Georgius Agricola - A Renewer Of Mining And Metallurgical Technique

Georgius Agricola - A Renewer Of Mining And Metallurgical Technique 

Metallurgists and alchemists passed on real chemical knowledge to the 17 century and practical chemistry continued to develop. Theoretical knowledge, however, was static and still based on Aristotle. But new winds blew. The Renaissance - a rebirth of the art and science of classical antiquity - became a rebirth also for the theory of matter. Aristotle had preferred Empedokles four-element system to Demokritos atomism. The church followed Aristotle. Renaissance people wished to evaluate the 

One of the most distinguished European advocates for atomism, new and old at the same time, was Robert Boyle in England (1627-91). He was bom in lis-more, Ireland, and educated at Eton and in Geneva and Florence. With the assistance of his colleague and instrument maker Robert Hooke he made celebrated experiments in which he measured how the volume of a given quantity of air varied when the pressure was changed. He found the relation between pressure and volume, known by students of physics in all generations as Boyle s Law. 

Newton had already demonstrated that physical forces such as gravitation could act across great distances. Might there be similar short-range forces acting only at interatomic distances  

Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues or Forces, by which they act at a distance... upon one another for producing a great part of the Phaenomena of Nature For it is well known that Bodies act upon another by the Attractions of Gravity, Magnetism, and Electricity and these Instances show the Tenor and Course of Nature and make it not improbable but that there maybe more attractive Powers than these. .. 

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