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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28980	Experiments, notes, &c. about the mechanical origine or production of divers particular qualities among which is inferred a discourse of the imperfection of the chymist's doctrine of qualities : together with some reflections upon the hypothesis of alcali and acidum / by the Honourable Robert Boyle ...	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1676 (1676)	Wing B3977; ESTC R14290	165,888	582

found in them Thus elementary Water though never so pure as distilled Rain-water has fluidity and coldness and humidity and transparency and volatility without having any of the tria prima And the purest Earth as Ashes carefully freed from the fixt salt has gravity and consistence and dryness and colour and fixity without owing them either to Salt Sulphur or Mercury not to mention that there are Celestial bodies which do not appear nor are wont to be pretended to consist of the tria prima that yet are indowed with Qualities As the Sun has Light and as many Philosophers think Heat and Colour and the Moon has a determinate consistence and figuration as appears by her mountains and Astronomers observe that the higher Planets and even the Fixt stars appear to be differingly coloured But I shall not multiply Instances of this kind because what I have said may not onely serve for my present purpose but bring a great Confirmation to what I lately said when I noted that the Chymical Principles were in many cases not necessary to explicate Qualities For since in Earth Water c. such diffused Qualities as gravity sixtness colour transparency and fluidity must be acknowledged not to be derived from the tria prima 't is plain that portions of matter may be endowed with such Qualities by other causes and agents than Salt Sulphur and Mercury And then why should we deny that also in compounded bodies those Qualities may be sometimes at least produced by the same or the like Causes As we see that the reduction of a diaphanous Solid to pouder produces whiteness whether the comminution happens to Rock-crystal or to Venice-glass or to Ice The first of which is acknowledged to be a natural and perfectly mixt body the second a factitious and not onely mixt but decompounded body and the last for ought appears an elementary body or at most very slightly and imperfectly mixt And so by mingling Air in small portions with a diaphanous Liquor as we do when we beat such a Liquor into foam a whiteness is produced as well in pure Water which is acknowledged to be a simple body as in white Wine which is reckoned among perfectly mixt bodies CHAP. IV. I Further observe that the Chymists Explications do not reach deep and far enough For first most of them are not sufficiently distinct and full so as to come home to the particular Phaenomena nor often times so much as to all the grand ones that belong to the History of the Qualities they pretend to explicate You will readily believe that a Chymist will not easily make out by his Salt Sulphur and Mercury why a Load-stone capp'd with steel may be made to take up a great deal more Iron sometimes more than eight or ten times as much than if it be immediatly applied to the iron or why if one end of the Magnetic Needle is dispos'd to be attracted by the North-pole for instance of the Load-stone the other Pole of the Load-stone will not attract it but drive it away or why a bar or rod of iron being heated red-hot and cooled perpendicularly will with its lower end drive away the flower de Luce or the North-end of a Marriners Needle which the upper end of the same barr or rod will not repell but draw to it In short of above threescore Properties or notable Phaenomena of Magnetic Bodies that some Writers have reckon'd up I do not remember that any three have been by Chymists so much as attempted to be solved by their three Principles And even in those Qualities in whose explications these Principles may more probably than elsewhere pretend to have a place the Spagyrists accounts are wont to fall so short of being distinct and particular enough that they use to leave divers considerable Phaenomena untouch'd and do but very lamely or slightly explicate the more obvious or familiar And I have so good an opinion of divers of the embracers of the Spagyrical Theory of Qualities among whom I have met with very Learned and worthy men that I think that if a Quality being pos'd to them they were at the same time presented with a good Catalogue of the Phaenomena that they may take in the History of it as it were with one view they would plainly perceive that there are more particulars to be accounted for than at first they were aware of and divers of them such as may quite discourage considering men from taking upon them to explain them all by the Tria prima and oblige them to have recourse to more Catholic and comprehensive Principles I know not whether I may not add on this occasion that methinks a Chymist who by the help of his Tria Prima takes upon him to interpret that Book of Nature of which the Qualities of bodies make a great part acts at but a little better rate than he that seeing a great book written in a Cypher whereof he were acquainted but with three Letters should undertake to decypher the whole piece For though 't is like he would in many words find one of the Letters of his short key and in divers words two of them and perhaps in some all three yet besides that in most of the words wherein the known Letter or Letters may be met with they may be so blended with other unknown Letters as to keep him from decyphering a good part of those very words 't is more than probable that a great part of the book would consist of words wherein none of his three Letters were to be found CHAP. V. AND this is the first account on which I observe that the Chymical Theory of Qualities does not reach far enough But there is another branch of its deficiency For even when the explications seem to come home to the Phaenomena they are not primary and if I may so speak Fontal enough To make this appear I shall at present imploy but these two Considerations The first is that those substances themselves that Chymists call their Principles are each of them indowed with several Qualities Thus Salt is a consistent not a fluid body it has its weight 't is dissoluble in water is either diaphanous or opacous fixt or volatile sapid or insipid I speak thus disjunctively because Chymists are not all agreed about these things and it concerns not my Argument which of the disputable Qualities be resolved upon And Sulphur according to them is a body fusible inflammable c. and according to Experience is consistent heavy c. So that 't is by the help of more primary and general Principles that we must explicate some of those Qualities which being found in bodies supposed to be perfectly similar or homogeneous cannot be pretended to be derived in one of them from the other And to say that 't is the nature of a Principle to have this or that Quality as for instance of Sulphur to be fusible and therefore we are not to exact a Reason why it is so

