Talk:Robert Boyle

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
Robert Boyle was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: March 26, 2006

Boyle's father, the Great Earl of Cork, was not noted as having scientific or philosophical inclinations, so it would be interesting to hear from anyone who knew more about Robert Boyle's father's influence upon Robert himself.

Contents

[edit] Sceptical or Skeptical

While this site upenn.edu shows an original with the c, the spelling of chymist would suggest that the spelling either need remain the same, or modernized, (which I assume is what is involved in the next external link.

A google test show that k is the most used one, and the NCBI shows this listing (for what that's worth).

While dictionary.com lists c as a variant of k, the OED lists otherwise.


That would be because "skeptical" is the American spelling and "sceptical" is the English spelling Baggabagga 13:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opposition to Boyle's work

Everything I read about Mr. Boyle suggests that his theories, laws, experiments, etc. were universally celebrated and accepted as 'the way things were'. My limited studies of other scientists who have engineered similarly groundbreaking ideas--Ohm and Galileo, to name just a couple of the many examples--lead me to believe that it could not have been that easy for Boyle to make all of the innovations he made without any substantial opposition. Granted, his fellow scientists at the Invisible College probably wouldn'tve had any motivation to cause him hardship, but that governments and laymen seemingly accepted his work with no trouble whatsoever seems difficult to understand. One example of opposition is mentioned in the article; are there any others? Did people really just say "oh, well, you must be right, I never looked at it that way"? Or did he ever suffer negative consequences, or at least substantial naysaying, from his work? Disbomber 20:33, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Probably, because most famous people i've read about have at least been taunted about their work. Moses was considered crazy because he was building an ark in the middle of the desert because God told him to. And it ended up raining for 40 days and 40 nights. So Moses wasn't crazy after all, and since he obeyed God, him and his family were the only human beings left on the earth..along with two of every kind of animal on the earth.FroggyJamer 23:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Er, that was Noah with the ark... Niehoff 17:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

It was definitely Moses. It rained frogs, locusts and blood for 40 days and nights, remember? Baggabagga 13:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Failed GA

Needs a bigger Lead and more refrences instead of the 2, one of them 1911 EB that is currently listed --172.162.52.251 23:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Natasha Benoit

Removed a line saying he married Natasha Benoit during his time at Eton, because I couldn't find this verified anywhere (and I also find it hard to believe he got married between the ages of eight and eleven as an Eton student). AniBunny 21:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inventor of the smiley?

See p. 66, line 6 of the Sceptical Chymist. [1]. :) --Itub 12:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)