{"id":2499,"date":"2006-08-02T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2006-08-02T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T17:05:00","slug":"robert-boyle-irish-chemist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2006\/08\/02\/13\/05\/robert-boyle-irish-chemist\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Boyle, Irish Chemist"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rather slipshod article in the New York Times about alchemy<\/a> manages to perpetuate a typical error: it calls Robert Boyle<\/a> a “British chemist”. This is an error. He was born in 1627 in Munster, in the Kingdom of Ireland<\/a>. He should properly be referred to as an Irish chemist. At that time, the political entities in the region consisted of the Kingdoms of Ireland, Scotland<\/a>, and England<\/a>. The “Kingdom of Great Britain<\/a>” did not come into existence until 1707, and the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland<\/a>” did not exist until 1801. In 1627, “British<\/a>” as a geographic designation referred to those people born on the Island of Great Britain<\/a> within territories territories controlled by the Kingdoms of Scotland and England.<\/p>\n

As usual with so many articles of this nature, it manages to invoke the ancient Hellenistic alchemists<\/a> but then jumps 2000 years to the European, Renaissance alchemists. By doing this it avoid mentioning any of the Muslim alchemists<\/a>, who carried forward the Roman and Greek science, researching chemistry and physics for over a millenia. Along the way they discovered or perfected such such things as distillation<\/a>, ethanol<\/a>, aqua regia<\/a>, the intromissive ray theory of light optics<\/a>, and a scientific method based on research, citation and peer review<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rather slipshod article in the New York Times about alchemy manages to perpetuate a typical error: it calls Robert Boyle a “British chemist”. This is an error. He was born in 1627 in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t