Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method.

He is best known for Boyle's law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.

Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his works in theology.

Biography

Early years

thumb|Sculpture of a young boy, thought to be Boyle, on his parents' monument in [[St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin]]

Boyle was born at Lismore Castle in County Waterford, in the far south of Ireland, the seventh son and fourteenth child of the 1st Earl of Cork ("the Great Earl of Cork") and Catherine Fenton.

As a child, Boyle was raised by a wet nurse, as were his elder brothers. Boyle received private tutoring in Latin, Greek, and French and when he was eight years old, following the death of his mother, he, and his brother Francis, were sent to Eton College in England. His father's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, was then the provost of the college. After spending over three years at Eton, Robert travelled abroad with a French tutor. They visited Italy in 1641 and remained in Florence during the winter of that year studying the "paradoxes of the great star-gazer", the elderly Galileo Galilei. His father, Lord Cork, had died the previous year and had left him the manor of Stalbridge in Dorset as well as substantial estates in County Limerick in Ireland that he had acquired. Robert then made his residence at Stalbridge House, between 1644 and 1652, and settled in a laboratory where he conducted many experiments. From that time, Robert devoted his life to scientific research and soon took a prominent place in the band of enquirers, known as the "Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the cultivation of the "new philosophy". They met frequently in London, often at Gresham College, and some of the members also had meetings at Oxford.

alt=Boyle's arm displayed in the Great Quadrangle of All Souls College, Oxford|thumb|Boyle's arms (shown on the right right) displayed in the Great Quadrangle of All Souls College, Oxford

All Souls, Oxford University, shows the arms of Boyle's family in the colonnade of the Great Quadrangle, opposite the arms of the Hill family of Shropshire, close by a sundial designed by Boyle's friend Christopher Wren.

In 1654, Boyle left Ireland for Oxford to pursue his work more successfully. An inscription can be found on the wall of University College, Oxford, the High Street at Oxford (now the location of the Shelley Memorial), marking the spot where Cross Hall stood until the early 19th century. It was here that Boyle rented rooms from the wealthy apothecary who owned the Hall.

Reading in 1657 of Otto von Guericke's vacuum pump, he set himself, with the assistance of Robert Hooke, to devise improvements in its construction. His "machina Boyleana" or "Pneumatical Engine" was finished in 1659.

Among the critics of the views put forward in this book was a Jesuit, Francis Line (1595–1675), and it was while answering his objections that Boyle made his first mention of the law that the volume of a gas varies inversely to the pressure of the gas, which among English-speaking people is usually called Boyle's law, after his name.

thumb|right|One of Robert Boyle's notebooks (1690–1691) held by the [[Royal Society of London. The Royal Society archives holds 46 volumes of philosophical, scientific and theological papers by Boyle and seven volumes of his correspondence.]]

In 1663 the Invisible College became The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and the charter of incorporation granted by Charles II of England named Boyle a member of the council. In 1680 he was elected president of the society but declined the honour from a scruple about oaths.

In 1668 he left Oxford for London where he resided at the house of his elder sister Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall. His contemporaries widely acknowledged Katherine's influence on his work, but later historiographers dropped discussion of her accomplishments and relationship to her brother from their histories.

Later years

thumb|right|[[Shelley Memorial#Boyle-Hooke plaque|Plaque at the site of Boyle and Hooke's experiments in Oxford]]

In 1669 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his communications to the Royal Society, and advertising his desire to be excused from receiving guests, "unless upon occasions very extraordinary", on Tuesday and Friday forenoon, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make known the nature. His health became still worse in 1691, just a week after the death of his sister, Katherine, in whose home he had lived and with whom he had shared scientific pursuits for more than twenty years. Boyle died from paralysis. He was buried in the churchyard of St Martin-in-the-Fields, his funeral sermon being preached by his friend, Bishop Gilbert Burnet.]] Boyle's great merit as a scientific investigator is that he carried out the principles which Francis Bacon espoused in the Novum Organum. Yet he would not avow himself a follower of Bacon, or indeed of any other teacher.

He regarded the acquisition of knowledge as an end in itself, and in consequence, he gained a wider outlook on the aims of scientific inquiry than had been enjoyed by his predecessors for many centuries. This, however, did not mean that he paid no attention to the practical application of science, nor that he despised practical knowledge. With Hooke's pump, Boyle began a series of experiments on the properties of air.

Chemistry

Robert Boyle was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of achieving it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, by the Royal Mines Act 1688 (1 Will. & Mar. c. 30), of the statute of Henry IV against multiplying gold and silver, the Gold and Silver Act 1403 (5 Hen. 4. c. 4). Factitious means "artificial, not natural". Later, English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish used the term "factitious air" to refer to "any kind of air which is contained in other bodies in an unelastic state, and is produced from thence by art".

Heat

Like English philosopher Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and Robert Hooke had done before him, Boyle declared that heat consists of the motion of the invisible, constituent particles of objects.

Other contributions

Among his major work in and contributions to physics were Boyle's law, the discovery of the role played by air in the propagation of sound, and investigations of the expansive force of freezing water, specific gravities, refractive powers, crystals, electricity, colour, and hydrostatics.

