Chemical Theories of Matter in England after 1661

Abstract

The aim of the present chapter is to outline the relationship between chemistry and corpuscular philosophy in England after the publication of Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle’s ideas played a relevant part in chemistry, at least until the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was not Boyle’s intention to establish a systematically organised body of chemical theories, so the impact of his chemistry is not easily measurable. The pars destruens of Boyle’s programme, namely his rejection of the chemists’ theory of principles, was not universally accepted, and a number of chemists and physicians did not rule out this doctrine. It is however relevant that in England, as on the Continent, some of Boyle’s objections to the spagyrical theories were accepted. A number of chemists redefined the notion of chemical principle as a useful ‘working tool’. They came to consider the three (or five) principles not as the ultimate constituents of bodies, but merely as the products of chemical analysis. In addition, Boyle’s quest for a better classification of chemical substances motivated more research on salts, notably on alkalised salts. Finally, the fusion of chemistry and corpuscular philosophy became widely accepted, so that in the 1660s and the 1670s a number of Helmontians reinterpreted the main notions of van Helmont’s iatrochemistry in corpuscular terms.