Robert Boyle (1627-91) was a British chemist and physicist. Boyle was a major figure in seventeenth century natural philosophy.
He replaced the vacuous explanations characteristic of what was termed "Peripateticism by explanations employing the principles of bodies, matter, and motion.
He argued that for instance a chemical substance's behavior is varied because it has a certain mechanical structure. When the chemical meets things with other mechanical structure, it reacts in certain ways.
Boyle's work was an important link in the development before Locke of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Locke accepted this view provisionally and remained curious as to why atoms cohere as unchanging things.
In other words why is it the case that when an atom hits another atom it does not fall apart?
In addition to Boyle, Locke was also influenced by the conclusions of Newton whose work had been published prior to Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding." Newton had proposed what was known as the "inverse square law" which stated, "Every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe with a force that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." Newton and Boyle attempted to explain the world in terms of its structure rather than its qualities and believed that our experiences of qualities such as color, scent and so on can be explained in terms of the structure rather than as entities distinct from the structures.
Locke adopted a similar point of view. He distinguished between primary and secondary qualities.
Locke accepted the proposals of Boyle and Newton as true universally He attempted to explain how things behave and made great use of mathematics and the application of mathematics which for Locke was "science."
Locke differed once again from Descartes in that Descartes argued that geometry was part of the science of space but Locke science is part of that created by us.
For Locke, science is not concerned with the nature of things or part of the external world but is part of that which is created by us by our own ideas.
