The Chemical Philosophy Of Robert Boyle

Author : Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0197502504
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle written by Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book examines the way in which Robert Boyle seeks to accommodate his complex chemical philosophy within the framework of a mechanistic theory of matter. More specifically, the book proposes that Boyle regards chemical qualities as properties that emerged from the mechanistic structure of chymical atoms. Within Boyle's chemical ontology, chymical atoms are structured concretions of particles that Boyle regards as chemically elementary entities, that is, as chemical wholes that resist experimental analysis. Although this interpretation of Boyle's chemical philosophy has already been suggested by other Boyle scholars, the present book provides a sustained philosophical argument to demonstrate that, for Boyle, chemical properties are dispositional, relational, emergent, and supervenient properties. This argument is strengthened by a detailed mereological analysis of Boylean chymical atoms that establishes the kind of theory of wholes and parts that is most consistent with an emergentist conception of chemical properties. The emergentist position that is being attributed to Boyle supports his view that chemical reactions resist direct explanation in terms of the mechanistic properties of fundamental particles, as well as his position regarding the scientific autonomy of chymistry from mechanics and physics"--

Author : Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197502520
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle written by Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Boyle (1627-1691) believed that a reductionist conception of the mechanical philosophy threatened the heuristic power and autonomy of chemistry as an experimental science. While some historical and philosophical scholars have examined his nuanced position, understanding the chemical philosophy he developed through his own experimental work is incredibly difficult even for experts in the field. In The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle, Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino energetically explains Boyle's ideas in a whole new light and proposes that Boyle regarded chemical qualities as non-reducible dispositional and relational properties that emerge from, and supervene upon, the mechanistic structure of chymical atoms. Banchetti-Robino demonstrates that these ideas are implicit in Boyle's writing, making his philosophical contributions crucial to the fields of both philosophy and chemistry. The arguments presented are further strengthened by a detailed mereological analysis of Boylean chymical atoms as chemically elementary entities, which establishes the theory of wholes and parts that is most consistent with an emergentist conception of chemical properties. More generally, this book examines the way in which Boyle sought to accommodate his complex chemical philosophy within the framework of the 17th century mechanistic theory of matter. Banchetti-Robino conceptualizes Boyle's experimental work as a scientific research programme, in the Lakatosian sense, to better explain the positive and negative heuristic function of the mechanistic theory of matter within his chemical philosophy. The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle actively engages with the contemporary and lively debates over the nature of Boyle's ideas about structural chemistry, fundamental mechanistic particles and properties, the explanatory power of subordinate causes, the complex relation between fundamental particles, natural kinds, and unified chemical wholes. The book is a rich historical account that begins with the dominant paradigms of 16th and 17th Century chemical philosophy and takes readers all the way through to the 21st Century.

Author : Lawrence Principe
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691186286
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Aspiring Adept written by Lawrence Principe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aspiring Adept presents a provocative new view of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), one of the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution, by revealing for the first time his avid and lifelong pursuit of alchemy. Boyle has traditionally been considered, along with Newton, a founder of modern science because of his mechanical philosophy and his experimentation with the air-pump and other early scientific apparatus. However, Lawrence Principe shows that his alchemical quest--hidden first by Boyle's own codes and secrecy, and later suppressed or ignored--positions him more accurately in the intellectual and cultural crossroads of the seventeenth century. Principe radically reinterprets Boyle's most famous work, The Sceptical Chymist, to show that it criticizes not alchemists, as has been thought, but "unphilosophical" pharmacists and textbook writers. He then shows Boyle's unambiguous enthusiasm for alchemy in his "lost" Dialogue on the Transmutation and Melioration of Metals, now reconstructed from scattered fragments and presented here in full for the first time. Intriguingly, Boyle believed that the goal of his quest, the Philosopher's Stone, could not only transmute base metals into gold, but could also attract angels. Alchemy could thus act both as a source of knowledge and as a defense against the growing tide of atheism that tormented him. In seeking to integrate the seemingly contradictory facets of Boyle's work, Principe also illuminates how alchemy and other "unscientific" pursuits had a far greater impact on early modern science than has previously been thought.