As a director of the East India Company he spent large sums in promoting the spread of Christianity in the East, contributing liberally to missionary societies and to the expenses of translating the Bible or portions of it into various languages. In this respect, Boyle's attitude to the Irish language differed from the Protestant Ascendancy class in Ireland at the time, which was generally hostile to the language and largely opposed the use of Irish (not only as a language of religious worship).

Boyle also had a monogenist perspective about race origin. He was a pioneer in studying races, and he believed that all human beings, no matter how diverse their physical differences, came from the same source: Adam and Eve. He studied reported stories of parents giving birth to different coloured albinos, so he concluded that Adam and Eve were originally white and that Caucasians could give birth to different coloured races. Boyle also extended the theories of Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton about colour and light via optical projection (in physics) into discourses of polygenesis, speculating that maybe these differences were due to "seminal impressions". Taking this into account, it might be considered that he envisioned a good explanation for complexion at his time, due to the fact that now we know that skin colour is disposed of by genes. Boyle's writings mention that at his time, for "European Eyes", beauty was not measured so much in colour of skin, but in "stature, comely symmetry of the parts of the body, and good features in the face". Various members of the scientific community rejected his views and described them as "disturbing" or "amusing".

In his will, Boyle provided money for a series of lectures to defend the Christian religion against those he considered "notorious infidels, namely atheists, deists, pagans, Jews and Muslims", with the provision that controversies between Christians were not to be mentioned (see Boyle Lectures). Boyle's law is named in his honour. The Royal Society of Chemistry issues a Robert Boyle Prize for Analytical Science, named in his honour. The Boyle Medal for Scientific Excellence in Ireland, inaugurated in 1899, is awarded jointly by the Royal Dublin Society and The Irish Times. Launched in 2012, The Robert Boyle Summer School organized by the Waterford Institute of Technology with support from Lismore Castle, is held annually to honor the heritage of Robert Boyle.

Important works

thumb|right|Title page of The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

thumb|Boyle's self-flowing flask, a [[perpetual motion machine, appears to fill itself through siphon action ("hydrostatic perpetual motion") and involves the "hydrostatic paradox". This is not possible in reality; a siphon requires its "output" to be lower than the "input".]]

thumb|Title page of "New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold" (1665)

The following are some of the more important of his works:

1660 – New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects
1661 – The Sceptical Chymist
1662 – Whereunto is Added a Defence of the Authors Explication of the Experiments, Against the Obiections of Franciscus Linus and Thomas Hobbes (a book-length addendum to the second edition of New Experiments Physico-Mechanical)
1663 – Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (followed by a second part in 1671)
1664 – Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark
1665 – New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold
1666 – Hydrostatical Paradoxes
1666 – Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy. (A continuation of his work on the spring of air demonstrated that a reduction in ambient pressure could lead to bubble formation in living tissue. This description of a viper in a vacuum was the first recorded description of decompression sickness.)
1669 – A Continuation of New Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air, and Their Effects
1670 – Tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things, the Temperature of the Subterraneal and Submarine Regions, the Bottom of the Sea, &tc. with an Introduction to the History of Particular Qualities
1672 – Origin and Virtues of Gems
1673 – Essays of the Strange Subtilty, Great Efficacy, Determinate Nature of Effluviums
1674 – Two volumes of tracts on the Saltiness of the Sea, Suspicions about the Hidden Realities of the Air, Cold, Celestial Magnets
1674 – Animadversions upon Mr. Hobbes's Problemata de Vacuo
1676 – Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Particular Qualities, including some notes on electricity and magnetism
1678 – Observations upon an artificial Substance that Shines without any Preceding Illustration
1680 – The Aerial Noctiluca
1682 – New Experiments and Observations upon the Icy Noctiluca (a further continuation of his work on the air)
1684 – Memoirs for the Natural History of the Human Blood
1685 – Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters
1686 – A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
1690 – Medicina Hydrostatica
1691 – Experimenta et Observationes Physicae

Among his religious and philosophical writings were:

1648 (1659) – Some Motives and Incentives to the Love of God, often known by its running head Seraphic Love, written in 1648, but not published until 1659
1663 – Some Considerations Touching the Style of the H[oly] Scriptures
1664 – Excellence of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy
1665 – Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, which was ridiculed by Swift in Meditation Upon a Broomstick, and by Butler in An Occasional Reflection on Dr Charlton's Feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College
1675 – Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, with a Discourse about the Possibility of the Resurrection
1687 – The Martyrdom of Theodora, and of Didymus, major source for Handel's Oratorio Theodora
1690 – The Christian Virtuoso

References

External links

Robert Boyle, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Readable versions of Excellence of the mechanical hypothesis, Excellence of theology, and Origin of forms and qualities
Robert Boyle Project, Birkbeck, University of London
Summary juxtaposition of Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist and his The Christian Virtuoso
The Relationship between Science and Scripture in the Thought of Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest: Including Boyle's "Lost" Dialogue on the Transmutation of Metals, Princeton University Press, 1998,
Robert Boyle's (1690) Experimenta et considerationes de coloribus – digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library