Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	cold_a	heat_n	hot_a	2,925	5	7.7399	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A69611	Experimental notes of the mechanical origine or production of fixtness.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1675 (1675)	Wing B3963A; ESTC R22966	166,942	586

Instances of the Production of Heat and I shall also forbear to insist on such known things as the Incalescence observable upon the pouring either of Oyl of Vitriol upon Salt of Tartar in the making of Tartarum Vitriolatum or of Aqua fortis upon Silver or Quicksilver in the dissolution of these Metals but shall rather chuse to mention some few Instances not so notorious as the former but not unfit by their variety to exemplifie several of the differing ways of exciting Heat And yet I shall not decline the mention of the most obvious and familiar Instance of all namely the Heat observed in Quick-lime upon the affusion of cold water because among learned men and especially Peripateticks I find causes to be assign'd that are either justly questionable or manifestly erroneous For as to what is inculcated by the Schools about the Incalescence of a mixture of Quick-lime and water by vertue of a supposed antiperistasis or Invigoration of the internal Heat of the Lime by its being invironed by cold water I have elsewhere shewn that this is but an Imaginary Cause by delivering upon Experiment which any man may easily make that if instead of cold water the liquor be poured on very hot the ebullition of the Lime will not be the less but rather the greater And Oyl of Turpentine which is a lighter and is lookt upon as a subtiler liquor than water though it be poured quite cold on Quick-lime will not that I have observed grow so much as sensibly hot with it And now I have mentioned the Incalescence of Lime which though an abvious Phaenomenon has exercised the wits of divers Philosophers and Chymists I will adde two or three Observations in order to an Inquiry that may be some other time made into the genuine Causes of it which are not so easie to be found as many learned men may at first sight imagine The acute Helmont indeed and his followers have ingeniously enough attempted to derive the Heat under consideration from the conflict of some Alcalizate and Acid salts that are to be found in Quick-lime and are dissolved and so set at liberty to fight with one another by the water that slakes the Lime But though we have some manifest marks of an Alcalizate Salt in Lime yet that it contains also an Acid Salt has not that I remember been proved and if the emerging of Heat be a sufficient reason to prove a latent acid Salt in Lime I know not why I may not inferr that the like Salt lies conceal'd in other bodies which the Chymists take to be of the purest or meerest sort of Alcalys For I have purposely tried EXPER. I that by putting a pretty quantity of dry Salt of Tartar in the palm of my hand and wetting it well in cold water there has been a very sensible Heat produced in the mixture and when I have made the trial with a more considerable quantity of salt and water in a Viol the heat proved troublesomely intense and continued to be at least sensible a good while after This Experiment seems to favour the opinion that the Heat produced in Lime whilst 't is quenching proceeds from the Empyreuma as the Chymists call it or impression left by the violent fire that was employ'd to reduce the stone to Lime But if by Empyreuma be meant a bare impression made by the fire 't will be more requisite than easie to declare intelligibly in what that impression consists and how it operates to produce such considerable effects And if the effect be ascribed to swarms of Atomes of fire that remain adherent to the substance of the Lime and are set at liberty to flye away by the liquor which seems to be argued by the slaking of Lime without water if it be for some time left in the air whereby the Atomes of fire get opportunity to flye away by little and little If this I say be alledged I will not deny but there may be a sense which I cannot explicate in few words wherein the Cooperation of a substantial Effluvium for so I call it of the fire may be admitted in giving an account of our Phaenomenon But the Cause formerly assigned as 't is crudely proposed leaves in my mind some Scruples For 't is not so easie to apprehend that such light and minute bodies as those of fire are supposed should be so long detained as by this Hypothesis they must be allowed to be in Quick-lime kept in well-stopt vessels from getting out of so laxe and porous a body as Lime especially since we see not a great Incalescence or Ebullition ensue upon the pouring of water upon Minium or Crocus Martis per se though they have been calcined by violent and lasting fires whose Effluviums or Emanations appear to adhere to them by the increase of weight that Lead if not also Mars does manifestly receive from the Operation of the Fire To which I shall adde that whereas one would think that the igneous Atoms should either flye away or be extinguished by the supervening of water I know and elsewhere give account EXPER. II of an Experiment in which two Liquors whereof one was furnished me by Nature did by being several times separated and reconjoyned without additament at each congress produce a sensible Heat And an Instance of this kind EXPER. III though not so odd I purposely sought and found in Salt of Tartar from which after it had been once heated by the affusion of water we abstracted or evaporated the Liquor without violence of fire till the Salt was again dry and then putting on water a second time the same Salt grew hot again in the Vial and if I misremember not it produced this Incalescence the third time if not the fourth and might probably have done it oftner if I had had occasion to prosecute the Experiment Which seems at least to argue that the great violence of fire is not necessary to impress what passes for an Empyreum upon all calcined bodies that will heat with water And on this occasion I shall venture to adde that I have sometimes doubted whether the Incalescence may not much depend upon the particular Disposition of the calcined body which being deprived of its former moisture and made more porous by the fire doth by the help of those igneous Effluviums for the most part of a saline nature that are dispersed through it and adhere to it acquire such a Texture that the water impell'd by its own weight and the pressure of the Atmosphere is able to get into a multitude of its pores at once and suddenly dissolve the Igneous and Alcalizate Salt it every where meets with there and briskly disjoyn the earthy and solid particles that were blended with them which being exceeding numerous though each of them perhaps be very minute and moves but a very little way yet their multitude makes the confused agitation of the whole aggregate of them and of the particles of the water and