Author : Robert Boyle
Publisher : Thoemmes Press
ISBN 13 : 9781855066045
Total Pages : 5150 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle written by Robert Boyle and published by Thoemmes Press. This book was released on 1999-01 with total page 5150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'almost every branch of modern science can trace phases of its origin in his writings ... in the broad field of science Boyle made a greater number and variety of discoveries than one man is ever likely to make again' - John Fulton, Boyle's bibliographer Robert Boyle (1627-91) was one of the most influential scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century. The founder of modern chemistry, he headed the movement that turned it from an occult science into a subject well-grounded in experiment, sound methodology and observation. His pioneering experiments on the properties of gases and his mechanistic theory of matter are the forerunners of the modern theories of chemical elements and atomic theory. He is best known for founding the renowned Boyle Lectures and for Boyle's Law that states that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional. A founding fellow of the Royal Society, three consecutive kings of England conversed familiarly with him. Philosophically, he wrote with sophistication on atheism, atomism, epistemology, miracles and natural laws. He influenced Berkeley, Spinoza, Henry More and especially John Locke, who relied on Boyle's theory of primary and secondary qualities in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Boyle's circle of correspondents included Newton, Locke, Aubrey, Oldenburg and Hartlib, and his influence on both British and European scholars was enormous. He also took a lead part in examining the relation of science to theology. This is the standard edition of Boyle's works and the only complete collection currently available. First published in 1772, it brings together his many and varied writings in one comprehensive, fully-indexed source. Covering his work in chemistry, philosophy and theology, it includes a Life of Boyle by Thomas Birch. The Thoemmes reprint of the second and best English edition features a new introduction by Peter Alexander, one of the world authorities on Boyle. --includes a Life of Boyle by Thomas Birch --features letters to and from Boyle --this rare edition is the only complete collected edition currently available and the standard text to which literature on Boyle refers --engraved frontispieces and several fold-out illustrations

Author : Marie Boas Hall
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107453747
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry written by Marie Boas Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1958 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : William Eaton
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1847144373
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Boyle on Fire written by William Eaton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-05-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of Robert Boyle (1627-1691) is a hot topic in early modern philosophy. Boyle was at the centre of the scientific community of 17th-century England, and an accurate view of the Enlightenment scientific revolution is impossible without recognition of the contributions that he made. Work on Boyle's philosophy is also shedding light on contemporary issues in the philosophy of science - it can help us understand the nature of scientific explanation and the role that the mechanical model of explanation plays in present-day science. Boyle's mechanical philosophy ushered in a new explanatory model for science and even though his corpuscular hypothesis failed, its failure does not entail the failure of the explanatory model of which it was an instance. Boyle on Fire demonstrates these points by examining Boyle's work concerning a method of experiment common in the seventeenth century called Fire Analysis. In the Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle attacks elemental theories of chemical explanation primarily by raising objections against Aristotelian and Paracelsian interpretations of fire analysis. The book reconstructs Boyle's corpuscular account of fire analysis and then compares it to these objections. This process reveals those characteristics of mechanical explanations that make them epistemologically superior to elemental theories of chemical explanation, and it is these characteristics that survive the death of the corpuscular hypothesis and have become an enduring feature of the scientific enterprise.

Author : Marie Boas
Publisher : CUP Archive
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry written by Marie Boas and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1958 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Mary Gow
Publisher : Enslow Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780766025011
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Robert Boyle written by Mary Gow and published by Enslow Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the life and accomplishments of one of the most important figures in the history of science, Robert Boyle. His observations of the relationship between volume and pressure became known as Boyle's Law.

Author : Steven Shapin
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400838495
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Leviathan and the Air-Pump written by Steven Shapin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump. The issues at stake in their disputes ranged from the physical integrity of the air-pump to the intellectual integrity of the knowledge it might yield. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer use the confrontation between Hobbes and Boyle as a way of understanding what was at stake in the early history of scientific experimentation. They describe the protagonists' divergent views of natural knowledge, and situate the Hobbes-Boyle disputes within contemporary debates over the role of intellectuals in public life and the problems of social order and assent in Restoration England. In a new introduction, the authors describe how science and its social context were understood when this book was first published, and how the study of the history of science has changed since then.

Author : Antonio Clericuzio
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9401594643
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Elements, Principles and Corpuscles written by Antonio Clericuzio and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Elements, Principles and Particles, Antonio Clericuzio explores the relationships between chemistry and corpuscular philosophy in the age of the Scientific Revolution. Science historians have regarded chemistry and corpuscular philosophy as two distinct traditions. Clericuzio's view is that since the beginning of the 17th century atomism and chemistry were strictly connected. This is attested by Daniel Sennert and by many hitherto little-known French and English natural philosophers. They often combined a corpuscular theory of matter with Paracelsian chemical (and medical) doctrines. Boyle plays a central part in the present book: Clericuzio redefines Boyle's chemical views, by showing that Boyle did not subordinate chemistry to the principles of mechanical philosophy. When Boyle explained chemical phenomena, he had recourse to corpuscles endowed with chemical, not mechanical, properties. The combination of chemistry and corpuscular philosophy was adopted by a number of chemists active in the last decades of the 17th century, both in England and on the Continent. Using a large number of primary sources, the author challenges the standard view of the corpuscular theory of matter as identical with the mechanical philosophy. He points out that different versions of the corpuscular philosophy flourished in the 17th century. Most of them were not based on the mechanical theory, i.e. on the view that matter is inert and has only mechanical properties. Throughout the 17th century, active principles, as well as chemical properties, are attributed to corpuscles. Given its broad coverage, the book is a significant contribution to both history of science and history of philosophy.