Researched
Boyle's Sceptical Chymist
Boyle attacks the alchemists' four elements (1661) and asks chemists to define elements by experiment.
Open in the interactive tree →In The Sceptical Chymist he argued that matter consists of corpuscles and that a substance is an element only if it cannot be broken down. His air-pump work gave gas chemistry its footing, and Lavoisier's table of elements (1789) completed the move.
Prerequisites
- Alchemy & Distillation~800
- Scientific Method~1600-1620
- Vacuum Pumps & Gas Laws1643-1662
Unlocks
- Modern Chemistry (Lavoisier)1789Lavoisier completed Boyle's definition of an element by experiment
Sources
More in Chemistry & Materials · Middle Ages & Renaissance
- Alchemy & Distillation~800
- Gunpowder~900