Douglas John Casson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691144740
- eISBN:
- 9781400836888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691144740.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter demonstrates how Locke's gradual move away from his early political positions parallels his encounter with a new notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. This shift took ...
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This chapter demonstrates how Locke's gradual move away from his early political positions parallels his encounter with a new notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. This shift took place as Locke became involved with a group of researchers surrounding Robert Boyle who were adopting a “new probability” linked to the evidential testimony of natural signs or nondemonstrable facts. Although their vocabulary grew from medieval notions of probability, these experimentalists unwittingly secularized practical rationality in a way that transformed scientific, religious, and political justification. This shift hinged on an assumption that evidence presented to the senses can be seen as a natural deliverance emanating from an ultimately inaccessible, yet divinely ordained structure of order.Less
This chapter demonstrates how Locke's gradual move away from his early political positions parallels his encounter with a new notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. This shift took place as Locke became involved with a group of researchers surrounding Robert Boyle who were adopting a “new probability” linked to the evidential testimony of natural signs or nondemonstrable facts. Although their vocabulary grew from medieval notions of probability, these experimentalists unwittingly secularized practical rationality in a way that transformed scientific, religious, and political justification. This shift hinged on an assumption that evidence presented to the senses can be seen as a natural deliverance emanating from an ultimately inaccessible, yet divinely ordained structure of order.
Stephen Gaukroger
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199296446
- eISBN:
- 9780191711985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296446.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
The development of the persona of the natural philosopher is the key to understanding how natural philosophy becomes inserted into European culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. This chapter shows ...
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The development of the persona of the natural philosopher is the key to understanding how natural philosophy becomes inserted into European culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. This chapter shows in detail that notions of truth and justification turn just as much on conceptions of intellectual honesty as they do on notions of method. It looks primarily at the standing of the natural philosopher in Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Royal Society apologists, focusing on claims that the natural philosopher requires a kind of intellectual honesty lacking in scholastic natural philosophy. This is closely tied in with one of the distinctive features of early-modern natural philosophy: that questions that had earlier been seen in terms of truth are now discussed instead in terms of impartiality and objectivity.Less
The development of the persona of the natural philosopher is the key to understanding how natural philosophy becomes inserted into European culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. This chapter shows in detail that notions of truth and justification turn just as much on conceptions of intellectual honesty as they do on notions of method. It looks primarily at the standing of the natural philosopher in Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Royal Society apologists, focusing on claims that the natural philosopher requires a kind of intellectual honesty lacking in scholastic natural philosophy. This is closely tied in with one of the distinctive features of early-modern natural philosophy: that questions that had earlier been seen in terms of truth are now discussed instead in terms of impartiality and objectivity.
Richard Yeo
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106564
- eISBN:
- 9780226106731
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226106731.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book explores the note-taking practices of English virtuosi and their contribution to the ethos of early modern science. By interpreting the extensive notes and papers of Samuel Hartlib, John ...
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This book explores the note-taking practices of English virtuosi and their contribution to the ethos of early modern science. By interpreting the extensive notes and papers of Samuel Hartlib, John Evelyn, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Robert Hooke it shows how, in spite of occasional anti-bookish rhetoric, they emulated Renaissance practices of excerpting from texts to build storehouses of material in personal notebooks (usually commonplace books). It argues that they adjusted this humanist method in response to Francis Bacon's call for the compilation of natural histories as a basis for scientific theories. In developing a new rationale for collective (as well as individual) note-taking, they reflected on the best use of memory, recollection, notebooks, and other records in the gathering and analysis of the empirical information sought by the early Royal Society of London. In recognizing the challenges of collaborative inquiry, they defended the need for long-term accumulation of material, finding support for this in the ancient Hippocratic tradition. By thinking about note-taking, the English virtuosi thus confronted some of the challenges and opportunities of the nascent empirical sciences.Less
This book explores the note-taking practices of English virtuosi and their contribution to the ethos of early modern science. By interpreting the extensive notes and papers of Samuel Hartlib, John Evelyn, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Robert Hooke it shows how, in spite of occasional anti-bookish rhetoric, they emulated Renaissance practices of excerpting from texts to build storehouses of material in personal notebooks (usually commonplace books). It argues that they adjusted this humanist method in response to Francis Bacon's call for the compilation of natural histories as a basis for scientific theories. In developing a new rationale for collective (as well as individual) note-taking, they reflected on the best use of memory, recollection, notebooks, and other records in the gathering and analysis of the empirical information sought by the early Royal Society of London. In recognizing the challenges of collaborative inquiry, they defended the need for long-term accumulation of material, finding support for this in the ancient Hippocratic tradition. By thinking about note-taking, the English virtuosi thus confronted some of the challenges and opportunities of the nascent empirical sciences.
