Abstract
In this paper, I would like to show how it is possible to understand and comment on Berkeley’s Siris. This book is not that difficult nor that obscure. Siris is unusual: Berkeley seems to have or to invent a new philosophical style. However, firstly, it is still philosophy; and, secondly, it is necessary to stress that, unlike his first works, Siris was read everywhere in Europe.
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Notes
- 1.
See S. Charles, “La Siris au siècle des Lumières: panacée ou imposture?”, Hermathena, 2000, pp. 55–69.
- 2.
See N. Le Fébvre, Cours de chymie, pour servir d’introduction à cette science, par Nicolas Lefevre (sic), Professeur Royal de chimie et Membre de la Société Royale de Londres, cinquième édition, revue, corrigée et augmentée d’un grand nombre d’opérations et enrichie de figures par M. du Monstier, Apothicaire de la Marine et des Vaisseaux du Roi, Membre de la Société Royale de Londres et de celle de Berlin, 5 vol., Paris, 1752, vol. 2, pp. 437–455. N. le Febvre was a Protestant chemist, emigrated in the United Kingdom in the 1650s, who became a fellow of the early Royal Society.
- 3.
Berkeley proposes quite important insights about the philosophy of chemistry, but I cannot develop them here; however, my reading of Siris is completely opposed to the way in which I. Tipton or A. A. Luce, for example, read it: see I. Tipton, “Two questions on Bishop Berkeley’s Panacea”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 30, 1969, pp. 203–224; A. A. Luce, “Berkeley’s Search for Truth”, Hermathena, 82, 1953: “I certainly wish he had not spent all that time on Siris; the part on tar-water justified itself; the rest is scaffolding, and never should have seen the light of the day as such” (p. 22). About Berkeley’s philosophy of chemistry, see my “Berkeley et les principes de la chimie: des lois pour la chimie?”, in B. Joly (ed.), La chimie dans l’œuvre des philosophes, Oxford: Kluwers “Cahiers de logique et d’épistémologie” (forthcoming). According to Berkeley, chemistry does not provide causal explanations, but rests on particular laws describing the motions of sub-microscopic particles. Chemistry is a science of particular phenomena: it has to give particular explanations.
- 4.
Siris, § 202, in The Works of George Berkeley, ed. by Luce and Jessop, 9 vols, London and Edinburgh: Nelson, 1948–1957, vol. 5, p. 100.
- 5.
Homberg, “Essai de l’analyse du soufre commun”, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des sciences, 1703, p. 39: “Tout se qui se fait par l’esprit de vitriol se peut faire de meme par l’esprit de soufre, et vice-versa” (in this paper, all translations from French and Latin into English are mine).
- 6.
See for example, Principles of Human Knowledge, § 103, op. cit. (vol. 2, p. 86): “The great mechanical principle now in vogue is attraction. That a stone falls to the earth, or the sea swells towards the moon, may to some appear sufficiently explained thereby. But, how are we enlightened by being told this is done by attraction? Is it that that word signifies the manner of the tendency, and that it is by the mutual drawing of bodies, instead of their being impelled or protruded towards each other?”.
- 7.
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, section XI, scholium, eng. transl. by I. B. Cohen and A. Whitman, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999, p. 588; see also the definition of the motive quantity of centripetal force: “this concept is purely mathematical, for I am not now considering the physical causes and the sites of forces” (Def. 8, p. 407). Many parallel texts can be found in Newton’s works.
- 8.
For a complete account, see my “Philosophie chimique et théologie naturelle dans la Siris de Berkeley”, Revue du 18 ème siècle (Revue du Dix huitième siècle, 42, 2010, pp. 417–432).
- 9.
A. Koyré, “Sens et portée de la synthèse newtonienne”, in Etudes newtoniennes, Paris: Gallimard, 1968.
- 10.
About Boerhaave, see G.A. Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave , The Man and his Work, London: Methuen & co, 1968; about Homberg, and its importance, see Saint-Simon’s judgement: “The duke of Orléans lost meanwhile Homberg, one of the greatest chemists in Europe”, Mémoires (year 1715), Paris: Gallimard, 8 vols, 1983–1988, vol. 7 p. 742. Both Boerhaave and Homberg are very important figures in the history of chemistry. I should add some other natural philosophers, of less importance in Siris, as Nehemiah Grew, Stephen Hales, and Bernard Nieuwentyt.
- 11.
This notion of an element which is also an instrument fits well to Boerhaave’s conception of elements – see R. Love, “Herman Boerhaave and the Element-Instrument Concept of Fire”, Annals of Science, 1974, pp. 547–559, and my “Philosophie chimique et théologie naturelle dans la Siris de Berkeley”.
- 12.
Siris, § 136, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 77.
- 13.
Homberg, “Essais de chimie. Article premier. Des principes de la Chimie en général”, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences 1702, p. 34: “ces principes sont de trois différentes natures; savoir un principe actif, un passif, et trois moyens. Le principe actif est le soufre, le passif est la terre, et les principes moyens sont le sel, l’eau et le mercure. Nous appelons le soufre principe actif parce qu’il agit seul et fait agir les autres.”
