BOYLE, Robert. Hydrostatical paradoxes, made out by new experiments, (for the most part physical and easie). Oxford: William Hall, for Richard Davis. 1666.
8vo. 18th-century polished tree calf, later double fillet border to boards in gilt, rebacked, the spine lettered in gilt to three of the compartments between five gilt-ruled raised bands, original endpapers lifted and bound in; pp. [32], 247, [1 (blank)], with 3 engraved folding plates, bound without b1-2 (contents and imprimatur) as in some other copies; right margin of title page lightly restored (not affecting text), variable light marginal damp-staining; folded sheets at rear with a few closed tears to edges and folds, though clean and structurally sound, occasional (later) pencilled crosses in margins; a very good, clean copy.
An uncommonly bright first edition copy of this elegantly written, defiantly practical, account of the behaviour of fluids under pressure by “the greatest experimental scientist of the mid-seventeenth century” (PMM). A subtle challenge to Pascal’s hydrostatic writings, it was one of the early fruits of the Royal Society.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691), the great Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, was born at Lismore Castle in the province of Munster, Ireland. Upon leaving Eton, Boyle travelled widely in Europe, developing a keen interest in the natural sciences. As a founder of the Royal Society, he was an early pioneer of experiment-based, empirical methods of research, and prolific and wide-ranging in his interests. The Sceptical Chymist (1661) (PMM 141) would become a foundational work in the field of chemistry, while his innovations and experiments with the air, or vacuum, pump, written up and published as New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects (PMM 143) in 1660, includes the “hypothesis” we know as “Boyle's Law”. A lifelong and increasingly devout Anglican, Boyle was able to reconcile his scientific interests with his faith, believing natural philosophy offered powerful evidence for the existence of God. In later years, his health declined, and he withdrew from public engagements. The Medicina Hydrostatica (1690) one of his final works, returns to the subject of hydrostatics, more than two decades after the Hydrostatical paradoxes.
The Hydrostatical Paradoxes Made out by New Experiments, for the most part Physical and Easie, published at the request of the Royal Society in 1666, draws on a series of experiments presented two years earlier to the newly founded Society. Setting out to demonstrate and describe the behaviour of fluids under pressure, both the experiments and the treatise that grew out of them were initially designed as an introduction and response to Blaise Pascal’s posthumously published Traité de l'équilibre des liqueurs et de la pesanteur de la masse de l'air (1663), attending in particular to the liquid element of Pascal’s title (arguing that the second, Air, had already been superseded by his own experiments with the air pump; Michael Hunter refers to the Paradoxes as “a kind of sequel to Spring of the Air”). Boyle approves of the Frenchman’s findings, but questions his experimental methods, or their seeming absence. Pascal, “more ingenious than practicable”, theorized about fluid pressure and its applications, “yet I remember not that he expresly [sic] says that he actually try’d them.” (5-6) Although he didn't think of himself as a disciple of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Boyle was nevertheless an early pioneer, in practice, of the scientific methods envisioned by his great predecessor in the Novum Organum (1620). The Paradoxes test Pascal’s theories, and his own, by means of experiments intended to be performed “with […] ease and clearnesse” (6) by anyone wishing to repeat them.
The work is divided into eleven sections (followed by two Appendices), each presenting an experiment and its resulting paradox. Paradox VI, for example, demonstrates that the pressure exerted by a fluid depends not on its total volume but on the height of the fluid column above a given point, so a small amount of water in a tall, narrow tube will – counterintuitively – exert more pressure than a large quantity in a wider vessel. For Boyle, these puzzles were inherent in hydrostatic effects and constitute the paradoxes of the work’s title. It was Isaac Newton, two decades later (in Book Two of the Principia), who would unravel some of these paradoxes, “br[inging] to a satisfactory conclusion the line of development begun by Stevin and advanced by Pascal and Boyle” (Chalmers).
Provenance: From the the library of Dr. & Mrs H. R. Knohl – the “Fox Pointe Collection” – with their elegant bookplate to the front pastedown.
See Michael Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); Alan Chalmers, Intermediate Causes and Explanations: The Key to Understanding the Scientific Revolution, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43 (2012) 551–562; The Bloomsbury Companion to Robert Boyle, edited by Jan-Erik Jones (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).
ESTC R17464; Wing B3985; Fulton 72.
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