Abstract
That year, Mr. Du Clos continued the examination that he had begun of Mr. Boyle’s Essays of Chemistry. This English scholar had undertaken to explain all the chemical phenomena by way of corpuscular philosophy, that is, through the motion and the configurations of small bodies alone. Mr. Du Clos, as great a chemist as Mr. Boyle, but being perhaps more chemistry minded, did not think this science could or even needed to be reduced to such clear principles as shapes and motions, and he readily accepted a certain specious obscurity, which is quite well established …. [C]hemistry, by visible operations, resolves bodies into certain coarse and tangible principles, salts, sulphur, etc. But physics, through delicate speculations, acts on these principles, as chemistry does on bodies, and resolves them into other even simpler principles, to small moving bodies with an endless number of shapes: here is the main difference between physics and chemistry, and almost the same as that which lay between Mr. Boyle and Mr. Du Clos. The spirit of chemistry is more confused, more veiled; resembles more the mixed bodies, where the principles are mixed up with one another, while the spirit of physics is more distinct, clearer; finally it identifies the first origins, and the other does not go through to completion.
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- 1.
Fontenelle, Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, vol. I, pp. 79–81: “M. du Clos continua cette année l’examen qu’il avoit commencé des Essais de Chimie de M. Boyle. Ce savant Anglois avoit entrepris de rendre raison de tous les Phénomenes Chimiques par la Philosophie corpusculaire, c’est-à-dire, par les seuls mouvemens & les seules configurations des petits corps. M. du Clos, grand Chimiste, aussi-bien que M. Boyle, mais ayant peut-être un tour d’esprit plus Chimiste, ne trouvoit pas qu’il fût nécessaire, ni même possible, de reduire cette Science à des principes aussi clairs que les figures & les mouvemens, & il s’accomodoit sans peine d’une certaine obscurité spécieuse qui s’y est assés établie. […] La Chimie par des operations visibles résout les corps en certains principes grossiers & palpables, sels, souffres, &c. Mais la Phisique par des spéculations délicates agit sur ces principes, comme la Chimie a fait sur les corps, elle les résout eux-mêmes en d’autres principes encore plus simples, en petits corps mus & figurés d’une infinité de façons: voilà la principale différence de la Phisique & de la Chimie, & presque la même qui étoit entre M. Boyle & M. du Clos. L’esprit de la Chimie est plus confus, plus envelopé; il ressemble plus au mixtes où les principes sont embarassés les uns avec les autres, l’esprit de Phisique est plus net, plus dégagé; enfin il remonte jusqu’aux premieres origines, & l’autre ne va pas jusqu’au bout.” Fontenelle is the real author of this report, and not Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel, as some claim.
- 2.
This same text was also the subject of some criticisms from Spinoza; see Macherey, “Spinoza, lecteur et critique de Boyle,” pp. 733f.
- 3.
As Kim wrongly claims in Affinity, that Elusive Dream, p. 66.
- 4.
On the different kinds of corpuscular theories of matter in seventeenth-century chemistry, see Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles. However, Clericuzio does not deal with the mechanical dimension of Du Clos’ chemical explanations.
- 5.
On Du Clos, see Todericiu, “Sur la vraie biographie de Samuel Duclos (Du Clos) Cotreau,” pp. 64f.; Stroup, “Censure ou querelles scientifiques,” pp. 435–452; and Franckowiak, “Samuel Cottereau Du Clos.”
- 6.
See Franckowiak, “Du Clos, un chimiste post-Sceptical Chymist,” pp. 361–377.
- 7.
See Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist.
- 8.
See Principe, The Aspiring Adept, p. 208; Clericuzio, “Carneades and the Chemists,” pp. 79–90; Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles; and Franckowiak, “La chimie du 17e siècle.”
- 9.
