated by Robert Boyle, was itself the capstone to a preexisting tradition employing alchemy to recast scholastic theories of mixture, an attempt at reform whose roots extended well into the Middle Ages. Nor does one find a common awareness of the fact that Boyle s most significant experimental evidence for the persistence of microlevel corpuscles and for the mechanical character of the accidental qualities induced upon and removed firom those corpuscles stemmed from the reduction to the pristine state originating in the alchemical tradition and made famous in the early seventeenth century by Daniel Sennert. 

Not surprisingly, people had speculated on the nature of heat since ancient times. Fire was one of the four classical elements and hotness one of the four primary qualities. At the time of the scientific revolution there was a widespread belief that heat was a substance, and some held the view that it was composed of atoms. Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke adopted a particulate explanation, and Hooke held the view that a body became hot because of the motion of the particles of which it is composed. 

The word corrosion is as old as the earth, but it has been known by different names. Corrosion is known commonly as rust, an undesirable phenomena which destroys the luster and beauty of objects and shortens their life. A Roman philosopher, Pliny (AD 23-79) wrote about the destruction of iron in his essay Ferrum Cor-rumpitar. Corrosion since ancient times has affected not only the quality of daily lives of people, but also their technical progress. There is a historical record of observation of corrosion by several writers, philosophers and scientists, but there was little curiosity regarding the causes and mechanism of corrosion until Robert Boyle wrote his Mechanical Origin of Corrosiveness. ... 

The Sceptiecd Chemist and Boyle s paper on the disintegration and re-composition of saltpetre are in The Works of Robert Boyle, Volume 2. An appendix he added to it over a decade later. The Produeibleness of Chymiecd Principles appears in Volume 9. Indicator tests are described in Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours in Volume 4 and the work on phosphorus in Volume 9. A critique of chemical principles and Boyle s attempts to contrive mechanisms for a range of chemical phenomena such as precipitation and the action of acids can be found in his essay on The Mechanical Origin of Qualities in Volume 8. 

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