Robert Boyle (1627–1691), an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, took a diamond to bed with him. He reports this in his book on colours in much the same matter-of-fact voice he uses to describe his experiments with a candle. He was interested in a particular stone that could give off a little light after he had taken it into the dark. How much did he have to do to persuade it to shine?
Boyle tried several conditions in succession. He compared the effects of a candle and the heat of a fire with the light the diamond gave after rubbing. In another trial he used a thick piece of iron which had been thoroughly heated but was still below the point at which it would glow visibly. Working in a very dark place, he held the diamond above the iron for some time. At last he could make out a glimmer, fainter than in his earlier trials. For his eleventh observation he turned to the simplest source of warmth at his disposal.
Eleventhly, I also brought it to some kind of Glimmering Light, by taking it into Bed with me, and holding it a good while upon a warm part of my Naked Body.
– Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, 1670, p. 416.[1]
The indefinite expression “some kind” records how little light Boyle could actually see. Details which might otherwise seem incidental matter here. How long was the stone in contact with his skin? How dark were its surroundings? Only with such particulars can a reader begin to compare the observations. Boyle immediately goes on to ask a different question. Would the diamond attract a slender hair when a candle flame had made it luminous? On this occasion the hair stayed still. We can follow one faint gleam as it gives rise to two distinct inquiries. One concerns the conditions under which a stone shines, the other a different power the experimenter might have expected the same stone to display.
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Believe one who has tried: you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from masters.
Bernhard von Clairvaux (1090/91–1153)
English translation by Samuel J. Eales
Such stillness! Into the rocks sinks the voice of the cicadas.
The age of bodies lies in their rigidity. Every act of becoming solid is a process of time, of history.
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810)
Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse eines jungen Physikers · p. 81
Our translation
A crystal grows together more deftly and regularly than a bee builds or a spider weaves.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803)
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit · p. 163
Our translation
Give the crystal the power of forming ideas. Its highest plan for the world will be crystallisation, its divinity the most beautiful form a crystal can take.
The water of crystallisation that holds the structure together is the tear of a moment. Once it has dried up, the structure has fallen apart.
In blue crystal The pale man dwells, his cheek leaning against his stars; Or he bows his head in purple sleep.
But the earth’s shaping power does not confine itself to one figure. It knows the whole of geometry and is practised in it.
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Strena seu de nive sexangula · 1611 · p. 23
Our translation from the Latin
Having rejected all these views, we say with Constantine and certain others that the power of a stone arises from its very kind and substantial form.
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280)
De mineralibus · 1519 · unpaginated
Our translation from the Latin. Abbreviations in the source text expanded.
Many of those mineral crystallisations, such as clusters of spar, glass-head ore and flowers of iron, often yield forms as beautiful as art could ever conceive; and the glory in the cave of Antiparos is merely the product of water seeping through beds of gypsum.
Yet it does not ward off influence from without; warmth and light penetrate the impenetrable.
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