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ROBERT BOYLE, THE FATHER OF CHEMISTRY
By
William Reville, University College, Cork.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691), ‘The Father of Chemistry’,
was the most influential scientist ever born in Ireland. His influence
on chemistry has been likened to that of Copernicus (1473-1543) on cosmology,
who proposed that the sun and not the earth lies at the centre of the
solar system. Apart from chemistry Boyle made many other contributions
to science.
Robert Boyle was born in Lismore, Co. Waterford,
the youngest son of Richard Boyle, First Earl of Cork, and his second
wife Katherine Fenton. Richard accumulated a great fortune in Ireland
and enjoyed a high social standing. Robert displayed a quiet scholarly
disposition and was his father’s favourite son.
After early education at home, Robert was sent for a
while to Eton College in England. Then at the age of 11 he was sent, with
a tutor, on a grand tour of Europe which lasted for 6 years. Apart from
conventional studies on the tour, Robert was also exposed to some vulgar
ways of the world. For example, he attracted the amorous attentions of
a couple of Friars, but he staunchly resisted the ‘preposterous
courtship’ of those ‘gowned sodomites’.
During his tour of Europe, the young Boyle experienced
an awesome thunderstorm which had the effect of a religious conversion
experience. Boyle thought he was going to die and felt very ill-prepared
to meet his Maker. Surviving the storm, he resolved to keep his spiritual
side well serviced so that he would not be caught unawares again.
Boyle returned
to Dorset in England in 1644 and embarked on a writing career, largely
of pious and moralistic material in the beginning. In 1649 he set
up a scientific laboratory, and he began to write accounts of his
scientific work, promulgating the use of experiment and the scientific
method.
In 1655 Boyle moved to Oxford where he joined a group of natural
philosophers that foreshadowed the Royal Society, founded in 1660.
Robert Hooke (1635-1703) entered Boyle’s employ at this time
and helped him in his experiments. They built the air-pump used
to create vacuums and with which Boyle carried out many trials to
elucidate the nature and importance of air.
Boyle demonstrated the necessity of air for combustion,
for animal breathing, and for the transmission of sound. Prior to
moving from Oxford to London in 1688, he published much influential
work, including New Experiments Physio-Mechanical, Touching the
Spring of the Air and its Effects (1660) and The Sceptical Chymist
(1661). In The Spring of The
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Right: Robert Boyle |
Air he
described the inverse relationship between the volume of a gas and
its pressure – now known as Boyle’s Law.
Medieval science was dominated by the ideas of Aristotle (384-322
BC). Aristotle proposed that matter was composed of 4 elements –
earth, air, fire, and water - which in varying proportions constituted
all things. Paracelsus (1493-1531), an adept in alchemy, proposed
that various combinations of three controlling elements (mercury,
sulphur, salt) accounted for the various properties of matter. |
Modern chemistry developed out of medieval alchemy.
Alchemy was a pseudoscientific practice that sought a method (by varying
the proportions of the 3 controlling elements) of changing base metals
into gold, an elixir to prolong life indefinitely, a panacea to cure all
ills, and a solvent capable of dissolving anything. Alchemy was still
practiced in Boyle’s time and he himself studied the art. He was
quite prepared to believe that ‘cosmical qualities’ transcended
pure mechanical laws in the universe. However, he sharply differentiated
his scientific experimentation and theorising from his alchemical work.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) laid down guidelines for the pursuit of inductive
science by controlled experiment but Boyle, the experimenter par excellence
[italics], worked out this idea in full and must be credited for properly
introducing the modern experimental method into science and for teasing
chemistry away from its alchemical origins.
Boyle was very religious. His major preoccupation was
the relationship between God’s power, the created realm and man’s
perception of it, and he was very hostile to views of nature that he saw
as detracting from an appreciation of God’s power in his creation.
His principal target in this respect was the Aristotelian worldview so
prevalent in his day. Boyle used his experiments to demonstrate that mechanical
explanations of the world are better than the traditional qualitative
explanations associated with the ideas of Aristotle.
In his book The Sceptical Chymist, Boyle attacked Aristotle’s
and Paracelsus’s theories. He proposed that elements are basically
composed of ‘corpuscles’ of various sorts and sizes capable
of organising themselves into groups and that each group constitutes a
chemical substance. He clearly distinguished between mixtures and compounds
and showed that a compound can have very different properties from those
of its constituents. This prefigured the atomic theory of matter. Boyle
declared that the proper object of chemistry was analysis of composition
and, indeed, he coined the term analysis itself. He was also the first
chemist to collect a sample of gas.
Robert Boyle was friendly with Isaac Newton (1642-1727).
Newton worked intensively on alchemical investigations, but he kept this
work secret. Newton had something of a paranoid personality and was secretive
about most of his activities. He tried unsuccessfully to infect Boyle
with this paranoia. Boyle, the wealthy aristocrat, had an easy self confidence
lacking in the self-made Newton.
In his will Boyle endowed a series of Boyle Lectures,
which still continue, ‘for proving the Christian Religion against
notorious Infidels’. He rarely dedicated any of his many books to
others. Interestingly, his last work, Free Discourse Against Swearing,
published posthumously, was dedicated to his brother, the Second Earl
of Cork.
(This article first appeared in The Irish Times, March
8, 2001.)
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