Milestones of Science Books

BOYLE, Robert.

New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the air, and their Effects ... in a New Pnuematical [sic] Engine.

London: Miles Flesher for Richard Davis, 1685.

3rd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002505

Three parts in one volume. 4to (196 x 165 mm). [16], 203 [1]; [12], 117 [1], [2]; [8], 102, [2] pp., half-title and 2 engraved plates (one folding) bound after title, blank 2V4, and final leaf listing the author's publications. Light browning, first gathering working loose and final 4 leaves softened and chipped at upper inner corner, first plate chipped at head. Contemporary sheep, rebacked (boards and extremities rubbed, corners scuffed). Provenance: Thomas Harrison of Queen's College, Cambridge (probably the Secretary of the Royal Institution who was an anti-slavery campaigner, 1771-1824), bookplate to front pastedown; The library of Hugh Selbourne (small ink stamp to half-title verso). ----

Fulton 15; Wing B4000; (cf. PMM 143 for second ed.) - THIRD EDITION. "Boyle's New Experiments Physico-Mechanical... recounted experiments using a vacuum chamber or 'air pump' which he constructed with the assistance of Hooke. Rejecting the scholastic notion that nature could not tolerate a vacuum, he showed how it was perfectly possible to produce one, and this enabled him to illustrate the characteristics and functions of the air by studying the effects of its withdrawal on flame, light, and living creatures. He also argued that certain characteristics of the air could only be explained in terms of the ingenious hypothesis that it had a certain weight and 'spring'" (ODNB). This edition includes his controversial tracts against Linus and Hobbes, the former provoking an attack to which Boyle wrote a defence that contained 'Boyle's law', first published in the second edition.

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