| Authorship Notes |
This work, published posthumously under the name of Robert Boyle, contains versions of his âGeneral Headsâ and his âEnquiries about Minesâ, together with a series of inquiries developed by the Royal Society on other topics. These are composed of lists of questions regarding Turkey, Egypt, Guinea, Hungary and Transylvania, Surat, Persia, Virginia and Bermuda, Guiana and Brazil, the Caribbean, and Greenland, published in the âPhilosophical Transactions.â For a discussion of these texts's source materials and relationship to Boyle, see the introductory notes in âThe Works of Robert Boyleâ, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, vol. 5: âThe Origin of Forms and Qualities and other publications of 1665-7â (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999), xli-xlv. The editors state that âit is very difficult to adjudicate what, if anything, was Boyleâs other than what had already appeared in print in publications on the subject, namely in âPhilosophical Transactionsâ in the 1660sâ (xliv). They follow John F. Fulton, âA Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyleâ (1932) in suggesting Denis Papin as the compiler, based on the fact that his scientific instruments were advertised in the text.
This text was widely known throughout Europe. For example, the preface of Bernard's 'Voiages du Nord', described elsewhere in this database, is almost entirely a translation of the list of questions published here.
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