Samuel Cottereau Du Clos (1598-1685) appears as the first French chemist to combine in chemistry – which is for him the science of substances, the physics of qualities – demonstrations using the laws of motion with demonstrations using the qualities of chemical principles, and in that way bringing to bear two different and complementary orders of explanations. According to him, the mechanical considerations represent a first approach, a stage towards the knowledge of “the truth of things” (la vérité des choses) (...) in natural philosophy. He set out his chemistry at the Académie royale des sciences de Paris, especially through his criticism of Boyle’s Certain Physiological Essays in 1668-1669. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many historians have traced the accumulation of scientific archives via communication networks. Engines for communication in early modernity have included trade, the extrapolitical Republic of Letters, religious enthusiasm, and the centralization of large emerging information states. The communication between Samuel Hartlib, John Dury, Duke Friedrich III of Gottorf-Holstein, and his key agent in England, Frederick Clodius, points to a less obvious but no less important impetus—the international negotiations of smaller states. Smaller states shaped communication networks in an international (albeit (...) politically and religiously slanted) direction. Their networks of negotiation contributed to the internationalization of emerging science through a political and religious concept of shared interest. While interest has been central to social studies of science, interest itself has not often been historicized within the history of science. This case study demonstrates the co-production of science and society by tracing how period concepts of interest made science international. (shrink)

Van Helmont's chemistry and medicine played a prominent part in the seventeenth-century opposition to Aristotelian natural philosophy and to Galenic medicine. Helmontian works, which rapidly achieved great notoriety all over Europe, gave rise to the most influential version of the chemical philosophy. Helmontian terms such as Archeus, Gas and Alkahest all became part of the accepted vocabulary of seventeenth-century science and medicine.

Summary Robert Boyle did not subordinate chemistry to mechanical philosophy. He was in fact reluctant to explain chemical phenomena by having recourse to the mechanical properties of particles. For him chemistry provided a primary way of penetrating into nature. In his chemical works he employed corpuscles endowed with chemical properties as his explanans. Boyle's chemistry was corpuscular, rather than mechanical. As Boyle's views of seminal principles show, his corpuscular philosophy cannot be described as a purely mechanical theory of matter. Boyle's (...) classification of corpuscles allowed him to connect his corpuscular views of matter with chemistry. Boyle did not rule out the possibility of a classification of chemical substances based on their properties: his aim was to reform the received classification. (shrink)

In this study of Robert Boyle's epistemology, Jan W. Wojcik reveals the theological context within which Boyle developed his views on reason's limits. After arguing that a correct interpretation of his views on 'things above reason' depends upon reading his works in the context of theological controversies in seventeenth-century England, Professor Wojcik details exactly how Boyle's three specific categories of things which transcend reason - the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the unsociable - affected his conception of what a natural philosopher (...) could hope to know. Also covered in detail is Boyle's belief that God had deliberately limited the human intellect in order to reserve a full knowledge of both theology and natural philosophy for the afterlife. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article argues that during the seventeenth century chemistry achieved intellectual and institutional recognition, starting its transition from a practical art – subordinated to medicine – into an independent discipline. This process was by no means a smooth one, as it took place amidst polemics and conflicts lasting more than a century. It began when Andreas Libavius endeavored to turn chemistry into a teaching discipline, imposing method and order. Chemistry underwent harsh criticism from Descartes and the Cartesians, who reduced natural (...) phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, leaving little room for chemistry as an independent discipline. Boyle rejected the chemical principles and promoted the fusion of chemistry with corpuscularianism. He did not reduce chemical phenomena to the mechanical affections of matter, but strived to promote chemistry as part of natural philosophy. Lemery gave strong impulse to the recognition of chemistry as a discipline in its own right by fostering a compromise of chemistry and mechanism. Lemery adopted the chemical principles, but did not see them as the ultimate ingredients of bodies. In order to promote chemistry, he distanced it from alchemy and pursued the reform of chemical terminology. (shrink)