The Sceptical Chymist - or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is pr???mis'd Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject - Robert Boyle - The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes is the title of Robert Boyle's piece of scientific literature, published in London in 1661. In the form of a dialogue, the Sceptical Chymist presented Boyle's ...
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The Sceptical Chymist - or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is pr???mis'd Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject - Robert Boyle - The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes is the title of Robert Boyle's piece of scientific literature, 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. 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. 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, Boyle establishes the modern concept of chemical element in the sixth part: 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.
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