Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
that not every chemical reaction or change involved the active role of salt, sulfur,
or mercury in some form. Thus, the notion of the
tria prima
soon lost credibility for
chemists such as Boyle. Substantial form, on the other hand, could not provide
adequate explanations for the chemical transformations that occurred via analysis
and synthesis, in part because such explanations were bound to end in circularity.
If one claims that analysis destroys the form of the substance and that synthesis
restores this form, this does not suffice to tell us what this form actually is. If, on the
other hand, substantial form is something non-physical that disappears and then
reappears, then this does not explain how a chemical procedure can affect a
non-physical
'
form
'
. If substantial form simply means the substance itself, then
we end up with a circular explanation: The substance has been altered because the
substance has been altered. Any of these three choices leaves us epistemically
unsatisfied. To be fair, there is another, more interesting way of understanding
substantial form that serves as a precursor to Boyle
s mechanistic structuralism.
Substantial form can be understood as meaning the inner structure that gives the
substance its essential properties. The problem with this understanding of substan-
tial form, however, is that it still does not tell us what this inner structure is.
Boyle latches on to this idea of inner structure but seeks to understand it in strictly
mechanistic and corpuscularian terms, without any reference to substantial form.
Boyle
'
s clearest statement of his theory of matter and of his corpuscularian
philosophy is found in
The Origin of Forms and Qualities
(1666). In this work, he
takes a position that mediates between Gassendi and Descartes. Against Gassendi
and Charleton and in agreement with Descartes, Boyle believes that material
corpuscles are not endowed by God with internal energy or
'
.
Additionally, he agrees with Descartes that material corpuscles are, at least in
theory, infinitely divisible. Despite their theoretical divisibility, Boyle agrees with
Gassendi against Descartes, that material corpuscles are impenetrable and inde-
structible by natural means. Matter conserves shape and size and cannot, thus, be
reduced to pure geometrical extension. Like visible bodies, insensible corpuscles
have the three essential properties of shape, size, and motion. According to Boyle,
God furnished the various fundamental corpuscles with various motions and
directed their various movements and compositions to form the variety of inanimate
and animate bodies that exist.
In this work, Boyle describes corpuscles as
minima naturalia
, that is, as corpus-
cles that are indivisible by nature, although they are mentally and divinely divisible.
These corpuscles form clusters or concretions of various sorts that affect the senses
in various ways. Although Boyle does not adopt the Gassendian term
motive virtue
'
'
molecule
,he
'
'
does avail himself of the concept attached to this term. Thus,
corpus-
cles, or elements, are corpuscular aggregations and are considered semi-permanent
because they cannot be further analyzed into smaller particles. The structure of
these corpuscular aggregations accounts for the chemical properties of substances,
which Boyle calls
elementary
'
'
essential properties
. Such semi-permanent corpuscles or
'
'
minima naturalia
can also be termed
chymical atoms
, as opposed to
physical
'
'
'
atoms
or
prima naturalia
. These chymical atoms are hierarchically secondary
with respect to primary corpuscles, but they are primary with respect to mixed
'
