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Full Idea
Explications be most satisfactory that show how the effect is produced by the more primitive affects of matter (bulk, shape and motion) but are not to be despised that deduce them from more familiar qualities such as heat, weight, fluidity, fermentation.
Gist of Idea
The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep
Source
Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:22), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
Book Ref
Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.530
A Reaction
[Compressed, and continued from Idea 16736] So there is a causal structure, and the best explanations go to the bottom of it, but lesser explanations only go half way down. So a very skimpy explanation ('dormative power') is still an explanation.
Related Idea
Idea 16736 Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle]
| 15964 | Boyle's secondary qualities are not illusory, or 'in the mind' [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
| 15965 | Boyle attacked a contemporary belief that powers were occult things [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
| 16735 | In the 17th century, 'disposition' usually just means the spatial arrangement of parts [Boyle, by Pasnau] |
| 15962 | Boyle's term 'texture' is not something you feel, but is unobservable structures of particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
| 15952 | The corpuscles just have shape, size and motion, which explains things without 'sympathies' or 'forces' [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
| 15972 | The corpuscular theory allows motion, but does not include forces between the particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P] |
| 16034 | Form is not a separate substance, but just the manner, modification or 'stamp' of matter [Boyle] |
| 15957 | Essential definitions show the differences that discriminate things, and make them what they are [Boyle] |
| 15960 | Explanation is deducing a phenomenon from some nature better known to us [Boyle] |
| 15953 | To cite a substantial form tells us what produced the effect, but not how it did it [Boyle] |
| 16736 | Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle] |
| 16737 | The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle] |
| 15961 | I don't see how mere moving matter can lead to the bodies of men and animals, and especially their seeds [Boyle] |