William R. Newman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691174877
- eISBN:
- 9780691185033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691174877.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter provides a sustained treatment of the self-styled English “naturalist” Robert Boyle, and his contribution to Newton's optical research. It is little appreciated that Boyle's analytical ...
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This chapter provides a sustained treatment of the self-styled English “naturalist” Robert Boyle, and his contribution to Newton's optical research. It is little appreciated that Boyle's analytical approach to chymistry had a profound impact on Newton's optics in the second half of the 1660s, the period that Newton considered “the prime of my age for invention.” It is argued that Newton transferred Boyle's analysis and resynthesis or “redintegration” of materials such as niter to the realm of light. The chapter also establishes the influence of Boyle's chymistry on Newton's experimental methodology, and presents Boyle's and Newton's work against the backdrop of scholastic matter theory and optics in order to underscore the epoch-making character of the new color theory, which resulted in the overthrow of two millennia of research on the subject.Less
This chapter provides a sustained treatment of the self-styled English “naturalist” Robert Boyle, and his contribution to Newton's optical research. It is little appreciated that Boyle's analytical approach to chymistry had a profound impact on Newton's optics in the second half of the 1660s, the period that Newton considered “the prime of my age for invention.” It is argued that Newton transferred Boyle's analysis and resynthesis or “redintegration” of materials such as niter to the realm of light. The chapter also establishes the influence of Boyle's chymistry on Newton's experimental methodology, and presents Boyle's and Newton's work against the backdrop of scholastic matter theory and optics in order to underscore the epoch-making character of the new color theory, which resulted in the overthrow of two millennia of research on the subject.
Catherine Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238811
- eISBN:
- 9780191716492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238811.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter presents an example of the manner in which the purely hypothetical atom of the ancients was introduced into the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society. Lucretius had posited that ...
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This chapter presents an example of the manner in which the purely hypothetical atom of the ancients was introduced into the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society. Lucretius had posited that the ambient air contained a mixture of toxic and salubrious particles that were taken in by the human body, explaining contagious illness and poisoning. Both Robert Boyle and John Mayow devised experiments with the aim of ascertaining the characteristics and powers of these invisible particles. Mayow's intelligent and prescient speculations regarding the vital component in the atmosphere, the ‘aerial niter’, were however repudiated by Boyle as inconsistent with the pure form of corpuscularianism Boyle himself advocated.Less
This chapter presents an example of the manner in which the purely hypothetical atom of the ancients was introduced into the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society. Lucretius had posited that the ambient air contained a mixture of toxic and salubrious particles that were taken in by the human body, explaining contagious illness and poisoning. Both Robert Boyle and John Mayow devised experiments with the aim of ascertaining the characteristics and powers of these invisible particles. Mayow's intelligent and prescient speculations regarding the vital component in the atmosphere, the ‘aerial niter’, were however repudiated by Boyle as inconsistent with the pure form of corpuscularianism Boyle himself advocated.
William R. Newman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691174877
- eISBN:
- 9780691185033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691174877.003.0022
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Robert Boyle was one of the most famous scientists in Britain, known for his experimental expertise and for his prominent role in the Royal Society, and also a semicloseted seeker of the ...
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Robert Boyle was one of the most famous scientists in Britain, known for his experimental expertise and for his prominent role in the Royal Society, and also a semicloseted seeker of the philosophers' stone. This chapter considers Newton's relationship with Boyle in the light of both men's attempts to arrive at a “sophic mercury” that would in principle dissolve gold into its primordial constituents and make it possible for the noble metal to “ferment,” as Newton says in his short text of 1692, De natura acidorum. The two major English representatives of public science in the seventeenth century had very different ideas about the path to chrysopoeia, though both, in the end, were alchemists in the fullest sense of the term.Less
Robert Boyle was one of the most famous scientists in Britain, known for his experimental expertise and for his prominent role in the Royal Society, and also a semicloseted seeker of the philosophers' stone. This chapter considers Newton's relationship with Boyle in the light of both men's attempts to arrive at a “sophic mercury” that would in principle dissolve gold into its primordial constituents and make it possible for the noble metal to “ferment,” as Newton says in his short text of 1692, De natura acidorum. The two major English representatives of public science in the seventeenth century had very different ideas about the path to chrysopoeia, though both, in the end, were alchemists in the fullest sense of the term.
Richard Yeo
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106564
- eISBN:
- 9780226106731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226106731.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter discusses Robert Boyle's mode of note-taking and his ideas about the relationships between notes, memory, and the communication of scientific information. Like other early modern ...