The more elevated sort of chemistry, which aims at the preparation of so-called “Philosophical Mercury” in particular, on the other hand, retains the status of real science, a well-established reasoned practice within a strong tradition. On Boyle’s relation to this tradition, see Principe, The Aspiring Adept, pp. 153 and ff. Moreover, as early as 1660, one year before the publication of the Sceptical Chymist, Samuel Sorbière expressed the wish that chemists would allow other more learned people to speak about their experiments; see his letter of July 13, 1660, in Relations, Lettres et Discours de M r Sorbière sur diverses matières curieuses, pp. 167–168. It is also important to note that the image Sorbière gives of the hard-working chemist is close to the etymology of the name of Philoponus, the character of the vulgar chemist in the Sceptical Chymist.
- 10.
In Boyle’s experimentalism, the practice of Chemistry is considered as a means to produce an experimental piece of evidence of the action of the human mind in matter; see Hamou, “Descartes, Newton et l’intelligibilité de la nature,” pp. 146f. A study more precisely focused on early modern chemistry in France points out that Boyle’s influence among eighteenth-century French chemists was very weak. Moreover, his Sceptical Chymist and his thoughts on chemistry in general had little influence in France, unlike Du Clos’; see Franckowiak, “La chimie du xvii e siècle.” Boyle’s virulent denunciation of chemistry without solid principles is undoubtedly his real contribution to chemistry, or at least to French chemistry. A remark by Christian Huygens illustrates this point. In 1692, just a few weeks after Boyle’s death, Huygens answered a letter from Leibniz in which he expressed his disappointment at the sterility of Boyle’s chemical experimental work, whose mechanism, according to him, was not new at all (see Leibniz to Huygens, 8 January 1692, in Huygens, Œuvres complètes, vol. X, pp. 228f.). See as well Huygens to Leibniz, 4 February 1692, in ibid., p. 239: “Mr. Boyle est mort, comme vous sçaurez desja sans doute. Il paroit assez etrange qu’il n’ait rien basti sur tant d’experiences dont ses livres sont pleins ; mais la chose est difficile, et je ne l’ay jamais cru capable d’une aussi grande application qu’il faut pour establir des principes vraisemblables. Il a bien fait cependant en contredisant à ceux des Chymistes.”
- 11.
Franckowiak, “Du Clos, un chimiste post-Sceptical Chymist,” pp. 361–377.
- 12.
Van Helmont, Ortus medicinae. See Du Clos, “Project d’exercitations physiques,” Procès Verbaux de séances, Registre de physique, Dec. 31, 1666, t. 1, p. 1; and “De la recherche des principes des mixtes naturels,” in ibid., pp. 4–16. All the references here to Du Clos’ works at the Académie come from the manuscript Procès Verbaux de séances.
- 13.
On such experiments made in front of his peers in the Académie, see among others the papers of Nov. 3 and 24, 1668, Jan. 5, 1669, and Jan. 26, 1669 (ff. 26v–27r). At the beginning of November 1668, the Academy had recently set up a laboratory. We may thus suppose that the Academicians’ desire to see for themselves what Du Clos spoke of also corresponded to a legitimate curiosity about this new show (the change of colors, the change of physical state, etc.). In other words, what is at issue here is chemistry staged in the laboratory as a theater. Later on, this theatrical element disappeared. Boyle too often used such expressions as “we have observed” and offers generous details of his experiments. However, he only practiced chemistry for a short time, only until the end of 1660s. See Newman and Principe, Alchemy tried in the Fire, pp. 15–30.
- 14.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, t. 4, Sept. 1, 1668, f. 196v. Du Clos’ reading of the Tentamina Chimica is certainly selective but respects Boyle’s text.
- 15.
Tentamina Chimica was not the first of Boyle’s writings Du Clos examined. From the beginning of 1667, Du Clos had commented several times on Boyle’s writings about “alchemical” subjects, which he considered insufficiently grounded in a real knowledge of the chemical literature or chemical substances. See Franckowiak, “Du Clos, un chimiste post-Sceptical Chymist.”
