Robert Boyle (1)Besprekingen

This Classics of Science Library edition (1997) is a beautifully bound volume that one can read with turning the book to scraps. The binding is fake leather and the edges are gilded, making it both attractive and robust. Original published in 1661.

Facsimile reprint. Orig. published London : printed by E. Flesher for R. Davis bookseller in Oxford, 1675 Obtainable from Dr. R.T. Gunther, Curator of the Lewis Evans Collection, at the Old Ashmolean, Oxford.fragile condition

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SERAPHICK LOVE: SOME MOTIVES AND INCENTIVES TO THE LOVE OF GOD

To the Countess of Warwick

My Dear Sister,

I expect you should somewhat wonder, that after
having for above eleven years been careful to keep this
following letter from the public view, and that too
notwithstanding the solicitation (not to say importunity) of
diverse illustrious persons, and even your commands to
release it from its confinement; I should now at length
give way to its passing abroad into the World, and its
making you a public and solemn address. Wherefore
judging myself obliged to give you an account of a paper,
for which you have been long pleased to highly and so
obligingly to concern yourself, I must, to remove your
wonder, inform you, that I am reduced to this publication
in my own defense. For, whilst I was far from dreaming
of permitting this epistle to pass out of my closet, it
happened, that a broken copy ofit did (by Iknow not what
misfortune for me) fall into the hands of a necessitous
person, who would needs persuade himself, that by
printing it, he might relieve some of his present wants;
and thereupon proffered to sell the copy for a sum of
money. But, my good fortune leading him to a stationer,
to whom my name was not unknown, he very civilly sent
me forthwith notice of the proposition that was made him,
and after came himself to acquaint me, that the copy
about which he had been treated with, being but one of
two or three that were then abroad, some or other of them
would, questionless, soon find the way to the press. This

Robert Boyle’s dense, stilted language takes great patience and devotion to navigate, but the rewards are many. To read him is to time-travel, to live inside and experience a different era and a mind-set truly different from the one we assume today.

Five friends meet in a garden for a civilized chat about the “constituents of the mixt bodies.” Their fictional conversation, published in 1649, is a landmark of the new “enlightened” philosophy that will complicate and forever change the way people relate to the physical world. The conversation continues today, but conducted in a much less civilized manner.

The five:
Carneades, host and Skeptic - Enlightened philosopher, dedicated to experiential chymical exploration;
Philoponus, Sober Chymist [as opposed to the uneducated, common “Vulgar Chymist”] - adherent of Paracelsus’ Spagyrist Doctrine of three Principles: Mercury, Sulphur, Salt;
Themistius, Aristotelian - adherent of the classical Doctrine of four “Peripatetick” Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water;
Eleutherius, impartial Judge;
unnamed narrator, secretary - records the exchange.

Themistius presciently anticipates the Uncertainty Principle. He advocates for a world view based upon established “Reason.” Aristotle’s Doctrine is “Obvious,” stable, and an expression of eternal “Truth.” Laboratory experiments are done in order to support the truth of that Doctrine, not the other way around where experimental results determine Doctrine. That way, he notes with horror, one never settles on “Truth” at all. Doctrine must be modified and changed with each new discovery.
Themistius explains, “For this [Aristotelian] Doctrine is very different from the whimseys of Chymists and other Modern Innovators, of whose Hypotheses we may observe, as Naturalists do of less perfect Animals, that as they are hastily form'd, so they are commonly short liv'd. For so these, as they are often fram'd in one week, are perhaps thought fit to be laughed at the next ; and being built perchance but upon two or three Experiments are destroyed by a third or fourth, whereas the doctrine of the four Elements was fram'd by Aristotle after he had leasurely considered those Theories of former Philosophers, which are now with great applause revived, as discovered by these latter ages ; And had so judiciously detected and supplyed the Errors and defects of former Hypotheses concerning the Elements, that his Doctrine of them has been ever since deservedly embraced by the letter'd part of Mankind.”

In “The Myth of the Eternal Return” Mircea Eliade names this dread of relativity and ambiguity. He calls it the Terror of History.
https://www.librarything.com/work/37685/book/25101668

Volume number 559 in Everyman's Library with dust cover still intact.