How Did Robert Boyle's Impact On Modern Chemistry

According to Glynis L. Coyne, “Mention the word ‘alchemy’ and certain images spring to mind: the lone sorcerer-scholar poring over ancient manuscripts and combining bubbling flasks by flickering candlelight.” Alchemy is based on the ideas that fundamental metals can be changed into gold and that, “the philosopher’s stone, which was said to grant eternal youth”, was a possibility (Coyne). According to the University of Bristol, alchemists focused on “the transmutation of base metals into gold.” These ideas of changing metals to gold and attaining eternal life appear to be fantasy from a scientific perspective. In the modern point of view, people assume that alchemy and science are mutually exclusive and that neither practice impacts the other.

During the 17th century, Robert Boyle, through experiments, discovered many things that are still important today. The famous Boyle’s Law, which describes the relationship between pressure and volume in gas, continues to be significant in scientist’s comprehension of the behavior of gases. Robert Boyle shows how much alchemists impacted scientists. According to J. J. MacIntosh and Peter Anstey, “he was interested both theoretically and practically in alchemy.“ Boyle was also majorly responsible for the change of scientific thinking. MacIntosh and Anstey also point out that “the discipline of natural philosophy was shifting from being regarded as a speculative science, like, say, theology, to being an operative or practical science in which experiments played a central role.” Boyle’s ideas about experimenting, rather than assuming, were directly correlated with his alchemical views (Macintosh and Anstey).
Newton was also an important figure during the Scientific Revolution. He became famous because of his ideas about gravity. He asked a significant question, if an apple falls, does the moon fall as well? He asked questions and experimented for more than just the theory of gravity. He contributed to the understanding of light, and his laws of motion were quite different from traditional views. Newton changed the way modern scientists think about many things, and his ideas about gravity are still in

So when people during the Scientific Revolution were at their prime, they were doing the same thing. They asked questions about the universe that was against common knowledge. Their laws and theories were already explained by those who came before them, but it was because they were able to see in a strange way that they could derive their thoughts by experimenting. Their unorthodox thinking was, at least partially, a result of their alchemical views about the world. This view caused them to ask questions that might have never been synthesized during the Scientific