ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691) The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes . London: J. Cadwell for J. Crooke, 1661. 8° (164 x 104 mm). Second title-page printed in red and black and bound as title. Type-ornament headbands and woodcut initials. R2 a cancel. (Occasional light spotting or marking, a few leaves trimmed at head touching number, light marginal worming on second title and A-E, touching text on a few leaves, lacking first title, G5 folded in printing, causing short tear, small paper flaws on Y6-8 and Z1, lacking final 3 postliminary leaves and final blank). Contemporary English speckled calf, boards with double-rule blind borders, spine ruled in compartments, red-speckled edges (a little rubbed and scuffed, small skilful repairs to board-edges, skilfully rejointed). Provenance : early inscription [?shelfmark] on upper pastedown, repeated on second title and A1r -- early marginal annotations and corrections -- traces of erased inkstamps on second title and A1. FIRST EDITION OF A MILESTONE IN THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN A CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Written in the form of a dialogue, The Sceptical Chymist presented Boyle's hypothesis that matter consisted of atoms and clusters of atoms in motion and that every phenomenon was the result of collisions of particles in motion. Boyle suspected that none of the then accepted elements -- the earth, air, fire and water of the Aristotelians or the salt, sulphur, and mercury of the Paracelsans -- was truly elementary. In this work he also defended his corpuscular chemistry, the first clear outline of which he published earlier the same year in Certain Physiological Essays . 'The importance of Boyle's book must be sought in his combination of chemistry with physics. His corpuscular theory, and Newton's modification of it, gradually led chemists towards an atomic view of matter ... Boyle distinguished between mixtures and compounds and tried to understand the latter in terms of the simpler chemical entities from which they could be constructed. His argument was designed to lead chemists away from the pure empiricism of his predecessors and to stress the theoretical, experimental and mechanistic elements of chemical science. The Sceptical Chymist is concerned with the relations between chemical substances rather than with transmuting one metal into another or the manufacture of drugs. In this sense the book must be considered as one of the most significant milestones on the way to the chemical revolution of Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century' (PMM). The Sceptical Chymist was issued with 2 titles, both printed on a bifolium; the first (bearing Boyle's name) was bound in before the text, and the second (which is here bound as a general title) was bound after D1. The work is scarce at auction: only 9 copies are recorded by ABPC since 1975 (of which 4 lack the final 4 leaves, possibly suggesting that this quire was issued later), and only two copies in a contemporary binding. Dibner Heralds 39 ('one of a very few recorded copies'); ESTC R37449; Fulton Boyle 33; Grolier Science 14; Norman 299; PMM 141.
ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691) The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes . London: J. Cadwell for J. Crooke, 1661. 8° (164 x 104 mm). Second title-page printed in red and black and bound as title. Type-ornament headbands and woodcut initials. R2 a cancel. (Occasional light spotting or marking, a few leaves trimmed at head touching number, light marginal worming on second title and A-E, touching text on a few leaves, lacking first title, G5 folded in printing, causing short tear, small paper flaws on Y6-8 and Z1, lacking final 3 postliminary leaves and final blank). Contemporary English speckled calf, boards with double-rule blind borders, spine ruled in compartments, red-speckled edges (a little rubbed and scuffed, small skilful repairs to board-edges, skilfully rejointed). Provenance : early inscription [?shelfmark] on upper pastedown, repeated on second title and A1r -- early marginal annotations and corrections -- traces of erased inkstamps on second title and A1. FIRST EDITION OF A MILESTONE IN THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN A CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Written in the form of a dialogue, The Sceptical Chymist presented Boyle's hypothesis that matter consisted of atoms and clusters of atoms in motion and that every phenomenon was the result of collisions of particles in motion. Boyle suspected that none of the then accepted elements -- the earth, air, fire and water of the Aristotelians or the salt, sulphur, and mercury of the Paracelsans -- was truly elementary. In this work he also defended his corpuscular chemistry, the first clear outline of which he published earlier the same year in Certain Physiological Essays . 'The importance of Boyle's book must be sought in his combination of chemistry with physics. His corpuscular theory, and Newton's modification of it, gradually led chemists towards an atomic view of matter ... Boyle distinguished between mixtures and compounds and tried to understand the latter in terms of the simpler chemical entities from which they could be constructed. His argument was designed to lead chemists away from the pure empiricism of his predecessors and to stress the theoretical, experimental and mechanistic elements of chemical science. The Sceptical Chymist is concerned with the relations between chemical substances rather than with transmuting one metal into another or the manufacture of drugs. In this sense the book must be considered as one of the most significant milestones on the way to the chemical revolution of Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century' (PMM). The Sceptical Chymist was issued with 2 titles, both printed on a bifolium; the first (bearing Boyle's name) was bound in before the text, and the second (which is here bound as a general title) was bound after D1. The work is scarce at auction: only 9 copies are recorded by ABPC since 1975 (of which 4 lack the final 4 leaves, possibly suggesting that this quire was issued later), and only two copies in a contemporary binding. Dibner Heralds 39 ('one of a very few recorded copies'); ESTC R37449; Fulton Boyle 33; Grolier Science 14; Norman 299; PMM 141.
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