Keill, John

As already noted, Newton replaced the concept of mechanical entanglement with the postulate of short-range interparticle forces of attraction and repulsion and applied this model in his Principia of 1687 to rationalize Boyle s law relating gas pressure and volume. However, it was not until the first decade of the 18th century that this new dynamic or force model was first specifically applied to chemical phenomena by the British chemists, John Freind and John Keill, and by Newton himself in the finalized version of the 31st query appended to the 1717 and later editions of his famous treatise on optics, where he succinctly summarized his new particulate program for chemistry ... 

Indeed, attempts 100 years earlier to apply the physics of the age— Newton s great work—to chemistry failed. Among the first to attempt these applications were mathematician John Keill (1671-1721) and physician John Freind (1675—1728). Newton had expressed the force arising from gravitational attraction between two bodies with the formula ... 

Unfortunately, we do not know what usefull and pleasant Doctrine Freind conveyed in 1704. His lectures were not published until 1709, and it is likely that he revised them considerably in the interval. Where Keill s lectures were reticent on the topic of Newton s theory of matter, Freind, with perhaps more enthusiasm than accuracy, claimed in 1709 that he would reduce chemistry to the Rules of true Philosophy, that philosophy being Newton s, to whom he dedicated his volume. Freind s premisses, he acknowledged, were based on John Keill s 1708 paper in the Philosophical Transactions. The paper, In which the laws of attraction are explained, expanded Newton s comments on matter in query 23 of the 1706 Latin Opticks into thirty theorems which... 

Subsequent lecturers implicitly echoed Crawford s criticisms of Freind s attempt to integrate chemistry and Newtonian natural philosophy. Freind s text did not become a model for others, and the teaching of chemistry did not become formalized at Oxford until the turn of the nineteenth century. Richard Frewin assumed the title of Ashmolean professor after Freind but it is not known whether he lectured on chemistry. Apparently more successful was the practically-oriented Hart Hall natural philosophy course established by Keill, who was succeeded by Desaguliers. John Whiteside, named Keeper of the Ashmolean in 1714, continued these extramural lectures and may also have lectured on chemistry. ... 

At Cambridge, as I have mentioned, John Mickleburgh s lectures included a Newtonian theoretical framework derived from Freind. But Schofield characterizes these lectures - unlike Freind s - as being clearly in a medical context , with extensive experimental demonstration and instructions for the preparation of specific pharmaceutical substances, echoing the demands of his audience of medical students. The attempts of Freind and Keill to redefine chemistry as part of natural philosophy (particularly Newtonian natural philosophy) rather than medicine remained unrealized. The central function of the universities as a training ground for the gentry declined precipitously... 

On Keill s background, see Anita Guerrini, The Tory Newtonians Gregory, Pitcairne and their Circle, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), pp. 305-307 Anita Guerrini and Jole R. Shackelford, John Keill s De operationum chymicarum ratione mechanica Ambix, 36 (1989), pp. 138-42. 

John Keill, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy, or Philosophical Lectures Read in the University of Oxford, Anno Dom. 1700 [Trans. George Sewell and J.T. Desaguliers] (2nd edn London J. Senex et al., 1726), Preface, pp. x-xi Guerrini and Shackelford, John Keill (n. 26), p. 139. 

John Keill], An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, (1701), pp. 409-35 in George Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (Oxford, 1892). 

This lecture is published in Guerrini and Shackelford, John Keill (n. 22). 

David Gregory, [Memoranda], British Library, Add. MS 29,243, f.lr John Keill, Epistola ad Cl. virum Gulielmum Cockburn, in qua leges attractionis, aliaque physices principia traduntur, Philosophical Transactions 26 (1708) pp. 97-110. See also Guerrini and Shackelford, John Keill (n. 22), p. 141. 

Guerrini and Shackelford, John Keill (n. 22) p. 151 and passim. Cf. Halley s work on evaporation in the 1680s, discussed in Arthur Quinn, Evaporation and Repulsion A Study of English Corpuscular Philosophy from Newton to Franklin, (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1970), ch, 2, pp. 12-25. On Keill s opinion of subtle fluids, also see Cambridge University Library, Lucasian MS Box 1 bundle 8, 4 sides in John Keill s hand beginning Mr Saurin has considered. . . , written after 1704. 

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