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 corpuscles and clusters of corpuscles in motion and that every phenomenon was the result of collisions of particles in motion. Boyle also objected to the definitions of elemental bodies propounded by Aristotle and by Paracelsus, instead defining elements as "perfectly unmingled bodies" (see below). For these reasons Robert Boyle has sometimes been called the founder of modern chemistry.[1]
Title page
| Author | Robert Boyle |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Chemistry |
| Publisher | J. Cadwell |
Publication date | 1661 |
The first part of the book 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 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.[2]
- 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.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sceptical_Chymist
No comments:
Post a Comment