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letsdothis3 ago

Robert Boyle and corpuscular alchemy - 2006 article : http://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226577036.001.0001/upso-9780226576961-chapter-9

Every survey of the scientific revolution highlights the importance of Boyle's mechanical philosophy, but the precise relationship of this doctrine to the immediate matter theory that it replaced has until now received uniformly short shrift. Few historians have appreciated the fact that the mechanical philosophy, as formulated by Robert Boyle, was itself the capstone to a preexisting tradition employing alchemy to recast scholastic theories of mixture, an attempt at reform whose roots extended well into the Middle Ages. Nor do we find a common awareness of the fact that Boyle's most significant experimental evidence for the persistence of microlevel corpuscles and for the mechanical character of the accidental qualities induced upon and removed from those corpuscles stemmed from the reduction to the pristine state originating in the alchemical tradition and made famous in the early seventeenth century by Daniel Sennert. The radical character of these claims justifies some comment from a methodological perspective. Despite the novelty of its results, the picture that this book paints of medieval and early modern matter theory employs traditional tools of textual scholarship and intellectual history to subvert the complacent story that has become canonical in the existing surveys of the scientific revolution.

corpuscular theory of light https://www.revolvy.com/page/Corpuscular-theory-of-light

In optics, the corpuscular theory of light, arguably set forward by Descartes (1637) states that light is made up of small discrete particles called "corpuscles" (little particles) which travel in a straight line with a finite velocity and possess impetus. This was based on an alternate description of atomism of the time period. This theory cannot explain refraction, diffraction, interference and polarization.

Isaac Newton was a pioneer of this theory, ..

Robert Boyle was a strong proponent of corpuscularianism and used the theory to exemplify the differences between a vacuum and a plenum, by which he aimed to further support his mechanical philosophy and overall atomist theory.[2] About a half-century after Gassendi, Isaac Newton used existing corpuscular theories to develop his particle theory of the physics of light.[3]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631070517301032

In the year 1666, Colbert invited the greatest scientists of the time to join the newly created “Académie des sciences”. One of the most eminent of them, , born in 1629 and grown up in the Netherlands, had studied the works of Descartes, Pascal, and Fermat, and already produced major results in mechanics, mathematics and astronomy. ..

Also in 1666, Newton bought his first prism. He went on to split light into different colours through the prism : http://www.thestargarden.co.uk/Newtons-theory-of-light.html

letsdothis3 ago

Theory of colour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours

Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840.[2] The book contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

The work originated in Goethe's occupation with painting and mainly exerted an influence on the arts (Philipp Otto Runge, J. M. W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Wassily Kandinsky). The book is a successor to two short essays entitled "Contributions to Optics".