Girish Mahajan (Editor)

The Sceptical Chymist

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
6.6
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
6.6
1 Ratings
100
90
80
70
61
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Language
  
English

Publication date
  
1661

Author
  
Robert Boyle

Country
  
Kingdom of England

3.3/5
Goodreads

Publisher
  
J. Cadwell

Originally published
  
1661

Subject
  
Chemistry

The Sceptical Chymist t2gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcQmVMUZQoPG7MNJTe

Genres
  
Dialogue, Mathematics, Science

Similar
  
Robert Boyle books, Chemistry books, Science books

The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes is the title of a book by Robert Boyle, published in London in 1661. In the form of a dialogue, the Sceptical Chymist presented Boyle's hypothesis that matter consisted of atoms and clusters of atoms in motion and that every phenomenon was the result of collisions of particles in motion. For these reasons Robert Boyle has been called the founder of modern chemistry by J. R. Partington.

Contents

Contents

The first part begins with 5 friends (Carneades the host and the Skeptic, Philoponus the Chymist, Themistius the Aristotelian, Eleutherius the impartial Judge, and an unnamed narrator) meeting in Carneades's garden and chatting about the constituents of the mixed bodies. In part one, Carneades (Boyle) lays out four propositions to the gathering, which sets the foundation for the rest of the book. They are as follows:

Proposition I. It seems not absurd to conceive that at the first production of mixt bodies, the universal matter whereof they among other parts of the universe consisted, was actually divided into little particles of several sizes and shapes variously moved. Proposition II. Neither is it impossible that of these minute particles divers of the smallest and neighboring ones were here and there associated into minute masses or clusters, and did by their coalitions constitute great store of such little primary concretions or masses as were not easily dissipable into such particles as composed them. Proposition III. I shall not peremptorily deny, that from most such mixt bodies as partake either of animals or vegetable nature, there may by the help of the fire be actually obtained a determinate number (whether three, four, or five, or fewer or more) of substances, worthy of differing denominations. Proposition IV. It may likewise be granted, that those distinct substances, which concretes generally either afford or are made up of, may without very much inconvenience be called the elements or principles of them.

Major themes

Boyle first argued that fire is not a universal and sufficient analyzer of dividing all bodies into their elements, contrary to Jean Beguin and Joseph Duchesne. To prove this he turned for support to Jan Baptist van Helmont whose Alkahest was reputed to be a universal analyzer.

Boyle rejected the Aristotelian theory of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and also the three principles (salt, sulfur, and mercury) proposed by Paracelsus. After discussing the classical elements and chemical principles in the first five parts of the book, in the sixth part Boyle defines chemical element in a manner that approaches more closely to the modern concept:

I now mean by Elements, as those Chymists that speak plainest do by their Principles, certain Primitive and Simple, or perfectly unmingled bodies; which not being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the Ingredients of all those call'd perfectly mixt Bodies are immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately resolved.

However, Boyle denied that any known material substances correspond to such "perfectly unmingled bodies." In his view, all known materials were compounds, even such substances as gold, silver, lead, sulfur, and carbon.

Influence

Its influence can be discerned in Nicholas Brady's reference to "jarring seeds" in his Ode to St. Cecilia (set by Henry Purcell in 1691, well before Daniel Bernoulli's kinetic theory):

Soul of the World! Inspir'd by thee, The jarring Seeds of Matter did agree, Thou didst the scatter'd Atoms bind, Which, by thy Laws of true proportion join'd, Made up of various Parts one perfect Harmony.

References

The Sceptical Chymist Wikipedia