Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
8.1 Historical Sketch of the Advent of Chemistry
as a Mereological Science
Robert Boyle (
1661
) set the shape of chemistry for centuries with his mereological
principles which encapsulated his corpuscularian philosophy. The generic principle,
that chemistry is based on considering material stuff to be composed of minute parts,
appears at the very beginning of
The Sceptical Chymist
.
that which we discover
partly by our
Microscopes
of the extreme littleness of even the scarce visible parts of
Concretes and partly by Chymical Resolution of mixt bodies, and by diverse other
operations of Spagyrical Fires upon them, seems sufficiently to manifest their
consisting of parts very minute and of differing figures
'...
(Boyle
1661
: The First
...'
Part, Prop 1).
The presumption that the salient properties of the invisible corpuscles are the
same as the visible parts extracted by various processes is represented in his
The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy
(Boyle 2nd Edition
1667
: i). There he makes clear the presumption of all
corpuscularian science that the relevant properties are the
'
bulk, figure, texture
and motion of the insensible parts
.
What I am chiefly aiming at is to make it probable to you by experiments. . . .that almost
all sorts of qualities—most of which the schools have either left unexplained or else
'
explained
'
in terms of I-know-not-what incomprehensible
'
substantial forms
'
—can be
produced mechanically. I mean: they can be produced by corporeal agents that seem (a)to
work purely by virtue of the motion, size, shape, and inner structure of their own
parts (I call these attributes
'
mechanical
'
affections of matter because they are what we
willingly turn to when explaining the various operations of mechanical engines), and (b)to
produce the new qualities exhibited by the bodies they act on purely by changing the
texture, or motion, or some other mechanical affection of the bodies in question. (Boyle
1667. Preface p. 9)
'
Whether or not there were indivisible corpuscles,
atoms
, did not affect the way
'
'
Boyle
s mereology was developed over the next two centuries. For example, Dalton
presented the metaphysical foundation of chemistry as an atomic theory. Boyle was
explicit in his cautious approach to attributing ultimate indivisibility to the units of
chemical reactions.
Considering material substances to be clusters of parts is the bare minimum for a
mereology for chemistry. Specific applications of the rules for part-whole reasoning
depend on the relation between the properties of the whole and the properties of its
parts. For example, in Boyle
'
s chemical metaphysics the corpuscular constituents
of material stuffs have some of the same properties as the materials of which they
are parts. Which properties are shared between parts and wholes is a fundamental
aspect of chemistry at any one historical moment. For example, restrictions on
which predicates could be transferred down a chain of inferences from parts to
wholes and wholes to parts were expressed in the distinction between primary and
secondary qualities, as formulated for example by John Locke (
1689
: Bk II,
Chapter 8, Section 23). Colour, taste and other
'
properties were not
transferred from wholes to their parts. Wholes and their parts shared
secondary
'
'
mechanical
'
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