 Boyle was fully aware that some of the central tenets of his view of experiments and his own natural historical methodology derived from the writings of Francis Bacon. But he did not believe that Bacon was the first to practise experimental philosophy. Interestingly, Boyle believed that his approach to natural philosophy found precedents in some of the presocratic philosophers, such as the Greek atomist Democritus and the (shadowy) Phoenician Moschus whom he surmised were experimental corpuscularians (Levitin 2014).