- 16.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Registre de mathématiques, t. 5, vol. 1, Jan. 5, 1669, f. 4v. “C’est bien le mouvement qui fait l’effervescence, mais Mr. Boyle, poursuit-il, n’assigne pas la cause de ce mouvement tumultueux, que peut estre il n’a pû trouver dans la figure et disposition des particules, comme il pense y avoir trouvé celles de la fluidité des corps.”
- 17.
Ibid., f. 5r.
- 18.
Ibid., f. 5v.
- 19.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 12, 1669, ff. 7r–7v.
- 20.
Ibid., f. 9r.
- 21.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 19, 1669, f. 14r.
- 22.
Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, p. 208.
- 23.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 26, 1669, f. 21v.
- 24.
Ibid., ff. 24v–25r.
- 25.
Du Clos did not exercise his skepticism against Boyle alone. In a communication read in April 1667 concerning the examination of Le Givre’s book on mineral waters, whose conclusions appeared hasty and faulty to him, he writes (Du Clos, “Examen du livre des Eaux Minerales du Sieur Le Givre”, Procès Verbaux de séances, March 12, 1667, pp. 57–70): “Voilà toujours l’auteur dans les suppositions, et le lecteur sans preuve, qui le satisfasse …. [T]outes les expériences et observations que cet auteur a rapportées ne prouvent rien de ce qu’il pretend.”
- 26.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Nov. 24, 1668, f. 308v.
- 27.
Ibid., f. 309r.
- 28.
Ibid., ff. 302r–302v.
- 29.
See Koyré, Paracelse, pp. 28–30; Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible,” pp. 17–50.
- 30.
Boyle also admits that fixed nitre (= salt of tartar) attracts the air (he talks about “its aptness to attract the air”); see Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, section X, in Works, vol. II.
- 31.
See Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 5, 1669.
- 32.
See also Du Clos, “Observations du Salpestre, de sa generation et de sa vertu fulminante,” Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 22, 1667, pp. 16–22.
- 33.
See Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Dec. 31, 1666, pp. 11f.
- 34.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 5, 1669, f. 4v. Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, also admits a conflict between the two opposed substances.
- 35.
See Du Clos, “Expériences de l’augmentation du poids de certaines matières en les calcinant à la chaleur du Soleil, ou du feu ordinaire,” April 1667, pp. 49–51: “Car la chaleur excite du Mouvement en l’air qui environne la matiere embrasée, cet air meu change de place, et ce lieu ne pouvant estre vuide, il y succede une autre portion d’air. Et tant que le mouvement dure cette succession d’air continüe, l’air passant ainsi continuellement sur cette Matiere embrasée …. Ce n’est pas tant que le feu attire veritablement l’air à soy; mais c’est qu’en rarefiant, et poussant celuy qui luy est le plus proche, cet air poussé est suivy d’un autre air, qui luy succede pour empescher le vuide.”
- 36.
Boyle’s explanation is not very clear; this motion might be initiated by a current of subtle matter. See Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, section XXVI, in Works, vol. II, p. XXX.
- 37.
See Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 19, 1669, and Jan. 26, 1669.
- 38.
Ibid., Jan. 12, 1669.
- 39.
See Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, Section XXIV, in Works, vol. II, p. XXX.
- 40.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 12, 1669, f. 8v.
- 41.
Ibid., f. 9v.
- 42.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 19, 1669, f. 16v.
- 43.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, Jan. 12, 1669, ff. 11r–11v: “There is hardly appearance as I already said, that it is the various position and shape of particles of saltpeter which make the difference of qualities which are noticed there, and which make it sometimes acrid, sometimes acid; sometimes sulfurized, sometimes mercurial, sometimes overheating sometimes refreshing &c. These differences could, it seems to me, to be better related to various matters which are in Saltpeter and to their alternating predominance; because some [matters] are manifestly sulfurized or igneous; the other ones aerial, as one can observed with the confection of saltpeter and with its resolution.”
