Like Sir Isaac Newton whose work concludes this collection, the alchemical interests and writings of Robert Boyle have undergone major reevaluation in recent years. For more than two and a half centuries following his death in 1691, Boyle's alchemical pursuits were conveniently overlooked by scientists and historians alike, who preferred to see him in a more rational, progressive, “mechanistic” light that precluded attention to such antiquated “occult” thought systems as alchemy. Consequently, beginning with the eighteenth century, little serious concern was shown for the Sceptical Chymist (1661) and the work included here, An Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold (1678), which were deemed unsuitable pastimes for the “Father of Modern Chemistry.”

This stereotypical portrait of a “Newtonized,” “Enlightenment” Boyle began to evaporate in the last decades of the twentieth century through the efforts of a new generation of scholars and editors, led by Michael Hunter and Lawrence M. Principe. The thesis of Principe's recent book, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest, for example, is that Boyle's alchemical interests “were serious and persistent, constituting a significant and influential dimension of his life, thought, and works” (12). Moreover, his alchemy was of a distinctly traditional type, grounded in chrysopoeia or gold-making through use of the philosopher's stone. In short, Boyle the alchemist writes as an “adept,” including use of secret codes, and – most remarkable of all – he displays keen interest in connections between alchemy and the supernatural world (Principe 188-213).