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A29012 Of the cause of attraction by suction a paradox / by the Honourable Robert Boyle ... Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691. 1674 (1674) Wing B4008; ESTC R36504 23,379 76

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OF THE CAUSE OF ATTRACTION BY Suction A PARADOX By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Fellow of the Royal Society LONDON Printed by William Godbid and are to be Sold by Moses Pitt at the Angel over against the little North Door of St. Paul's Church 1674. PREFACE HAving about twelve years ago summarily exprest and publish'd my Opinion of the Cause of Suction and a while before or after brought to the Royal Society the Glass Instrument I employ'd to make it out I desisted for some time to add any thing about a Problem that I had but occasionally handled Only because the Instrument I mention'd in my Examen of Mr. Hobbes's Opinion and afterwards us'd at Gresham-College was difficult enough to be well made and not to be procur'd ready made I did for the sake of some Virtuosi that were curious of such things devise a slight and easily made Instrument describ'd in the following Tract Chap. 4th in which the chief Phaenomena I shew'd before the Society were easily producible But afterwards the mistakes and erroneous Opinions that in Print as well as in Discourse I met with even among Learned Men about Suction and the Curiosity of an Ingenious Person engaged me to resume that Subject and treat of it as if I had never before meddled with it for the reason intimated in the beginning of the insuing Paper And finding upon the review of my later Animadversions on Mr. Hobbes's Problemata de Vacuo that some passages of this Tract are referr'd to there I saw my self thereby little less than engaged to annex that Discourse to those Animadversions And this I the rather consented to because it contains some Experiments that I have not elsewhere met with which together with some other parts of that Essay may I hope prove of some use to illustrate and confirm our Doctrine about the Weight and Spring of the Air and supply the less experienced than ingenious Friends to our Hypothesis with more grounds of answering the later Objections of some Learned Men against whose endeavours I perceive it will be useful to employ variety of Experiments and other Proofs to evince the same Truth that some or other of these may meet with those Arguments or evasions with which they strive to elude the force of the rest The Title of the following Essay may sufficiently keep the Reader from expecting to find any other kind of Attraction discours'd of than that which is made by Suction But yet thus much I shall here intimate in general that I have found by Trials purposely made that the Examples of Suction are not the only noted ones of Attraction that may be reduced to Pulsion OF THE CAUSE OF Attraction by SUCTION A PARADOX CHAP. I. I Might Sir save my self some trouble in giving you that account you desire of me about Suction by referring you to a passage in the Examen I long since writ of Mr. Hobbes's Dialogus Physicus de Natura Aeris if I knew you had those two Books lying by you But because I suspect that my Examen may not be in your hands since 't is almost out of Print and has not for some years been in my own and because I do not so well remember after so long a time the particulars that I writ there about Suction as I do in general that the Hypothesis I proposed was very incidentally and briefly discours'd of upon an occasion ministred by a wrong Explication given of Suction by Mr. Hobbes I shall here decline referring you to what I there writ and proposing to you those thoughts about Suction that I remember I there pointed at I shall annex some things to illustrate and confirm them that would not have been so proper for me to have insisted on in a short and but occasional Excursion And I should immediately proceed to what you expect from me but that Suction being generally look'd upon as a kind of Attraction it will be requisite for me to premise something about Attraction it self For besides that the Cause of it which I here dispute not of is obscure the very Nature and Notion of it is wont by Naturalists to be either left untouch'd or but very darkly deliver'd and therefore will not be unfit to be here somewhat explain'd How general and ancient soever the common Opinion may be that Attraction is a kind of Motion quite differing from Pulsion if not also opposite to it yet I confess I concur in opinion though not altogether upon the same grounds with some modern Naturalists that think Attraction a Species of Pulsion And at least among inanimate Bodies I have not yet observed any thing that convinces me that Attraction cannot be reduced to Pulsion for these two seem to me to be but extrinsical denominations of the same Local Motion in which if a moved Body precede the Movent or tend to acquire a greater distance from it we call it Pulsion and if upon the score of the Motion the same Body follow the Movent or approach to it we call it Attraction But this difference may consist but in an accidental respect which does not Physically alter the nature of the Motion but is founded upon the respect which the Line wherein the Motion is made happens to have to the situation of the Movent And that which seems to me to have been the chief cause of mens mistaking Attraction for a motion opposite to Pulsion is that they have look'd upon both the moving and moved Bodies in too popular and superficial a manner and consider'd in the Movent rather the situation of the conspicuous and more bulky part of the Animal or other Agent than the situation of that part of the Animal or Instrument that does immediately impress that motion upon the Mobile For those that attentively heed this may easily take notice that some part of that Body or of the Instrument which by reason of their conjunction in this operation is to be look'd on but as making one with it is really placed behind some part of the Body to be drawn and therefore cannot move outwards it self without thrusting that Body forward This will be easily understood if we consider what happens when a Man draws a Chain after him for though his Body do precede the Chain yet his finger or some other part of the hand wherewith he draws it has some part or other that reaches behind the fore part of the first Link and the hinder part of this Link comes behind the anteriour part of the second Link and so each Link has one of its parts placed behind some part of the Link next after it 'till you come to the last Link of all And so as the finger that is in the first Link cannot move forwards but it must thrust on that Link by this Series of Trusions the whole Chain is moved forwards and if any other Body be drawn by that Chain you may perceive that some part of the last Link comes behind some part of that