- 44.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, June 16, 1668, ff. 58r–63r, and June 23, 1668, ff. 63v–66r.
- 45.
Ibid., June 16, 1668, f. 58r.
- 46.
Boyle seems to have held such a view, along with a number of “vulgar chemists”; see Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, part II, section XXVI, in Works, vol. II, p. 105.
- 47.
Boyle seems to have held this view as well, though in his Sceptical Chymist, he prefers to speak of prima mista, mista primaria, or “secundary principals, or mixed bodies of peculiar sort”; see Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, pp. 215 and 273.
- 48.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, June 16, 1668, ff. 62r–62v. “Cette chaleur et cet embrasement font impulsion aux parties du subject eschauffé ou embrasé et ceste Impulsion est suivie de leur rarefaction. L’Impulsion et la rarefaction causent l’eslevation des dictes parties agitées et rarefiées. Cette Eslevation est plus prompte proche du feu, où l’Impulsion est plus forte, quoy que la rarefaction y soit moindre, comme on le voit en la fumée qui s’esleve du Boys embrasé, et qui monte par le Tuyau d’une cheminée; car elle monte plus viste dans ledict tuyau, ou elle est moins rarefiée que quand elle en est sortie et qu’elle se rarefie d’avantage dans l’air, où elle s’estend au large et se dissipe. Ce n’est donc pas la seule rarefaction qui fait monter la fumée, mais aussi l’impulsion qu’elle reçoit du feu, laquelle Impulsion est plus forte proche du feu qui la donne.” This mechanical theory of the impulsion of fire was quickly put into practice in a proposal Du Clos made for the desalination of sea water in a paper of July 1668. According to him, the salinity of sea water is an accident, and can for this reason be separated. One of the means selected to remove the salt is the following (Du Clos, ibid., f. 120v): “It would be necessary to make the water rise up through sand or from ground, because the salt, which is coarser than water, could not easily go up with it, and the water, which is more subtle and more mobile than salt, less resisting to the Impulsion of what forces it to rise up, would go up more easily than the salt through the ground or the sand, and thus it would separate from it and would become soft.” Clay could just as well be used for this separation, but it is not, according to Du Clos, “porous enough to give passage to water” (f. 120v). Du Clos presents still another means—chemical this time—by precipitation of the salt of sea water by means of the attraction of salt by Glauber’s “specular stone” (ff. 121v–122r).
- 49.
Ibid., Procès Verbaux de séances, June 23, 1668, ff. 63v–66r. According to Du Clos fire is no longer the instrument for the resolution of mixed bodies into their true principles, as the “vulgar chemists” used to think (see the first two of Du Clos’ papers at the Académie). It is also for this reason that Du Clos suggested collecting a history of plants through chemical means, and thus not only through an analysis by fire, giving rise to a controversy with Denis Dodart; see Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists.
- 50.
Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, June 23, 1668, ff. 65r–65v: “Les liqueurs mixtes qui constent de sels sulphurez, et de sels mercuriels, joincts ensemble, sont seules capables de dissoudre l’union des parties constitutives principales, tant mercurielles que sulphurées, chacun de ces sels agissant sur la partie qui luy est symbolique et la separant de l’autre, laquelle estant pareillement resoute par un sel symbolique ne fait plus de resistance. Ces Menstrües mixtes sont les vrayes (f. 65v) dissolvants propres aux analyses chymiques, et ceux dont nous devons faire provision pour nous servir aux desseins proposez tant de la Recherche des Principes des mixtes naturels, que des observations analytiques, qui peuvent aider à la connoissance de la nature et des qualitez de ces mixtes. Les menstrües meslez sont ou universels, ou particuliers. Les universels doivent estre tirez des sels les moins specifiez, mais de nature mixte et temperée. Tel est le sel commun, duquel Paracelse a faict son grand dissolvant, qu’il nomme sel circulé.”