Experiments Notes c. ABOUT THE Mechanical Origine or Production Of divers particular QUALITIES Among which is inserted a Discourse of the IMPERFECTION OF THE CHYMIST's Doctrine OF QUALITIES Together with some Reflections upon the HYPOTHESIS OF ALCALI and ACIDUM By the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq Fellow of the R. Society LONDON Printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford 1676. THE PUBLISHER TO THE Reader TO keep the Reader from being at all surpriz'd at the Date of the Title-Page I must inform him that a good part of the ensuing Tracts were Printed off and in my custody the last year and the rest had come out with them divers moneths ago if the Noble Author had not been hinder'd from committing them to the Press by the desire and hope of being able in a short time to send them abroad more numerous and by his being hinder'd to do so partly by Remove partly by the want of some Papers that were odly lost or spoil'd and partly by the sickness of himself and divers of his near Relations And some of these Impediments do yet suppress what the Author intended should have made a part of the Book which now he suffers to be publish'd without them though divers of his Papers about some other particular Qualities have been written so long ago as to have lain for many years neglected among other of his old Writings Which that he may have both leasure and health to review and fit for publication is the ardent wish of the sincere Lovers of Real Knowledge who have reason to look on it as no mean proof of his constant kindness to Experimental Philosophy that in these Tracts he perseveres in his course of freely and candidly communicating his Experiments and Observations to the publick notwithstanding the liberty that hath been too boldly taken to mention them as their own by some later Writers as particularly by the Compiler of the Treatise entitul'd Polygraphice who in two Chapters hath allow'd himself to present his Reader with alove Fifty Experiments taken out of our Authors Book of Colours without owning any one of them to Him or so much as naming him or his Book in either of those Chapters nor that I remember in any of the others Nor did I think this practice justified by the confession made in the Preface importing that the Compiler had taken the particulars he deliver'd from the Writings of others For this general and perfunctory acknowledgment neither doth right to particular Authors nor by naming them enables the Reader to know whether the things deliver'd come from persons fit to be credited or not And therefore since 't is but too likely that such Concealment of the Names if not Usurpation of the Labours of the Benefactors to Philosophy will prove much more forbidding to many others to impart their Experiments than as yet they have to our generous Author it seems to be the Interest of the Commonwealth of Learning openly to discountenance so discouraging a practice and to shew that they do not think it fit that Possessors of useful pieces of knowledge should be strongly tempted to envy them to the Publick to the end onely that a few Compilers should not be put upon so reasonable and easie a work as by a few words or names to shew themselves just if not grateful But not to keep the Reader any longer from the perusal of these Tracts themselves I shall conclude with intimating onely that what our Author saith in one of them concerning the Insufficiency of the Chymical Hypothesis for explaining the Effects of Nature is not at all intended by him to derogate from the sober Professors of Chymistry or to discourage them from useful Chymical Operations forasmuch as I had the satisfaction some years since to see in the Authors hands a Discourse of his about the Usefulness of Chymistry for the Advancement of Natural Philosophy with which also 't is hoped he will e're long gratifie the Publick ADVERTISEMENTS Relating to the following TREATISE TO obviate some misapprehensions that may arise concerning the ensuing Notes about Particular Qualities it may not be improper to adde something in this place to what has been said in another Paper in reference to those Notes and consequently to premise to the particular Experiments some few general Advertisements about them And I. we may consider that there may be three differing ways of treating Historically of Particular Qualities For either one may in a full and methodical History prosecute the Phaenomena or one may make a Collection of various Experiments and Observations whence may be gathered divers Phaenomena to illustrate several but not all of the Heads or Parts of such an ample or methodical History or in the third place one may in a more confin'd way content ones self to deliver such Experiments and Observations of the Production or the Destruction or Change of this or that Quality as being duly reason'd on may suffice to shew wherein the nature of that Quality doth consist especially in opposition to those erroneous conceits that have been entertained about it Of the First of these three ways of treating of a Quality I pretend not to have given any compleat example but you will find that I have begun such Histories in my Specimens about Fluidity and Firmness and in the Experiments Observations c. that I have put together about Cold. The Second sort of Historical Writings I have given an Instance of in my Experiments about Colours but in these ensuing Notes the occasion I had to make them having obliged me chiefly to have an eye to the disproval of the errours of the Peripateticks and the Chymists about them I hope I shall not be thought to have fallen very short in my Attempt if I have here and there perform'd what may be required in the Third way of writing Historically of a Quality my present Design being chiefly to give an Intelligent and Historical Account of the Possible Mechanical Origination not of the various Phaenomena of the particular Qualities succinctly mentioned in these Notes though my secondary end being to become a Benefactor to the History of Qualities by providing Materials for my self or better Architects I have not scrupled to adde to those that tend more directly to discover the Nature or Essence of the Quality treated of and to derive it from Mechanical Principles some others which happen'd to come in my way that acquaint us but with some of the less luciferous Phaenomena II. That you may not mistake what is driven at in many of the Experiments and Reasonings deliver'd or propos'd in the ensuing Notes about Particular Qualities I must desire you to take notice with me what it is that I pretend to offer you some proofs of For if I took upon me to demonstrate that the Qualities of bodies cannot proceed from what the Schools call Substantial Forms or from any other Causes but Mechanical it might be reasonably enough expected that my Argument