A History of Science, vol 4, Henry Smith Williams [best books to read in life txt] 📗

f making a wrong deduction from the phenomenonof the calcination of the metals, because of a very importantfactor, the action of the air, which was generally overlooked.And he urged his colleagues of the laboratories to give greaterheed to certain other phenomena that might pass unnoticed in theordinary calcinating process. In his work, The Sceptical Chemist,he showed the reasons for doubting the threefold constitution ofmatter; and in his General History of the Air advanced some noveland carefully studied theories as to the composition of theatmosphere. This was an important step, and although Boyle is notdirectly responsible for the phlogiston theory, it is probablethat his experiments on the atmosphere influenced considerablythe real founders, Becker and Stahl.

Boyle gave very definitely his idea of how he thought air mightbe composed. "I conjecture that the atmospherical air consists ofthree different kinds of corpuscles," he says; "the first, thosenumberless particles which, in the fo