- 51.
Du Clos, op. cit. in n. 16, for the 11, 18 and 25 Aug. 1668, ff. 127v–175r. About the alkahest, see Joly, “L’alkahest, dissolvant universel,” pp. 305–344; about its medical use, see Porto, “Summus atque felicissimus salium,” pp. 1–29.
- 52.
This use of the two kinds of explanation in chemistry will be found very clearly though in a somewhat different way in Wilhelm Homberg at the beginning of the eighteenth century; see Franckowiak and Peterschmitt, “La chimie de Homberg,” pp. 65–90. The application of mechanism in chemistry required great concessions on behalf of mechanism. Among Cartesian philosophers who had the ambition to extend mechanism to chemical phenomena, one can observe the abandonment of its metaphysical dimension and use of chemical explanations; see Peterschmitt, “The Cartesian Chemistry,” pp. 193–202.
- 53.
See Du Clos, Dissertation sur les principes des mixtes naturels, faite en l’an 1677.
- 54.
Ibid., pp. 4, 7 and 20.
- 55.
Ibid., pp. 7 and 27.
- 56.
Ibid., p. 28.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 8.
- 58.
See Du Clos, Procès Verbaux de séances, April 1667, pp. 40–52. One notes that this communication was read at the Académie Royale des Sciences more than 100 years before Lavoisier’s works on those phenomena.
- 59.
Du Clos, Dissertation sur les principes des mixtes naturels, faite en l’an 1677, p. 15: “[C]’est aussi par cet esprit que les natures particulières des Mixtes ont de l’extension pour agir sur d’autres Mixtes sans attouchement corporel, & même en distances tres-notable (sic) d’un corps à l’autre, par la seule médiation de l’Esprit qu’ils participent, & par l’étenduë duquel les natures particulières de ces Mixtes peuvent avoir une certaine sphère d’activité hors des corps qu’elles informent.”
- 60.
Ibid., p. 1: “Le sens apercevant la chose sensible, connoît bien qu’elle est…. Ce que les sens nous annoncent des Mixtes … est évident. Ils nous apprennent l’existence de ces Mixtes, & quelques modifications de leur Etre.”
- 61.
Ibid., pp. 3–6.
- 62.
Ibid., p. 2: “La supposition de ces Principes est bonne & vraie ; mais leur détermination n’est pas facile à l’Entendement, qui les peut considérer diversement.”
- 63.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 64.
Ibid., p. 24.
- 65.
Du Clos’ expression, ibid., p. 1.
- 66.
Ibid., pp. 10 and 19–23.
- 67.
The term is from Le Febvre’s Traité de la Chymie (1660). The expression will be used again in 1702 by Wilhelm Homberg who will continue the inversion of the status of chemical physics and mechanical physics; only chemistry according to him is true, whereas mechanism, the explanation by shape and motion of the parts of the bodies while “probable” is also contestable; see Franckowiak and Peterschmitt, “La chimie de Homberg.”
- 68.
The work in question is Boyle’s Certain Physiological Essays.
- 69.
Using Barlet’s expression in Le vray et méthodique cours de la Physique résolutive, vulgairement dite Chymie.
- 70.
See Stroup, “Censure ou querelles scientifiques,” pp. 435–452.
- 71.
In the quarrel of Ancients and Moderns, chemists belong among the moderns, of course. Moreover, following Van Helmont, from the 1660s, chemists such as Boyle, Du Clos and Le Febvre were in the habit of calling themselves “modern chemists,” as opposed to “vulgar Chemists,” whose practice was centered on a simple application of the Paracelsian principles to the preparation of pharmaceutical remedies.
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Franckowiak, R. (2013). Du Clos and the Mechanization of Chemical Philosophy. In: GARBER, D. (eds) The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 282. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4345-8_12
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