The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle: In Five Volumes

Robert Boyle; Thomas Birch

London : Printed for A. Millar, 1744.

5 volume set. 1st complete edition of Boyle's works.  Bound in contemporary leather.  Folios, 36 x 23 cm.   Collated: [2], viii, 152, 583, [1] pp., folding plate; [2], 565, [1] pp., 5 folding plates; [4], 652, 5 folding plates; [4], 556, 3 folding plates; [4], 736, folding plate, 42 ff. index.  15 plates.  Altogether, more than 3200 pages. All joints cracked, boards held by cords.  Frontispiece portrait of Boyle. Tile in red and black.  Pages generally clean. Scientific illustrations of Boyle's experiments. Minor toning, mostly to end pages.  Pages are generally in very good condition. 

"The first complete edition … included his posthumous remains and correspondence, with a life of the author founded on materials collected with abortive biographical designs by Burnet and Wotton, and embracing Boyle's unfinished narrative of his early years entitled 'An account of Philatretus during his Minority'" (DNB II, 1030).  Birch's collection became the standard academic edition of Boyle's work for more than two centuries.  Boyle's contribution to modern science cannot be understated.  This work contains Boyle's most notable experiments that laid the foundation of modern chemistry, including: Boyle's Law; The Properties of Air and the Vacuum; the rejection of Aristotle and Paracelsus's views on matter in favor of a modern concept of elements, compounds and mixtures; atoms as the basis of matter; heat as mechanical movement; a continuation of Francis Bacon's principles of rational based experimental science; as well as many other experiments.  

Specifically, the works include: Boyle's air pressure experiment No. 17 in Spring of the Air showing a Torricellian apparatus and an air pump; Experiments Physio-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects, 1662, Boyle's Law;  The Description of the Pneumatick Engin, and it's Use; etc.  Fulton 240. Bibliotheca Sunderlandiana 1915.   ESTC T4460. See Macclesfield, 2510. Armorial book plate of the Right Honorable Francis Greville, Lord Brooke (of Warwick). 

This is an oversized or heavy book, which requires additional postage for international delivery outside the US.