{"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":"<p>A rather slipshod <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/08\/01\/science\/01alch.html?ex=1312084800&#038;en=4445e5f8f9c7b3c0&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss\">article in the New York Times about alchemy<\/a> manages to perpetuate a typical error: it calls <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Boyle\">Robert Boyle<\/a> a &#8220;British chemist&#8221;. This is an error. He was born in 1627 in Munster, in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingdom_of_Ireland\">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, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingdom_of_Scotland\">Scotland<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingdom_of_England\">England<\/a>. The &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingdom_of_Great_Britain\">Kingdom of Great Britain<\/a>&#8221; did not come into existence until 1707, and the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland\">United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland<\/a>&#8221; did not exist until 1801. In 1627, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/British\">British<\/a>&#8221; as a geographic designation referred to those people born on the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Britain\">Island of Great Britain<\/a> within territories territories controlled by the Kingdoms of Scotland and England.<\/p>\n<p>As usual with so many articles of this nature, it manages to invoke the ancient <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alchemy#Alchemy_in_the_Greek_world\">Hellenistic alchemists<\/a> but then jumps 2000 years to the European, Renaissance alchemists. By doing this it avoid mentioning any of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alchemy#Alchemy_in_the_Islamic_world\">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 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jabir_ibn_Hayyan\">distillation<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Al-Razi\">ethanol<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aqua_regia\">aqua regia<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ibn_Al-Haitham#Optics\">intromissive ray theory of light optics<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Islamic_science#Scientific_method\">scientific method based on research, citation and peer review<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A rather slipshod article in the New York Times about alchemy manages to perpetuate a typical error: it calls Robert Boyle a &#8220;British chemist&#8221;. This is an error. He was born in 1627 in&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}