What safely guided him in spite of all defects of his natural character was, above all, his sincere hatred of the phrase-building and pretended knowledge of Scholasticism, and his exclusive confidence in what he saw himself and could show to others as the result of his experiments.43 He was one of the first members of the Royal Society' founded by Charles II., and scarcely any member worked inore zealously in the spirit of its foundation. In connection. with his experiments he kept a regular diary,44 and never omitted, on finding anything of unusual importance, to lay it before the eyes of his colleagues and other capable persons. This conduct alone would entitle him to a place in the history of modern sciences, which could not have attained their present eminence without adding to experiment the constant control of experiment as well. self only gives Boyle the first place among Englishmen, and in so doing indirectly admits the greater importance of Pascal (comp., loc. cit., Note 68, where indeed it may be further suggested that the importance of both these men is overrated. According to Dühring, Gesch. d. Princ. der Mechanik, S. 90 ff., Galilei was in this branch also the really originating mind; Pascal only makes an ingenious application of his principles; and as to Boyle, whom Dühring does not even name, in this branch also his chief service is to have clearly exhibited the new principles by experiment). As to the 'Law of Mariotte,' the absolute certainty of Boyle's asserted priority appears to me still somewhat doubtful. Boyle had obviously a great disinclination to hasty generalisations, and, moreover, as it appears, was not fully conscious of the importance of sharply formulated laws. In his principal work on this subject, the "Continuation of New Experiments touching the Spring and Weight of the Air and their Effects," Oxford, 1669, the dependence of pressure upon volume 66 is quite clear; Boyle, in fact, gives methods for the accurate numerical determination of the pressure and quantity of the air remaining in the receiver; at the same time the result is nowhere distinctly drawn out. Thus we find, for instance, Exp. 1, § 6, p. 4 of the Latin edition of Geneva, 1694: ... facta inter varios aeris in phiala constricti expansionis gradus, et respectivas succrescentes Mercurii in tubum elati altitudines comparatione, judicium aliquod ferri possit de vi aeris elastica, prout variis dilatationis gradibus infirmati, sed observationibus tam curiosis supersedi.” 43 Boyle must also be mentioned with praise for the stress which he was, perhaps, the first among the modern physicists to attach to the demand for well-considered and accuratelyprepared apparatus. 44 Comp. especially the essay Expe rimentorum Nov. Physico-Mech. Continuatio II. (A Continuation of New Experiments, London, 1680), where the days are everywhere given on which the experiments were performed. This love of experiment, however, is very essentially supported by the Materialistic theory of the essence of natural bodies. In this connection his essay on the " Origin of Forms and Qualities "45 is of especial interest. He mentions here a long series of opponents of Aristotle, all of whose writings had been useful to him; but he had gained more from Gassendi's small, but extremely valuable compendium of the Philosophy of Epikuros than from all others. Boyle regrets that he had not earlier adopted his theories.46 The same laudation of the philosophy of Epikuros is found also in other essays of Boyle's, of course in connection with the most vehement protests against its atheistic consequences. We have seen that, in the case of Gassendi, there is some doubt as to the sincerity of this protest; in Boyle's case there can be none. He compares the universe with the ingenious clock of Strasburg Cathedral; 47 to him it is a mighty mechanism, working according to fixed laws; but for this very reason it would, like the clock at Strasburg, have an intelligent originator. Of the elements of Epikureanism, Boyle rejects most distinctly the Empedoklean doctrine of the rise of the purposeful from the unpurposeful. His cosmology, exactly like that of Newton, bases teleology upon the mechanism itself. Whether in this respect intercourse with his younger contemporary, Newton, who also thought much of Gassendi, worked upon Boyle, or whether conversely Newton rather borrowed from Boyle, we cannot certainly say; it is enough that the two men were so far agreed that they ascribed to God the first origination of motion among the atoms, and that even later 45 Origin of Forms and Qualities, according to the Corpuscular Philosophy, Oxford, 1664, and often; Latin, Oxford, 1669, and Geneva, 1688. I cite the latter edition. 46 Loc. cit., Discursus ad Lectorem: "Plus certe commodi e parvo illo sed locupletissimo Gassendi syntagmate philosophiae Epicuri perceperam, modo tempestivius illi me assuevissem." 47 Comp. Exercitatio IV. de Utilitate Phil. Naturalis, where this subject is treated at great length. "Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy," appeared first at Oxford, 1663-64. In Latin under the title Exercitationes de Utilitate Phil. Nat., Lindaviae, 1692, 4o. (Gmelin, Gesch. d. Chem., ii. 101, mentions a Latin edition, London, 1692, 40.') they attributed to God certain modifying interferences with the course of nature, but that they sought the ordinary rules of everything that happens in nature in the mechanical laws of the motion of atoms. The absolute indivisibility which gave the name to the atoms of Demokritos is entirely and readily given up by the moderns. This is due either to the consideration that God who made the atoms must surely be able to divide them, or it is a result of that relativity which was most consciously present in Hobbes: an absolutely smallest is no more admitted even in the elements of the physical world. Boyle troubles himself little on this point. He gives his view the name of 'philosophia corpuscularis,' but is very far, indeed, from adopting the serious modifications made in Atomism by Descartes. He considers matter impenetrable, and believes in the void space combated by Descartes. With regard to this question, he engaged in a somewhat bitter controversy with Hobbes, who explained vacuum to be only a rarer kind of atmosphere.48 To each smallest particle of matter Boyle ascribes its definite figure, size, and movement; where several of these unite, there must be further taken into account their position in space, and the order of their combination. And then from the varieties of these elements are explained, exactly as in Demokritos and Epikuros, the various impressions made by bodies on the sense organs.49 But everywhere Boyle declines to enter further into psychological questions: he busies himself only with the world as it was on the eve of the last day but one of creation; that is, so far as we must regard it merely as a system of corporeal things.50 The 43 Comp. the controversial work: Examen Dialogi Physici Domini Hobbes de Natura Aeris, Geneva, 1695. 