Chemical Translation: The Case of Robert Boyle's Experiments on Sensible Qualities

Summary

The purpose of this work is to translate some of Robert Boyle's chemical experiments into the terms of modern chemistry. Most of the reactions involve sensible qualities, since there are on it considerable helpful tracking descriptions like heating, hissing, colour changing, etc. For a long time in the history of science, this procedure was seen as an exercise in anachronism which should be avoided at all costs. Recently many scholars have demonstrated that chemical translation can assist with historical work instead of causing confusion, and it may be very useful as a tool for the history of chemistry and for reproducing past chemical experiments.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thanks the CAPES foundation for its sponsorship for the development of this work, Michael Hunter for his guidance and help, the staff of Birkbeck College (especially Maria Margaronis and Jessica Dune) and CLE (especially Eliana Marciela Marquetis), the Wellcome Library for its support and all others who collaborated with this work.

Notes

¹See more in Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Apparatus and reproducibility in alchemy’, in Instruments and experimentation in the history of chemistry, edited by Frederic Lawrence Holmes and Trevor Harvey Levere ( Cambridge, MA, 2000), pp. 55–74.

²William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, George Starkey: Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and correspondence (Chicago, 2004), xii.

³See more in Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Robert Boyle's alchemical secrecy: codes, ciphers and concealments’, Ambix, 39 (1992), 63–74.

⁴See more in Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Chemical translation and the role of impurities in alchemy: example from Basil Valentine's Triumph-Wagen’, Ambix, 34 (1987), 21–33.

⁵Melvyn C. Usselman and others, ‘Restaging Liebig: A study in the Replication of Experiments’, Annals of Science, 62 (2005), 5.

⁶Melvyn C. Usselman and others, ‘Restaging Liebig: A study in the Replication of Experiments’, Annals of Science, 62 (2005), p. 6.

⁷Melvyn C. Usselman and others, ‘Dalton disputed nitric oxide experiments and the origins of his atomic theory’, ChemPhysChem, 9:1 (2008), 106–110.

⁸Barbara I. Kronberg and others, ‘Mass-Spectometry as an historical probe: Quantitative answers to historical questions in mettalurgy’, Advances in Chemistry Series, 205 (1984), 295–310.

⁹Frederic L. Holmes and Trevor H. Levere, eds, Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry (Cambridge, MA., 2000), 415 p.

¹⁰Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest (Princeton, 1998).

¹¹William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: chymistry and the experimental origins of the scientific revolution (Chicago, 2006), 19.

¹²Lawrence M. Principe (note 1), 71.

¹³See William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe., ‘Alchemy vs. Chemistry: Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake’, Early Science and Medicine, 3 (1998), 32–65. And William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, ‘Some problems with the Historiography of Alchemy’ in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, edited by William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

¹⁴ Michael Hunter, Robert Boyle By himself and his friends (London, 1994), ix.

¹⁵Jan W. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason (Cambridge, 1997), x.

¹⁶To know more about it see Michael Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, 1^st edn (Cambridge, 1994).

¹⁷Michael Hunter, The Boyle Papers: Understanding the Manuscripts of Robert Boyle (Farnham, 2007), chapter 3.

¹⁸Michael Hunter, ‘How Boyle became a scientist’, History of Science, 33 (1995), 59–103.

¹⁹To know more about it, see Peter R. Anstey, The philosophy of Robert Boyle (London, 2000).

²⁰Robert Boyle, ‘Experiments, Notes, &c., about the Mechanical Origin of Qualities’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VIII, 379, experiment I.

²²Robert Boyle, ‘The Sceptical Chymist’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), II, 241–242. Similar explanation can be found in page 265.

²¹To know more about concepts of synthesis and decomposition as synkrisis and diakrisist see William R. Newman (note 11), chapter 6.

²³Boyle considered acids like hydrochloric acid, HCl, and nitric acid, HNO₃, are just small particles of the correspondent salt sea-salt, NaCl, and nitre, KNO₃. Part of the sea-salt would be considered here as part of the spirit of salt, which in modern chemical terms would be chlorine ions Cl^–. To know more see Robert Boyle, ‘The history of Fluidity and Firmnesse’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), II, 150–203.

²⁵Robert Boyle, ‘Of the Usefulnesse of Naturall Philosophy’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), III, 371.

²⁴The reaction in the following excerpt can be found commented in Robert Boyle (note 23), 125, as a sign of the nature of the spirit of salt, since sea-salt can fix ammonia as well, and in the Workdiary 19 Entry 114, but considering his heating properties.

²⁶Robert Boyle (note 22), 273.

