Boyle on Fire: The Mechanical Revolution in Scientific Explanation
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Boyle on Fire examines Robert Boyle's work concerning a method of experiment common in the seventeenth century called Fire Analysis. In the Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle attacked elemental theories of chemical explanation primarily by raising objections against Aristotelian and Paracelsian interpretations of fire analysis. The book reconstructs Boyle's 'corpuscular' account of fire analysis and then compares it to these objections. This process reveals those characteristics of mechanical explanations that make them superior to elemental theories of chemical explanation, characteristics that have become an enduring feature of the scientific enterprise.
1Boyle and the philosophy of science32On the intelligibility of mechanical explanations243Boyle's attack on elemental interpretations of fire874Boyle's mechanical theory of heat and fire1095Boyle's mechanical epistemology1296The contrivance of parts1527Mechanical explanation in contemporary science171Robert Boyle chronology194
