caa a22 4500 606224076 CHVBK 20210128101141.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00407-015-0159-7 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00407-015-0159-7 Chalmers Alan Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Carslaw Building F07, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut Robert Boyle's mechanical account of hydrostatics and pneumatics: fluidity, the spring of the air and their relationship to the concept of pressure [Elektronische Daten] [Alan Chalmers] This article in an attempt to identify the precise way in which Robert Boyle provided a mechanical account of the features that distinguish liquids and air from solids and from each other. In his pneumatics, Boyle articulated his notion of the ‘spring' of the air for that purpose. Pressure appeared there only in a common, rather than in a technical, sense. It was when he turned to hydrostatics that Boyle found the need to introduce a technical sense of pressure to capture the fluidity of water which, unlike air, lacked a significant spring. Pressure, understood as representing the state of a liquid within the body of it rather than at its surface, enabled Boyle to trace the transmission of hydrostatic forces through liquids and thereby give a mechanical account of that transmission according to his understanding of the term. This was a major step towards the technical sense of pressure that was to be adopted in Newton's hydrostatics and in fluid mechanics thereafter. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2015 Archive for History of Exact Sciences Springer Berlin Heidelberg 69/5(2015-09-01), 429-454 0003-9519 69:5<429 2015 69 407 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-015-0159-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-015-0159-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Chalmers Alan Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Carslaw Building F07, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Archive for History of Exact Sciences Springer Berlin Heidelberg 69/5(2015-09-01), 429-454 0003-9519 69:5<429 2015 69 407