Carneades and the chemists: a study of The Sceptical Chymist and its impact on seventeenth-century chemistry

Axioms, Essences, and Mostly Clean Hands: Preparing to Teach Chemistry with Libavius and Aristotle

“…As Antonio Clericuzio has noted, later chemists, like Boyle (1627Boyle ( -1691, also argued that chemistry should be raised up from a purely practical discipline to the status of a collaborator in natural philosophy, and Boyle would also claim chemistry's ability, by means of experiment, to penetrate further into the actual design and configuration of bodies. 28 However, when Boyle argued for chemistry's relevance to philosophy, what he meant by ''real philosophy'' was ''corpuscularian, atomical, Cartesian, mechanical,'' 29 and within this definition chemistry was no longer an intruder at the table of philosophical discussion, but an invited guest. Boyle's message is important, but it was not the first time that chemistry had nudged its way into the company of natural philosophers and then claimed to be their purest embodiment.…”

“Sooty Empiricks” and Natural Philosophers: The Status of Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century

“…Yet, in the appendix to the second edition of the Sceptical Chymist, bearing the title of Producibleness of Chemical Principles (1680), Boyle's position was less strict, showing that he did not rule out the existence of homogeneous chemical substances. In the section devoted to mercury, he did not deny that mercury was a homogeneous substance, though he pointed out that nobody had extracted it (Boyle 1999(Boyle -2000Clericuzio 1994). In a manuscript contained in the Royal Society Boyle Papers we find a more positive statement about mercury, where Boyle asserts that the corpuscles of mercury are primary concretions as well as the primary ingredients of some mixed bodies (Royal Society, Boyle Papers, xvii, fol.…”

“…(Boyle 1999(Boyle -2000 Boyle often criticized the "vulgar chymists" who failed to "give philosophical accounts" of their experiments. His main targets were those chemical textbooks, like Beguin's Tyrocinium, that contained practical instructions often based on obscure and confusing terminology and on the theory of principles (Clericuzio 1994). Boyle's ambivalent attitude towards chemistry is apparent in The Sceptical Chymist (1661), where he criticized the unphilosophical chemists and at the same time promoted "true chemistry" as conductive to a profound knowledge of nature: I am far from being an enemy to the chymists art, (though I am no friend to many that disgrace it by professing it,) and perswade them to believe me when I declare that I distinguish betwixt those chymists that are either cheats, or but laborants, and the true Adepti.…”

“…And thus much I shall here make bold to add, that we shall much undervalue chymistry, if we imagine, that it cannot teach us things far more useful, not only to Physick but to Philosophy, than those that are hitherto known to vulgar chymists. (Boyle 1999(Boyle -2000 Boyle preferred "Adepts" who thoroughly investigated the properties of metals and pursued the preparation of the alkahest to those practical chemists who failed to give a proper understanding of their experiments, confining chemistry to the status of purely practical art (Clericuzio 1994;Principe 1998, 35-48). In The Usefulness of Natural Philosophy (1663), Boyle extolled the application of chemistry to the study of the human body, since, "by the resolution of bodies" it can "extricate their more active parts."…”

Empowering Lay Belief: Robert Boyle and the Moral Economy of Experiment

“…As Boyle noted in The Sceptical Chymist, "divers chymical notions about matters philosophical are taken for granted and employed, and so adopted by very eminent writers." The notion of "spirit" in particular was applied "to so many differing things, that this various and ambiguous use of the word seems to me no mean proof, that they [i.e., chemists and physiologists] have no clear and settled notion of the thing" (Boyle 1772, i, 609;Clericuzio 1994). Boyle's dictum, that neither the world, "nor the soul of it -is the true God" (Boyle 1996, 48-50, 57), was also central to his critical appraisal of the natural philosophy of Henry More, one of the main contemporary advocates of the "spirit of nature."…”