Robert Boyle's experimental programme: Some interesting examples of the use of subordinate causes in chymistry and pneumatics

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Acknowledgements

I thank Michael Hunter, Elizabethanne Boran and Lawrence M. Principe for their help and support. I also thank two anonymous referees for insightful comments, and Eliana Marciela Marquetis and Rogério Côrte Sassonia.

Notes

1. Chalmers, “Lack of Excellency.” Boyle clearly states the importance of subordinate causes in the following excerpt: “Of the Subordinate or intermediate Causes or Theories of Natural things, there may be many; some more, and some /fol. 41/ less, remote from the First Principles, and yet each of them capable to afford a just delight & usefull Instruction to the Mind. And these may call for distinction sake, the Cosmographical, the Hydrostatical, the Anatomical, the Magnetical, the Chymical, and other causes or reasons of Phaenomena, as those which are more Immediate (in our way of Estimating things) than the general and Primordial causes of Natural Effects.” cited in Boyle, Works, vol. 14, 169. Also quoted in Chalmers, “Lack of Excellency,” 557.

2. Chalmers, “Intermediate causes.”

3. Clericuzio, “A Redefinition”; Clericuzio, Elements.

4. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, Ch. 6: “Boyle, Sennert, and the Mechanical Philosophy,” 175–189.

5. Chalmers, “Boyle and the Origins.”

6. Chalmers, “Lack of Excellency.”

7. Chalmers, Scientist's Atom.

8. Anstey, “Robert Boyle”; Pyle, “Boyle on Science.”

9. Chalmers, “Experiment versus Mechanical Philosophy.”

10. Newman, “How Not to Integrate.”

11. Ibid., 211–212.

12. Chalmers, “Intermediate Causes and Explanations,” 553.

13. Chalmers, “Boyle and the Origins,” 8.

14. Chalmers, “Intermediate Causes and Explanations,” 561.

15. Chalmers, “Boyle and the Origins,” 8.

16. Boyle, Works; Boyle, Workdiaries.

17. Boyle, “Certain Physiological Essays,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 3–33 (22).

18. Chalmers, “Intermediate Causes and Explanations,” 553.

19. Boyle, Works, vol. 1, 157, footnote.

20. Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan.

21. Boyle, “New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 1, 141–301 (192).

22. Ibid., 193.

23. Ibid., 194.

24. Boyle, Workdiaries 29, entry 232.

25. Ibid., entry 289.

26. Chalmers, “Intermediate Causes and Explanations,” 559.

27. Boyle, “New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 1, 141–301 205–206, experiment 19.

28. Boyle, “A Continuation of New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring and the Weight of the Air, And their Effects. The Second Part,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 9, 121–263.

29. Ibid., 152, experiment IV.

30. Francis Bacon's experientia literata as expounded in Bacon, Of the Proficience, 186, available at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433070225416;view=1up;seq=7.

31. Chalmers, Scientist's Atom, 140.

32. Ibid., 151.

33. Boyle, “The Sceptical Chymist,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 205–378.

34. Kuhn, “Robert Boyle and Structural Chemistry.”

35. Anstey, Philosophy of Robert Boyle.

36. Clericuzio, Elements.

37. Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate, 181–182.

38. Boyle, Workdiaries, 15, entry 25.

39. For an account of chemical translation, see Cecon, “Chemical Translation.”

40. The terms in parenthesis were added to guide the contemporary reader. This notation, obviously, is neither part of Boyle's language nor part of his concepts in chymistry.

41. Boyle, “The Sceptical Chymist” in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 241–242.

42. Ibid., 264–265.

43. Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, in Boyle, Works, vol. 4, 3–202 (93).

44. Boyle, Workdiaries 38, entry 23.

45. On the chemical translation involved in this reaction and the role of impurities in the process, see: Principe, “Chemical Translation.”

46. Boyle, Wordiaries 15, entry 11.

47. Antimony was, in the seventeenth century, the name given to the ore of antimony (what it is called today of antimony sulfide [Sb2S3]). The reaction with Mars (Iron, Fe) would result in the product star regulus of antimony, which is basically metallic antimony (Sb). See Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, 156–206.

48. Boyle, “The History of Fluidity and Firmness,” in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 115–203 (191).

49. Ibid., 201.

50. Ibid., 201.

51. Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, in Boyle, Works, vol. 4, 3–202, 150.

52. Ibid., 150–151.

53. Cecon, “Chemical Translation.”

54. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy, 182.

55. Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, in Boyle, Works, vol. 4, 3–202, 151.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.