The Golden Chain of Homer

124. How is a reported striking effect made to serve as evidence?

125. What additional reasoning is needed to establish the cause of such an effect?

126. Why should a visible effect be distinguished from an explanation of its mechanism?

127. What can a historical reader learn from the surrounding argument when an operational passage is omitted?

128. How should that editorial omission be disclosed in a bilingual edition?

129. Which assertion in the retained argument depends most directly on the earlier examination of rainwater?

130. What question would you carry from this chapter into the demonstrations involving water and earth?

Book I Chapter 12 Nitre and Salt in Waters and Earths

Read with: I.12.

131. What distinction does the author make between the appearance of water and its concealed principles?

132. How does the treatment of earth contribute to the chapter’s demonstration?

133. What makes a collected residue relevant to the argument about universal seed?

134. Which earlier account is needed to interpret the names given to the products?

135. How does the chapter connect a particular sample with waters and earths generally?

136. What could differences among samples reveal about the limits of that inference?

137. How does the distinction between fixed and volatile organise the evidence?

138. What is assumed when a material is identified through its behaviour?

139. How could you restate the argument without strengthening its conclusion?

140. What remains to be shown before applying the same account to living beings?

Book I Chapter 13 Nitre and Salt in Animals

Read with: I.13.

141. What does the author claim about the material origin of animals?

142. How does the return of animal matter to simpler products support that claim?

143. What relation is assumed between a body’s origin and the products of its destruction?

144. Could the products of an analysis alone establish the original manner of generation?

145. Why does the distinction between universal and particular principles matter here?

146. How are animal forms connected with the broader circulation of nourishment?

147. What does the chapter require the reader to remember about water and spirit?

148. Which part of the demonstration is observational and which is interpretive?

149. What difference would a highly volatile animal product make within this scheme?

150. What question about living form is left after the common principles have been identified?

Book I Chapter 14 Nitre and Salt in Plants

Read with: I.14.

151. Why does the author begin with knowledge attributed to gardeners and farmers?

152. How are dew, rain, water and earth made to explain plant growth?

153. Why does the author deny that bare earth and empty water are sufficient?

154. What is the purpose of comparing treated and untreated seeds?

155. Which conditions would need to remain comparable for that comparison to be persuasive?

156. What is claimed about plant flame and the presence of nitre?

157. Does the appearance of a flame establish the particular explanation offered for it?

158. What do oil, vinegar, spirit and alkali contribute to the analysis of plants?

159. How does the return to universal seed connect this chapter with the opening account of generation?

160. What can an unresolved phrase teach a reader about the limits of editorial certainty?

Book I Chapter 15 Nitre and Salt in Minerals

Read with: I.15.

161. How does increasing earthliness change the behaviour of a principle?

162. What relationship is proposed between fixation and the capacity to burn or give light?

163. How does the author move from the common principles to distinct mineral bodies?

164. What evidence is drawn from mineral dissolution or separation?

165. Why must a mineral’s greater fixity affect the manner of examining it?

166. How does the chapter connect invisible vapour with visible and durable products?

167. What is gained by treating the mineral kingdom as continuous with the other two kingdoms?

168. What difference among kingdoms must still be preserved?

169. Which inference in this demonstration most needs comparison with a particular case?

170. How does this chapter prepare the later, much longer account of mineral generation?

Book I Chapter 16 Putrefaction as a Key

Read with: I.16.

171. Why does the author call putrefaction a principal point, gate and key?

172. What does a key open in the argument of the book?

173. How can one process be assigned a role in both generation and destruction?

174. What changes in the way a subject’s principles are bound together?

175. Why does access to a material’s principles matter to the practitioner?

176. How does this chapter connect with the author’s demand to understand nature before following recipes?

177. What would distinguish a mere loss of form from preparation for another generation?

178. How much explanatory work is carried by the metaphor of opening?

179. What question must a definition of putrefaction answer in the next chapter?

180. Where else in the book would you expect this key to be used?

Book I Chapter 17 the Meaning of Putrefaction

Read with: I.17.

181. Which changes mark putrefaction in the author’s description?

182. How does the author connect moisture with the awakening of activity?

183. What relation does heat bear to the process?