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Almost all philosophers, ancient and modern, fearing an eternal confusion of the elements, were they all endowed with weight, conceived the two upper… - Jean Rey
" "Almost all philosophers, ancient and modern, fearing an eternal confusion of the elements, were they all endowed with weight, conceived the two uppermost to be furnished with a certain levity, by means of which they bounded up on high, each to occupy its peculiar place, like as the two lower ones are pushed downwards by their own weight. But having clearly shewn in the last Essay, that levity is not necessary for that effect, weight alone being sufficient, I embrace the maxim, which they themselves have prudently laid down, that we should never multiply existences unnecessarily; assuming that God and Nature do nothing in vain, (which they also teach.) I think it would be otherwise were we to admit levity, since it is of no use.
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About Jean Rey
John Rey (1583–1645) (or, in French) Jean Rey, was a physician of , France who in 1630 published a tract on , or of metals, after being notified by Brun, an apothecary of Bergerac, France, of Brun's experiments (as early as 1629) on the calcination of tin. Brun had melted 2 pounds six ounces of tin, and after 6 hours the resulting calx weighed seven ounces more than the original tin. More than one hundred and forty years before Antoine Lavoisier, John Rey recognized that in the calcination of lead or tin, part of the air provided an increase in mass to the calcined metal oxide. His work was eclipsed first by the phlogiston theory and then later, by Lavoisier's discoveries disproving the existence of phlogiston. Lavoisier's oxygen theory confirmed Rey's earlier report, of which Lavoisier claimed he was unaware. After the presentation of Lavoisier's 1775 memoir at the Académie des sciences, (1725-1798) wrote a letter to Abbé , director of the journal Observations sur la Physique, sur l'Histoire naturelle and sur les Arts, to ask him to publish an update notice, recognizing the priority Rey's work.
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Additional quotes by Jean Rey
I answer, and proudly maintain, "That this increase of weight comes from the air, thickened and made heavy, and in some measure rendered adhesive in the vessel by the violent and long—continued heat of the furnace—which air mixes with the calx (its union being assisted by the continual stirring), and attaches itself to its smallest particles—no otherwise than as water, when sand is thrown into it, makes it heavier by moistening it, and adhering to its smallest grains."
Plants too ought to become heavy by death, the celestial heat being expelled: but the contrary is evident to all. As to the increased weight of animals by death, the true cause, far remote from that which increases the weight of lead when calcined, is this: in the living animal its natural heat subtilizes, dilates, and augments the dimensions of the humours, the flesh, and every thing in it capable of dilatation—but losing this heat by death, the whole on this becoming cold, contracts and diminishes, whence the increase of weight, as I have often said already. What is there like this in lead?
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