preview

Chemistry Essay

Decent Essays

Robert Boyle is considered both the founder of modern chemistry and the greatest

English scientist to live during the first thirty years of the existence of the Royal Society.

He was not only a chemist and a physicist as we know him to be, but also

an avid theologian, a philanthropist, an essayist, and a beginner in medicine. Born in

Lismore, Ireland to Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, and Katherine Fenton, his second

wife, Boyle was the youngest son in a family of fourteen. However he was not

shortchanged of anything. After private tutoring at home for eight years, Robert Boyle

was sent to Eton College where he studied for four years. At the age of twelve, Boyle

traveled to the Continent, as it was referred to at the …show more content…

For centuries scientists had been explaining the unknown with the simple explanation that

God made it that way. Though Boyle did not argue with this, he did believe that there was

a scientific explanation for God’s doings. Boyle’s point of view can be seen by his dealings

with the elements. At this time it was thought that an element was not only the simplest

body to which something could be broken down, but also a necessary component of all

bodies. Meaning that if oil was an element, it would not be able to be broken down, and it

would be found in everything. Boyle did not accept this theory, whether it referred to the

earth, air, fire, the water of the Aristotelians, the salt, sulfur, and mercury of the

Paracelsans, or the phlegm, oil, spirit, acid, and alkali of later chemists. He did not believe

that these elements were truly fundamental in their nature. Boyle thought that the only

things common in all bodies were corpuscles, atom-like structures that were created by

God and that occupy all void space. He began to perform experiments, concentrating

on the color changes that took place in reactions. He started to devise a system of

classification based on the properties of substances. By showing that acids turned the blue

syrup of violets red, Boyle claimed that all acids react in the same manner with violet

syrup and those that did not, were not acids. Similarly, he showed that all alkalies turned

the

Get Access