49 De Origine Qual. et Form., Geneva, 1688, p. 28 foll. Yet we must observe that Boyle does not make motion an essential characteristic of matter, which remains unchanged in its nature even when at rest. Motion, however, is the 'modus primarius' of matter, and its division into 'corpuscula' is, as with Descartes, a consequence of the motion. Comp. in the same work, p. 44 foll. 50 Comp. the Tractatus de Ipsa Natura (I can here again only quote the Latin edition of Geneva, 1688), origin and the destruction of things is with Boyle, as with the ancient Atomists, only the combination and separation of atoms, and in the same light-with a reservation always for the case of miracles 51-he regards also the processes of organic life.52 The principle everywhere spread by Descartes, that in death the machine of the body is not merely abandoned by the actuating forces of the soul, but is in its inner particles destroyed, is extended by Boyle with physiological demonstrations, and he shows that numerous phenomena which have been ascribed to the activity of the soul are purely corporeal in their nature.53 With equal clearness he combats, as one of the leaders of the iatromechanic tendency, the then usual doctrine of drugs and poisons, to which the effects they have upon the human body -to produce perspiration, for instance, to render deaf, and so on—are attributed as a peculiar force and property; while these effects are really only the result of the contact of the general properties of those matters with the constitution of the organism. So to pounded glass was attributed a special "facultas deleteria," instead of keeping to the simple explanation that the small fragments of glass wound the intestines.54 In a series of briefer essays, Boyle, whose zeal in these questions of method almost equalled his industry in positive research, attempted to prove the mechanical nature of heat, of magnetism, and of an essay interesting also in a philosophical regard, sect. i. ad fin., p. 8. 51 So, for example, in the Tractatus de Ipsa Natura, p. 76, the regularity of nature praised, in which even apparent disturbances, as, for example, the eclipse of the sun, the inundations of the Nile, and so on, must be regarded as foreseen consequences of the natural laws laid down once for all by the Creator. By the side of these the halting of the sun in the time of Joshua, and the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, will be regarded as exceptions, which may occur in rare and importVOL. I. ant cases, through the special interposition of the Creator. 52 De Utilitate Phil. Exper., Exerc. v. § 4, Lindaviae, 1692, p. 308: "Corpus enim hominis vivi non saltem concipio tanquam membrorum et liquorum congeriem simplicem, sed tanquam machinam, e partibus certis sibi adunitis consistentem." De Origine Formarum, p. 2: "Corpore viventium curiosas hasce et elaboratas machinas ;" and very frequently elsewhere. 53 De Orig. Form., Gen., 1688, p. 8r. De Orig. Form., p. 8. electricity, of the interchanges of solid, fluid, or gaseous condition, and so on. Here, of course, he must very often be content, like Epikuros, though with much correcter views, with the supposition of mere possibilities; yet these hypotheses are everywhere sufficient for his immediate object-the banishment of latent qualities and substantial forms, and the introduction of the idea of a really picturable causality running through the whole province of nature. Less many-sided but more intense was the influence of Newton in the establishment of a mechanical conception of the universe. More sober than Boyle in his theology, and, in fact, suspected by the orthodox of Socinianism, Newton only showed in advanced life, and with failing powers, that leaning to mystical speculations on the Revelation of John,55 which forms so marked a contrast to his great scientific achievements. His life, until the completion of all the important results of his inquiry, was the quiet existence of a scholar, with full leisure for the development of his wonderful mathematical powers, and the quiet completion of his magnificent and extensive undertakings; then suddenly rewarded for his services by a brilliant position,56 he continued to live for a long series of years without making any essential addition to the results of his scientific labours. As a boy, he is said to have been remarkable only for mechanical skill. Quiet and delicate, he neither made progress in the school, nor developed any capacity for the business of his father; yet when, in his eighteenth year (1660), he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, he speedily astonished his tutor by the facility and inde 55 Newton's "Annotationes in Va ticinia Danielis, Habacuci et Apocalypseos," appeared at London in 1713. 56 Newton was in 1696 made Master of the Royal Mint, with a salary of £1500 sterling. As early as the year 1693, the loss of a portion of his manuscripts is said to have brought on an illness which acted deleteriously on his intellect. Comp. the biographical sketch given by Littrow in his translation of Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, Stuttg., 1840, ii. 163, note. [But see Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, ii. 139 foll. TR.] |