The Golden Chain of Homer

61. In what sense does divided chaotic water become common again?

62. How does the chapter relate form to fire and matter to water?

63. What is preserved as one element changes into another?

64. How do increasing density and increasing subtlety reverse one another?

65. What role is assigned to the signs of the elements?

66. How are innate heat and radical moisture connected with the preceding argument?

67. What makes the regenerated seed both celestial and available in the atmosphere?

68. How does the vocabulary of soul and spirit clarify or complicate the account?

69. Which part of the chapter describes a visible material and which part offers an explanatory principle?

70. What would count as evidence that regeneration renews an origin rather than merely repeats an appearance?

Book I Chapter 6 Heaven and Its Influence

Read with: I.6.

71. What qualities make heaven the most active part of the elemental order?

72. How does heaven communicate with lower conditions through intervening media?

73. Why must ascending vapours meet descending influence?

74. What prevents the circulation from being described as a one-way gift from above?

75. How do rain, dew and atmospheric changes sustain the author’s account?

76. Why does the author compare the movement of elements with the passage of food and excrement?

77. How can what one body rejects nourish another body?

78. What connects the circulation described here with the above and below of the chain?

79. Which parts of the account could be observed, and which require an inference beyond observation?

80. How would the argument change if the lower world could receive influence but give nothing back?

Book I Chapter 7 Air and Its Influence

Read with: I.7.

81. Why is air a necessary medium between heaven and water?

82. What does the author mean by calling air a receptacle of soul and life?

83. How does the account distinguish air from the subtler condition beyond the atmosphere?

84. What relations among density, moisture and spirit explain changes in air?

85. Why does saturation lead to a downward movement?

86. How does the chapter connect respiration with a wider circulation?

87. What is gained by assigning air a reproductive role?

88. What difficulties arise from the German and Latin anatomical names given to air?

89. How should an editor preserve a disagreement between an anatomical word and its gloss?

90. Which relation in this chapter is most important for the later analysis of rainwater?

Book I Chapter 8 Water and Its Effluence

Read with: I.8.

91. Why are water and earth grouped together as receptive principles?

92. How does water mediate between air and earth?

93. What makes a medium compatible with the things it joins?

94. Why might a practitioner need more than one intervening medium?

95. How does the author connect the three kingdoms through nourishment?

96. What changes when plants are taken up into an animal body?

97. How do decay and absorption complete that account of nourishment?

98. What does the womb image add to the description of earth?

99. How should the claim of a common inward nature be distinguished from outward differences?

100. Which example best supports the chapter’s explanation of the passage between kingdoms?

Book I Chapter 9 Earth and Its Effluence

Read with: I.9.

101. How can earth be both the lowest element and a receptacle of celestial activity?

102. What is meant by calling earth coagulated or fixed heaven?

103. How does the chapter infer motion in things that appear still?

104. What connection is drawn between motion, heat and life?

105. How does a detached plant or mineral remain active in the author’s account?

106. Why are earthly vapours assigned both a twofold and a fourfold character?

107. How does one element act as another element’s magnet or solvent?

108. What difference does relative proximity to heaven or earth make to a vapour?

109. Where does the argument require an unobserved process beneath the earth?

110. How would you diagram the reciprocal movements in this chapter without erasing their intermediate stages?

Book I Chapter 10 the Universal Seed Made Manifest

Read with: I.10.

111. Why does rainwater become a privileged subject for examining the universal seed?

112. What does the order of separation reveal about the author’s three principles?

113. How are particular collected products connected with the universal argument?

114. What evidence is offered for identifying the fixed and active sides with salt and nitre?

115. How do the paired columns of the correspondence table organise the preceding account?

116. Which correspondence is a material claim and which is an analogy?

117. How do the father and mother images relate to agent and patient?

118. What does the comparison of hammer and anvil add to the table?

119. What would have to be shown to move from a result in collected water to a result in every natural body?

120. Which distinction in this chapter should guide your reading of the later demonstrations?

Book I Chapter 11 Nitre and Salt in Air and Natural Things

Read with: I.11.

121. What is the principal claim the chapter sets out to demonstrate?

122. How does the author connect the behaviour of particular materials with a universal principle?

123. What part does the distinction between volatile and fixed play in the argument?