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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	great_a	part_n	see_v	2,658	5	3.2246	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A69611	Experimental notes of the mechanical origine or production of fixtness.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1675 (1675)	Wing B3963A; ESTC R22966	166,942	586

granted not to be found in them Thus elementary Water though never so pure as distilled Rain-water has fluidity and coldness and humidity and transparency and volatility without having any of the tria prima And the purest Earth as Ashes carefully freed from the fixt salt has gravity and consistence and dryness and colour and fixity without owing them either to Salt Sulphur or Mercury not to mention that there are Celestial bodies which do not appear nor are wont to be pretended to consist of the tria prima that yet are indowed with Qualities As the Sun has Light and as many Philosophers think Heat and Colour and the Moon has a determinate consistence and figuration as appears by her mountains and Astronomers observe that the higher Planets and even the Fixt stars appear to be differingly coloured But I shall not multiply Instances of this kind because what I have said may not onely serve for my present purpose but bring a great Confirmation to what I lately said when I noted that the Chymical Principles were in many cases not necessary to explicate Qualities For since in Earth Water c. such diffused Qualities as gravity fixtness colour transparency and fluidity must be acknowledged not to be derived from the tria prima 't is plain that portions of matter may be endowed with such Qualities by other causes and agents than Salt Sulphur and Mercury And then why should we deny that also in compounded bodies those Qualities may be sometimes at least produced by the same or the like Causes As we see that the reduction of a diaphanous Solid to pouder produces whiteness whether the comminution happens to Rock-crystal or to Venice glass or to Ice The first of which is acknowledged to be a natural and perfectly mixt body the second a factitious and not onely mixt but decompounded body and the last for ought appears an elementary body or at most very slightly and imperfectly mixt And so by mingling Air in small portions with a diaphanous Liquor as we do when we beat such a Liquor into foam a whiteness is produced as well in pure Water which is acknowledged to be a simple body as in white Wine which is reckoned among perfectly mixt bodies CHAP. IV. I Further observe that the Chymists Explications do not reach deep and far enough For first most of them are not sufficiently distinct and full so as to come home to the particular Phaenomena nor often times so much as to all the grand ones that belong to the History of the Qualities they pretend to explicate You will readily believe that a Chymist will not easily make out by his Salt Sulphur and Mercury why a Loadstone capp'd with steel may be made to take up a great deal more Iron sometimes more than eight or ten times as much than if it be immediatly applied to the iron or why if one end of the Magnetic Needle is dispos'd to be attracted by the North-pole for instance of the Load-stone the other Pole of the Load-stone will not attract it but drive it away or why a bar or rod of iron being heated red-hot and cooled perpendicularly will with its lower end drive away the flower de Luce or the North-end of a Marriners Needle which the upper end of the same barr or rod will not repell but draw to it In short of above threescore Properties or notable Phaenomena of Magnetic Bodies that some Writers have reckon'd up I do not remember that any three have been by Chymists so much as attempted to be solved by their three Principles And even in those Qualities in whose explications these Principles may more probably than elsewhere pretend to have a place the Spagyrists accounts are wont to fall so short of being distinct and particular enough that they use to leave divers considerable Phaenomena untouch'd and do but very lamely or slightly explicate the more obvious or familiar And I have so good an opinion of divers of the embracers of the Spagyrical Theory of Qualities among whom I have met with very Learned and worthy men that I think that if a Quality being pos'd to them they were at the same time presented with a good Catalogue of the Phaenomena that they may take in the History of it as it were with one view they would plainly perceive that there are more particulars to be accounted for than at first they were aware of and divers of them such as may quite discourage considering men from taking upon them to explain them all by the Tria prima and oblige them to have recourse to more Catholic and comprehensive Principles I know not whether I may not add on this occasion that methinks a Chymist who by the help of his Tria Prima takes upon him to interpret that Book of Nature of which the Qualities of bodies make a great part acts at but a little better rate than he that seeing a great book written in a Cypher whereof he were acquainted but with three Letters should undertake to decypher the whole piece For though 't is like he would in many words find one of the Letters of his short key and in divers words two of them and perhaps in some all three yet besides that in most of the words wherein the known Letter or Letters may be met with they may be so blended with other unknown Letters as to keep him from decyphering a good part of those very words 't is more than probable that a great part of the book would consist of words wherein none of his three Letters were to be found CHAP. V. AND this is the first account on which I observe that the Chymical Theory of Qualities does not reach far enough But there is another branch of its deficiency For even when the explications seem to come home to the Phaenomena they are not primary and if I may so speak Fontal enough To make this appear I shall at present imploy but these two Considerations The first is that those substances themselves that Chymists call their Principles are each of them indowed with several Qualities Thus Salt is a consistent not a fluid body it has its weight 't is dissoluble in water is either diaphanous or opacous fixt or volatile sapid or insipid I speak thus disjunctively because Chymists are not all agreed about these things and it concerns not my Argument which of the disputable Qualities be resolved upon And Sulphur according to them is a body fusible inflammable c. and according to Experience is consistent heavy c. So that 't is by the help of more primary and general Principles that we must explicate some of those Qualities which being found in bodies supposed to be perfectly similar or homogeneous cannot be pretended to be derived in one of them from the other And to say that 't is the nature of a Principle to have this or that Quality as for instance of Sulphur to be susible and therefore we are not to exact a

