Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
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.
English
Collect this quote
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.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Jean Rey
I imagine there are many persons who would have been startled (effarouchées) at the mere statement of this answer, had I given it in the outset, that will now receive it willingly, being, as I may say, tamed (apprivoisées) and rendered tractable, by the evident truth of the preceding essays. For doubtless they whose minds were preoccupied with the opinion that air is absolutely light, would have rushed to the encounter, exclaiming, Why do we not extract heat from cold, white from black, light from darkness, if from air, a thing absolutely light, we can extract so much weight? And they, who might have given credit to the weight of air, would have been unable to persuade themselves, that it could ever increase the weight of a substance balanced in itself.
For this matter, every where filling the space closed in by the curvature of heaven, is continually pushed, by its own weight, towards the centre of the world. Earth, it is true, as the heaviest, readily occupies this situation, and forcing its fellow-elements to retire, causes water, the second in weight, to be also second in place; so that the air, driven from the lowest, as well as the second station, holds the third place, leaving the highest region to be occupied by fire, the lightest of all.
Loading...