³¹Robert Boyle (note 20), 365.

²⁷Robert Boyle, ‘An Introduction to the History of Particular Qualities’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VI, 270.

²⁸Robert Boyle, ‘That the goods of Mankind’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VI, 474.

²⁹To know more about acid-alkali theory, see Marie Boas Hall, ‘Acid and Alkali in Seventeenth-Century Chemistry’, Archives Internationales d'histoire des Science, 9 (1956), 13–28.

³⁰Robert Boyle, ‘Reflections upon the hypothesis acid-alkali’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VIII, 414.

³²Robert Boyle (note 20), 366, experiment I.

³³Boyle didn't believe the charcoal was getting into the reaction, from Boyle's point of view the saltpetre was being separated in volatile (HNO₃) and fixed nitre (K₂CO₃), in reference to the famous reintegration of Nitre described by Boyle himself in ‘Certain Physiological Essays’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), II, pp. 92–96. To know more about it see William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy tried in the fire: Starkey, Boyle and the fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago, 2002).

³⁴Robert Boyle (note 20), 366, experiment II. The title of this experiment is: ‘Of two bodies, the one highly acid and corrosive, and the other alkalizat and fiery, to produce a body almost insipid’.

³⁵Robert Boyle (note 20), 367, experiment III.

³⁶The same reaction can be done with hydrochloric acid, translated to modern chemistry from Boyle's text in Peter Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles (Cambridge, 1985), p. 85.

³⁷Robert Boyle (note, 20), 369, experiment VIII.

³⁹Robert Boyle, ‘Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), IV, p. 49.

³⁸As when red minium in vinegar, as the reaction we have seen of Pb₃O₄ dissolved into vinegar, the redness of lead was destroyed by the liquor.

⁴²Robert Boyle, Workdiaries, WD 38, Entry 2 < http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/wd/index.html>

⁴³Robert Boyle (note 42), WD 29, Entry 234.

⁴⁴Fair quantity.

⁴⁵Robert Boyle, ‘Experimenta et Observationes Phisicae’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), XI, p. 394.

⁴⁶Robert Boyle (note 39), 150.

⁴⁸Robert Boyle (note 39), 150.

⁴⁹Robert Boyle (note 39), 150.

⁵⁰Robert Boyle (note 39), 151.

⁴⁰Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, edited by Marie Boas Hall (New York, 1964), Introduction.

⁴¹See Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A study of atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht, 2000), chapter 4.

⁴⁷Robert Boyle, ‘The Origine of Formes and Qualities’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), V, p. 403.

⁵¹Robert Boyle (note 39), 151.

⁵²Robert Boyle (note 39), 151.

⁵⁴Robert Boyle (note 39), 151.

⁵³For more about synkrisis and diakrisis reactions, see William R. Newman (note 11). This reaction can be found in p. 182.

⁵⁵Robert Boyle (note 39), 77.

⁵⁶Robert Boyle (note 40), xxiii.

⁵⁷Robert Boyle, ‘Memoirs forthe Natural History of Humane Blood’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), X, pp. 62–63.

⁵⁸Robert Boyle (note 57), 125.

⁵⁹Robert Boyle, ‘The General History of the Air’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), XII, p. 37.

⁶⁰Robert Boyle, ‘Essays of the Efluviums’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VII, p. 241.

⁶¹Robert Boyle (note 39), 123.

⁶²To the chemical structure of the syrup of violets pH indicator, see page xiv and xx of the introduction of Robert Boyle (note 40).

⁶⁴Robert Boyle (note 42), WD 19, Entry 114.

⁶³See for example Robert Boyle (note 42) WD 38, Entry 19.

⁶⁶Robert Boyle (note 20), 332.

⁶⁵Robert Boyle (note 20), 332, experiment I.

⁶⁷There are a lot of experiments presented in Workdiary 19, which are present in Experiments, Notes, &c., about the Mechanical Origin of Qualities. Just to cite some, the experiment II, page 332 is exactly the experiment of WD 19, exp. 113. And the experiment number III (page 333) is present in the WD 19, exp. 114.

⁶⁹Robert Boyle (note 20), 351, experiment X.

⁷¹Robert Boyle (note 20), 351, experiment X.

⁷²Robert Boyle (note 20), 351, experiment X.

⁶⁸Robert Boyle (note 20), 345, experiment I.

⁷⁰Just to cite one, it is present in Robert Boyle, ‘Men's great ignorance of the uses of natural things’, in Works, edited by Michael Hunter and Edward Davis, 14 vols (London, 2000), VI, p. 521.