Origine of Forms and Qualities

Like many natural philosophers of his day, Boyle was an atomist. He summed up his atomistic hypothesis in Origine of Forms and Qualities, published in 1666, in which he stated his belief that there was one kind of Catholick or Universal Matter which existed in the form of tiny corpuscles of different sizes, shapes, and motions. These properties of the corpuscles caused different chemical substances to have different properties. For example, noting that nitrate crystals were prismatic, Boyle reasoned that the corpuscles that made up the crystals were tiny prisms. He speculated further that it is the sharp ends of these crystals that cause nitric add to be corrosive. Of course... 

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. 

Boyle, The Origin of Forms and Qualities, Works, volume 3,105. 

Figure, or shape, has long been ensconced in modern philosophy as a primary or essential quality of matter. Descartes, Malebranche, Hobbes, and Boyle all apparently endorsed the Lockean claim that shape is "in Bodies whether we perceive them or no" (Locke, [1700] 1975, p. 140). In addition, most seventeenth-century philosophers endorsed the inference that because shape is primary, it is one of the "ultimate, irreducible explanatory principles" (Dijksterhuis, 1961, p. 433 cf. Ihde, 1964, p. 28). Locke has often been read in this way, and in Origins of Forms and Qualities, Boyle claims the "sensible qualities. . . are but the effects or consequents of the.. . primary affections of matter," one of which is figure (quoted in Harre, 1964, p. 80). 

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. 

It is well known that even the works published from 1661 through 1667 were actually composed over a period that extended back well into the 1650s, especially Some Considerations touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosopy (1663), in which important juvenilia are embedded. See Boyle, Works, ed. Hunter and Davis, 3 xix—xxviii. Our main concern, however, will be The Origin of Forms and Qualities and The Sceptical Chymist. 

Boyle, Free Considerations about Subordinate Forms, appendix to The Origin of Forms and Qualities, in Works, ed. Hunter and Davis, 5 469. See also Origin of Forms and Qualities, in Works, 5 358, where a similar argument is made. 

Despite the continuities that I have underlined, there is another point at which Boyle s attitude to form is notably different from that of most alchemical writers, namely in his explicitly polemical use of the distinction between artificial and natural substances as a means of undermining the concept of the substantial form. The basic idea behind Boyle s approach capitalized on the fact that—as the Scholastics habitually put it—art alone could not impose a substantial form. Hence purely artificial bodies, in the Scholastic schema, had no substantial form, but only a superficial forma artificial—a deceptive external appearance of unity. What then if one could produce an artificial imitation of a natural body having all the known qualities of its natural exemplar Would it not follow that the substantial form was a purely otiose concept, since the ersatz product could not be distinguished from the natural except on the gratuitous hypothesis that it lacked the imperceptible substantial form of its natural model More than this, since the qualities of natural bodies were said to flow from the substantial form, how could a Scholastic opponent account for the existence of these very same qualities in a factitious (i.e., artificial) body, since it confessedly lacked a substantial form This approach was a key element to Boyle s assault on substantial forms and his concomitant attempt to demonstrate the mechanical production of forms. If one could eliminate the explanatory power of the substantial form, there was one less obstacle to Boyle s own explanation of qualities—that they derived from the shapes, sizes, and motions of individual corpuscles and from the textures supplied by corpuscular aggregates. Boyle s tactic is spelled out prominently at the very end of The Origin of Forms and Qualities ... 

The presumption that the salient properties of the invisible corpuscles are the same as the visible parts extracted by various processes is represented in his The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy (Boyle 2nd Edition 1667 i). There he makes clear the presumption of all corpuscularian science that the relevant properties are the bulk, figure, texture and motion of the insensible parts . 

Boyle R (1667) The origin of forms and qualities according to the corpuscular philosophy, 2nd edn. Davis, Oxford (Quotation from 2010 edition, edited with commentary by Jonathan Bennett p. 9)... 

Raw rubber is in masses or cakes of form and dimensions varying with the quality and origin, often of stratified section and not rarely containing impurities or occluded extraneous bodies it varies in colour from yellowish to brown and has a more or less marked empyreumatic odour D 0-91-0 97 it is highly elastic, but loses its elasticity when cooled to o° or heated to 6o° at about ioo° it begins to soften and it melts at about 180 0 to a blackish liquid, which becomes pasty on cooling but solidifies only after a very long time. 

Anonymous fingerprinting applications of PTR-MS, that is, where the analysis is not concerned with identifying specific VOCs, but instead merely uses the mass spectral peaks as some form of information, have been successfully applied in several studies of food quality and control. A few examples have already been met earlier in this chapter in a different context, but in this section the emphasis is on food classification. A particularly interesting and perhaps unexpected application of this relates to determining the geographical origin of food and drink products. 

Documentation of data origin is essential. Each completed data collection form needs to contain a file reference number or code to connect it to the documentation sources. This provides an essential trail to audit data quality, to confirm risk or reliability estimates or to investigate data values that appear questionable. Procedures to control data during handling, processing, recording, and reviewing are also necessary to prevent loss of data and to assure that opportunities are not lost to check the content of a form, by... 

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