The Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle—a seventeenth-century polymath who was also a theologian and a devout Christian—refuted the idea that blackness was caused by the curse of Ham, in his book "Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours" (1664). There, Boyle explains that the curse of Ham as an explanation for the complexion of coloured people was but a misinterpretation that was embraced by "vulgar writers", travelers, critics, and also "men of note" of his time. In his work, he challenges that vision, explaining: