Robert Boyle - Important Works

Important Works

The following are some of the more important of his works:

• 1660 – New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects
• 1661 – The Sceptical Chymist
• 1663 – Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (followed by a second part in 1671)
• 1664 – Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark
• 1665 – New Experiments and Observations upon Cold
• 1666 – Hydrostatical Paradoxes
• 1666 – Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy
• 1669 – a continuation of his work on the spring of air
• 1670 – demonstrated that a reduction in ambient pressure could lead to bubble formation in living tissue. This description of a viper in a vacuum was the first recorded description of decompression sickness.
• 1670 – tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things, the Temperature of the Subterraneal and Submarine Regions, the Bottom of the Sea, &c. with an Introduction to the History of Particular Qualities
• 1672 – Origin and Virtues of Gems
• 1673 – Essays of the Strange Subtilty, Great Efficacy, Determinate Nature of Effluviums
• 1674 – two volumes of tracts on the Saltiness of the Sea, Suspicions about the Hidden Realities of the Air, Cold, Celestial Magnets, Animadversions on Hobbes's Problemata de Vacuo
• 1676 – Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Particular Qualities, including some notes on electricity and magnetism
• 1678 – Observations upon an artificial Substance that Shines without any Preceding Illustration
• 1680 – the Aerial Noctiluca
• 1682 – New Experiments and Observations upon the Icy Noctiluca
• 1682 – a further continuation of his work on the air
• 1684 – Memoirs for the Natural History of the Human Blood
• 1685 – Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters
• 1686 – A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
• 1690 – Medicina Hydrostatica
• 1691 – Experimentae et Observationes Physicae

Among his religious and philosophical writings were:

• 1648/1660 – Seraphic Love, written in 1648, but not published until 1660
• 1663 – An Essay upon the Style of the Holy Scriptures
• 1664 – Excellence of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy
• 1665 – Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, which was ridiculed by Swift in A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, and by Butler in An Occasional Reflection on Dr Charlton's Feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College
• 1675 – Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, with a Discourse about the Possibility of the Resurrection
• 1687 – The Martyrdom of Theodora And Didymus
• 1690 – The Christian Virtuoso