Reason why it is so though I could say much by way of answer I shall now only observe that this Argument is grounded but upon a supposition and will be of no force if from the primary affections of bodies one may deduce any good Mechanical Explication of Fusibility in the general without necessarily supposing such a Primigeneal Sulphur as the Chymists fancy or deriving it from thence in other bodies And indeed since not only Salt-peter Sea salt Vitriol and Allum but Salt of Tartar and the Volatile Salt of Urine are all of them fusible I do not well see how Chymists can derive the fusibleness even of Salts obtained by their own analysis such as Salt of Tartar and of Urine from the participation of the Sulphureous Ingredient especially since if such an attempt should be made it would overthrow the Hypothesis of three Simple bodies whereof they will have all mixt ones to be compounded and still 't would remain to be explicated upon what account the Principle that is said to endow the other with such a Quality comes to be endowed therewith it self For 't is plain that a mass of Sulphur is not an Atomical or Adamantine body but consists of a multitude of Corpuscles of determinate Figures and connected after a determinate manner so that it may be reasonably demanded why such a Convention of particles rather than many another that does not constitutes a fusible body CHAP. VI. AND this leads me to a further Consideration which makes me look upon the Chymists explications as not deep and radical enough and it is this that when they tell us for instance that the fusibleness of bodies proceeds from Sulphur in case they say true they do but tell us what material Ingredient 't is that being mingled with and dispers'd through the other parts of a body makes it apt to melt But this does not intelligibly declare what it is that makes a portion of matter fusible and how the sulphureous Ingredient introduces that disposition into the rest of the mass wherewith 't is commixt or united And yet 't is such explications as these that an inquisitive Naturalist chiefly looks after and which I therefore call Philosophical And to shew that there may be more Fontal explications I shall only observe that not to wander from our present instance Sulphur it self is fusible And therefore as I lately intimated Fusibility which is not the Quality of one Atome or Particle but of an Aggregate of Particles ought it self to be accounted for in that Principle before the Fusibleness of all other bodies be derived from it And 't will in the following notes appear that in Sulphur it self that Quality may be probably deduced from the convention of Corpuscles of determinate shapes and sizes contexed or connected after a convenient manner And if either nature or art or chance should bring together particles endowed with the like Mechanical Affections and associate them after the like manner the resulting body would be fusible though the component particles had never been parts of the Chymists primordial sulphur And such particles so convening might perhaps have made Sulphur it self though before there had been no such body in the world And what I say to those Chymists that make the sulphureous Ingredient the cause of fusibility may easily mutatis mutandis be applied to their Hypothesis that rather ascribe that quality to the Mercurial or the Saline Principle and consequently cannot give a rational account of the fusibility of Sulphur And therefore though I readily allow as I shall have afterwards occasion to declare that Sulphur or an other of the tria prima may be met with and even abound in several bodies endowed with the quality that is attributed to their participation of that Principle yet that this may be no certain sign that the propos'd Quality must flow from that Ingredient you may perhaps be assisted to discern by this illustration That if Tin be duly mixt with Copper or Gold or as I have tried with Silver or Iron it will make them very brittle and it is also an Ingredient of divers other bodies that are likewise brittle as blew green white and otherwise colour'd Amels which are usually made of calcin'd Tin which the Tradesmen call Puttee colliquated with the Ingredients of Crystal-glass and some small portion of Mineral pigment But though in all the above-named brittle bodies Tin be a considerable Ingredient yet 't were very unadvised to affirm that Brittleness in general proceeds from Tin For provided the solid parts of consistent bodies touch one another but according to small portions of their surfaces and be not implicated by their contexture the Metalline or other Composition may be brittle though there be no Tin at all in it And in effect the materials of glass being brought to fusion will compose a brittle body as well when there is no Puttee colliquated with them as when there is Calcin'd Lead by the action of the fire may be melted into a brittle mass and even into transparent Glass without the help of Tin or any other additament And I need not add that there are a multitude of other bodies that cannot be pretended to owe their brittleness to any participation of Tin of which they have no need if the matter they consist of wants not the requisite Mechanical Dispositions And here I shall venture to add that the way employed by the Chymists as well as the Peripateticks of accounting for things by the Ingredients whether Elements Principles or other bodies that they suppose them to consist of will often frustrate the Naturalists expectation of events which may frequently prove differing from what he promis'd himself upon the Consideration of the Qualities of each Ingredient For the ensuing Notes contain divers Instances wherein there emerges a new Quality differing from or even contrary to any that is conspicuous in the Ingredients as two transparent bodies may make an opacous mixture a yellow body and a blew one that is green two malleable bodies a brittle one two actually cold bodies a hot one two fluid bodies a consistent one c. And as this way of judging by material Principles hinders the foreknowledg of Events from being certain so it much more hinders the assignation of Causes from being satisfactory so that perhaps some would not think it very rash to say that those who judg of all mixt bodies as Apothecaries do of Medicines barely by the Qualities and Proportions of the Ingredients such as among the Aristotelians are the four Elements and among the Chymists the tria prima do as if one should pretend to give an account of the Phaenomena and operations of Clocks and Watches and their Diversities by this That some are made of brass wheels some of iron some have plain ungilt wheels others of wheels overlaid with Gold some furnished with gut-strings others with little chains c. and that therefore the Qualities and Predominancies of these metalls that make parts of