The Nautilus article on the same list [1] suggests that Boyle may have been referring to architecture - building structures larger . I interpret it as humans be

The Nautilus article on the same list [1] suggests that Boyle may have been referring to architecture - building structures larger . I interpret it as humans being able to leave a large mark on the universe, and I think we've achieved it and are improving on that ability. The man had a fantastic imagination, but I wouldn't be surprised if he imagined 50-foot men digging canals with this statement. Boyle would have been familiar large structures like Old St. Paul's Cathedral, whose spire stretched to almost 150m high, or the HMS Britannia, a 51m 1620-ton ship. These and other projects would have been completed with manpower and horsepower: 80kg, 100 watt men and 500kg, 700-watt horses doing work. I think Boyle may have been imagining 8,000 kg, 10,000 watt men doing the same, and been unable to imagine an 80 kg man sitting in a machine that did the work. I think that would have been checked off his list if his life had been prolonged long enough to see factories, trains, and equipment operating by steam power. It would the 800m Burj Kalifa or a 333m 100,000 ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, effected not by men pulling on ropes but by gigantick hydraulic heavy equipment. A person can pull a lever and lift more than a thousand tons with a crane, or dig up cubic meters of earth effortlessly. And I don't know if anyone has ever effected more useful power than a Saturn V launch, which projected humanity's reach out to the moon, and the Voyager missions have subsequently reached out to 22 billion km and are currently adding 17 kilometers to that number every second. [1]: http://nautil.us/blog/has-science-realized-this-350_year_old-alchemist-wish-list http://nautil.us/blog/has-science-realized-this-350_year_old...