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The Sceptical Chymist

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1661
Pages: 220

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About this book

Published in 1661, this treatise takes the form of a dialogue among several natural philosophers who gather in a garden and argue over what matter is actually made of. Robert Boyle uses the conversation to attack two long-accepted schemes: the Aristotelian four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and the Paracelsian three principles (salt, sulphur, mercury). In their place he presses a corpuscular view, holding that substances are built from tiny particles in motion, and he insists that a true element must be a body that cannot be resolved into anything simpler. Boyle grounds his doubts in experiment rather than inherited authority. The work helped pull chemistry away from alchemy and toward a rigorous, evidence-based science, which is one reason Boyle is often counted among the founders of modern chemistry.

About the author

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, and physicist, and one of the founding members of the Royal Society of London. He is best remembered for Boyle's Law, describing the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas, and for insisting that scientific claims rest on careful experiment.

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