- 14.
Homberg, “Suite de l’article trois des Essays de chimie”, Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1706, p. 272: “S’il pouvait y avoir plusieurs mondes comme le nôtre, ils pourraient tous être différemment garnis d’objets sans changer la matière, ni la manière dont ces objets seraient composés; ce qui marque une richesse et une puissance infinie de l’Être qui a produit l’univers”.
- 15.
Siris, § 133, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 76; see also Siris §§ 240, 250.
- 16.
Newton, De Natura acidorum, in John Harris, Lexicon Technicum, reprint in Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy and related Documents, ed. by I.B. Cohen and R.E. Schofield, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958; eng. transl. rev. by Newton, Some Thoughts about the Nature of Acids, ibid., p. 257 (hereafter De Natura Acidorum).
- 17.
Newton, Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. The Second Edition, with Additions London: 1717, Question 31, p. 375 (hereafter Opticks).
- 18.
ibid., p. 257.
- 19.
Siris, § 149, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 81.
- 20.
Newton, Opticks, Question 31, p. 372.
- 21.
ibid. p. 353.
- 22.
De Natura Acidorum, op. cit., p. 257.
- 23.
Maybe Berkeley interprets Newton according to a quite common view, which is also Homberg’s position. To Homberg, an acid is composed of pure salt, sulphur and some other matters. Moreover, pure acid is nothing else than pure salt. However if this is Berkeley’s reading, it seems that, according to Berkeley, Homberg’s acid or salt is the same as his Fire, which would be a complete nonsense. Berkeley proves too much; his rebuilding is, from a historical point of view, an impossible task, once again.
- 24.
Siris, § 191, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 96.
- 25.
Boerhaave, Elementa Chemiae, Leiden: Joannis Rudolphi, 2 vols., 1732 (hereafter Elementa), vol. II, p. 697: “cognoscitur fere solvens universale, quatenus pleraque liquefacit corpora”.
- 26.
Ibid. vol. I, p. 540: “Quum [Aer] enim in se gerat, deferatque, fere omnia genera corporum dissolute, fieri vix potuit, quin successive tantam varietam applicando aliquando applicentur quaedam particulae quae idoneae sint illud corpus, instar menstrui, dissolvere; hocque respectu dici poterit fungi vice Menstrui Universalis”.
- 27.
M. Goupil, Du flou au clair? Histoire de l’affinité chimique de Cardan à Prigogine, Paris: Editions des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1991, p. 101.
- 28.
Elementa, vol. II p. 720 sq. – see especially pp. 720–721.
- 29.
Berkeley may also recall the presentation given by Fontenelle of Homberg’s memoir devoted to experiments performed with the help of a new burning glass. Fontenelle writes: “fire has been its universal dissolvent, or almost always the soul of its other dissolvents” ( Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences¸ “Sur des expériences faites au miroir ardent convexe”, 1702, p. 34: “Le feu a été son dissolvent universel, ou presque toujours l’âme de ses autres dissolvants”).
- 30.
Siris, § 221, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 106–107.
- 31.
An Examination of the Newtonian Argument for the Emptiness of Space and of the Resistance of subtile Fluids, London: T. Cooper, 1740, quot. by R. E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism. British Natural Philosophy in An Age of Reason, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970, p. 107.
- 32.
R. Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), Calvinist Chemist and Physician, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002, p. 137.
- 33.
S. Hales, Vegetable Staticks, Or, An Account of some Statical Experiments on the Sap in Vegetables: Being n Essay towards a Natural history of Vegetation. Also a Specimen of An Attempt to Analyse the Air by a Great Variety of Chymico-Statical Experiments, London: W. and J. Innys, and T. Woodward, 1732, p. 296. This text is also important because Hales was considered as a great Newtonian – about his alleged Newtonianism, see Desaguliers’ review of his book in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. 34, 1728, pp. 264–291, and vol. 35, 1729, pp. 322–331.
- 34.
Siris, § 146, op. cit, vol. 5, p. 80.
- 35.
Hales, Vegetable Staticks, p. 315.
- 36.
Siris, § 143, op. cit, vol. 5, p. 79.
- 37.
If elasticity could explain every property of air, then it would have to explain opposite effects, which is impossible; Berkeley’s solution is to consider that what he calls Fire is in fact composed, just as white light is composed of colours: it can explain even opposite effects.
- 38.
Maybe the reader should not believe Berkeley when he writes: “it may, therefore, be pardoned if this rude essay doth, by insensible transitions, draw the reader into remote inquiries and speculations, that were not thought of either by him or by the author at first setting out” ( Siris, § 297, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 138).
- 39.
A first version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Berkeley, organized by S. Parigi in Gaeta (Italy), 25–29 September 2007. I thank S. Parigi for her invitation, and the participants for their remarks, questions and encouragements – especially, R. Jakapi, M. Hight, G. Brykman and S. Charles. I also thank Camille Peterschmitt, Lawrence Principe and Steve Daniel who corrected earlier drafts.
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Peterschmitt, L. (2010). Berkeley and Chemistry in the Siris . In: Parigi, S. (eds) George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 201. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9243-4_6
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