"Rey's theory was, indeed, fallacious; still, it was a great step in advance of all that had been done in former ages; there is impressed upon it a stamp of a great and energetic intellect. We must not judge of it by what has been done since; we must think of what was done before; we must think of it as the work of a man removed from a great centre of learning; from the converse of scientific men; from every external source of knowledge; compelled to work alone, to think alone. Let it be remembered, moreover, that experimental science had not yet left its cradle; middle age superstition was still very rife; philosophy founded on reasoning had not given way to philosophy founded on experiment; the syllogism had not yielded its place to induction; the Church was still dominant—still condemned all that was contrary to the philosophy of Aristotle, and thus cramped and curbed the human intellect; the "Novum Organum" had but just appeared; and the "Dialoghi" of Galileo were as yet unknown to the world."
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John Rey
1583 – 1645
John Rey (1583–1645) (or, in French) Jean Rey, was a physician of , France who in 1630 published a tract on , or of metals, after being notified by Brun, an apothecary of Bergerac, France, of Brun's experiments (as early as 1629) on the calcination of tin. Brun had melted 2 pounds six ounces of tin, and after 6 hours the resulting calx weighed seven ounces more than the original tin. More than one hundred and forty years before Antoine Lavoisier, John Rey recognized that in the calcination of le
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