the Mechanical Structure or Constitution so in some other cases it appears not that the Agent whether natural or factitious operates on the Patient otherwise than Mechanically employing onely such a way of acting as may proceed from the Mechanisme of the matter which it self consists of and that of the body it acts upon As when Goldsmiths burnish a Plate or Vessel of Silver that having been lately boil'd lookt white before though they deprive it of the greatest part of its colour and give it a new power of reflecting the beams of Light and visible Objects in the manner proper to specular bodies yet all this is done by the intervention of a burnishing Tool which often is but a piece of Steel or Iron conveniently shap'd and all that this Burnisher does is but to depress the little prominencies of the Silver and reduce them and the little cavites of it to one physically level or plain Superficies And so when a Hammer striking often on a Nail makes the head of it grow hot the Hammer is but a purely Mechanical Agent and works by local motion And when by striking a lump of Glass it breaks it into a multitude of small parts that compose a white powder it acts as Mechanically in the production of that Whiteness as it does in driving in a Nail to the head And so likewise when the powder'd Glass or Colophony lately mention'd is by the fire from a white and opacous body reduc'd into a colourless or a reddish and transparent one it appears not that the fire though a natural Agent need work otherwise than Mechanically by colliquating the incoherent grains of powder into one mass wherein the ranks of pores not being broken and interrupted as before the incident beams of Light are allow'd every way a free passage through them Fifthly the like Phaenomena to those of a Quality to be explicated or at least as difficult in the same kind may be produc'd in bodies and cases wherein 't is plain we need not recurre to Substantial Forms Thus a varying Colour like that which is admired in a Pigeons Neck may be produc'd in changeable Taffety by a particular way of ranging and connecting Silk of several Colours into one piece of Stuff Thus we have known Opals casually imitated and almost excell'd by Glass which luckily degenerated in the Furnace And somewhat the like changeable and very delightful Colour I remember to have introduced into common Glass with Silver or with Gold and Mercury So likewise meerly by blowing fine Crystal-Glass at the flame of a Lamp to a very extraordinary thinness we have made it to exhibit and that vividly all the Colours as they speak of the Rainbow and this power of pleasing by diversifying the Light the Glass if well preserved may keep for a long time Thus also by barely beating Gold into such thin leaves as Artificers and Apothecaries are wont to employ it will be brought to exhibite a green Colour when you hold it against the Light whether of the day or of a good Candle and this kind of Greenness as 't is permanent in the foliated Gold so I have found by trial that if the Sun-beams somewhat united by a Burning-glass be trajected through the expanded Leaf and cast upon a piece of white paper they will appear there as if they had been tinged in their passage Nay and sometimes a flight and almost momentany Mechanical change will seem to over-rule Nature and introduce into a body the quite opposite Quality to that she had given it As when a piece of black Horn is onely by being thinly scraped with the edge of a knife or a piece of glass reduced to permanently white Shavings And to these Instances o● Colours some Emphatical and some Permanent might be added divers belonging to other Qualities but that I ought not to anticipate what you will elsewhere meet with There is yet another way of arguing in favour of the Corpuscularian Doctrine of Qualities which though it do not afford direct proofs of its being the best Hypothesis yet it may much strengthen the Arguments drawn from other Topicks and thereby serve to recommend the Doctrine it self For the use of an Hypothesis being to render an intelligible account of the Causes of the Effects or Phaenomena propos'd without crossing the Laws of Nature or other Phaenomena the more numerous and the more various the Particulars are whereof some are explicable by the assign'd Hypothesis and some are agreeable to it or at least are not dissonant from it the more valuable is the Hypothesis and the more likely to be true For 't is much more difficult to finde an Hypothesis that is not true which will suit with many Phaenomena especially if they be of various kinds than but with few And for this Reason I have set down among the Instances belonging to particular Qualities some such Experiments and Observations as we are now speaking of since although they be not direct proofs of the preferrableness of our Doctrine yet they may serve for Confirmation of it though this be not the only or perhaps the chief Reason of their being mention'd For whatever they may be as Arguments since they are matters of fact I thought it not amiss to take this occasion of preserving them from being lost since whether or no they contribute much to the establishment of the Mechanical Doctrine about Qualities they will at least contribute to the Natural History of them III. I shall not trouble the Reader with a Recital of those unlucky Accidents that have hinder'd the Subjects of the following Book from being more numerous and I hope he will the more easily excuse their paucity if he be advertised that although the particular Qualities about which some Experiments and Notes by way of Specimens are here presented be not near half so many as were intended to be treated of yet I was careful to chuse them such as might comprehend in a small number a great variety there being scarce one sort of Qualities of which there is not an Instance given in this small Book since therein Experiments and thoughts are deliver'd about Heat and Cold which are the chief of the four FIRST QVALITIES about Tasts and Odours which are of those that being the immediate objects of Sense are wont to be call'd SENSIBLE QVALITIES about Volatility and Fixity Corrosiveness and Corrosibility which as they are found in bodies purely natural are referrable to those Qualities that many Physical Writers call SECOND QVALITIES and which yet as they may be produced and destroyed by the Chymists Art may be stiled Chymical Qualities and the Spagyrical ways of introducing or expelling them may be referr'd to Chymical Operations of which there is given a more ample Specimen in the Mechanical account of Chymical Precipitations And lastly some Notes are added about Magnetism and Electricity which are known to belong to the Tribe of Occult Qualities IV. If a want of apt Coherence and exact Method be discover'd