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This chapter discusses Robert Boyle's mode of note-taking and his ideas about the relationships between notes, memory, and the communication of scientific information. Like other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extracts and empirical information, but he did not maintain large commonplace books of the kind recommended by the humanists; nor did he publicize an account of his note-taking methods. Boyle relied on what he called ‘loose notes, but also kept such notes in ‘workdiaries’, sometimes conceived as ‘centuries’, or sets of 100 entries, as also used by Francis Bacon. In this way, his notes played the dual function of both prompting memory and relieving it. Boyle relied on both memory and notes as prompts to recollection, and as ways of securing the steps of a train of thought or argument. However, he also believed that some of his loose notes could be useful to others.Less
This chapter discusses Robert Boyle's mode of note-taking and his ideas about the relationships between notes, memory, and the communication of scientific information. Like other early modern virtuosi, Boyle made copious notes comprising both textual extracts and empirical information, but he did not maintain large commonplace books of the kind recommended by the humanists; nor did he publicize an account of his note-taking methods. Boyle relied on what he called ‘loose notes, but also kept such notes in ‘workdiaries’, sometimes conceived as ‘centuries’, or sets of 100 entries, as also used by Francis Bacon. In this way, his notes played the dual function of both prompting memory and relieving it. Boyle relied on both memory and notes as prompts to recollection, and as ways of securing the steps of a train of thought or argument. However, he also believed that some of his loose notes could be useful to others.
William R. Newman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691174877
- eISBN:
- 9780691185033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691174877.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter examines the young Newton from his education at the Free Grammar School in Grantham during the 1650s up to his student years at Trinity College, Cambridge, beginning in 1661, in order to ...
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This chapter examines the young Newton from his education at the Free Grammar School in Grantham during the 1650s up to his student years at Trinity College, Cambridge, beginning in 1661, in order to see how his interest in chymistry originated and developed. The standard view is that Newton was stimulated to his early interest in chymistry by the works of Robert Boyle. However, the recent discovery of an anonymous and hitherto unexamined manuscript, Treatise of Chymistry, provides new evidence showing that Newton was already compiling chymical dictionaries before reading Boyle's works on the subject. The chapter also considers what could be Newton's earliest notes on chrysopoeia, namely, his abstracts and summaries of the works attributed to the supposed fifteenth-century Benedictine Basilius Valentinus. Finally, it attempts to pin down some of the early contacts in Cambridge and London who transmitted the manuscripts and other texts to Newton that provided a major part of his alchemical knowledge.Less
This chapter examines the young Newton from his education at the Free Grammar School in Grantham during the 1650s up to his student years at Trinity College, Cambridge, beginning in 1661, in order to see how his interest in chymistry originated and developed. The standard view is that Newton was stimulated to his early interest in chymistry by the works of Robert Boyle. However, the recent discovery of an anonymous and hitherto unexamined manuscript, Treatise of Chymistry, provides new evidence showing that Newton was already compiling chymical dictionaries before reading Boyle's works on the subject. The chapter also considers what could be Newton's earliest notes on chrysopoeia, namely, his abstracts and summaries of the works attributed to the supposed fifteenth-century Benedictine Basilius Valentinus. Finally, it attempts to pin down some of the early contacts in Cambridge and London who transmitted the manuscripts and other texts to Newton that provided a major part of his alchemical knowledge.
Jayne Elizabeth Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226476698
- eISBN:
- 9780226476711
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226476711.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter examines the works of Robert Boyle and John Milton in an exploration of the definition of literary atmosphere. A closer study of Paradise Lost reveals that Adam and Eve’s loss of Eden ...
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This chapter examines the works of Robert Boyle and John Milton in an exploration of the definition of literary atmosphere. A closer study of Paradise Lost reveals that Adam and Eve’s loss of Eden also resulted in a loss of “pure” air. Satan is portrayed as having experienced Eve’s “air” in an atmospheric sense, and Milton invokes this experience of air repeatedly—which in the end creates both an obstruction and a condition of experience. In effect, Milton’s work and “air” are the result of an age of literary experiment that would cohere with a larger body of new experiments in natural philosophy. In the case of Boyle, his purpose was to show that matter was all there was to it, endowing air with physical attributes of weight through a visualizing machine: the air pump. The chapter explores, then, how Milton and Boyle influenced the discussion that brought forth the making of literary atmosphere.Less
This chapter examines the works of Robert Boyle and John Milton in an exploration of the definition of literary atmosphere. A closer study of Paradise Lost reveals that Adam and Eve’s loss of Eden also resulted in a loss of “pure” air. Satan is portrayed as having experienced Eve’s “air” in an atmospheric sense, and Milton invokes this experience of air repeatedly—which in the end creates both an obstruction and a condition of experience. In effect, Milton’s work and “air” are the result of an age of literary experiment that would cohere with a larger body of new experiments in natural philosophy. In the case of Boyle, his purpose was to show that matter was all there was to it, endowing air with physical attributes of weight through a visualizing machine: the air pump. The chapter explores, then, how Milton and Boyle influenced the discussion that brought forth the making of literary atmosphere.
Richard Yeo
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106564
- eISBN:
- 9780226106731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226106731.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John ...
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This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John Beale. The young Boyle thought and wrote about the mental and moral cultivation of the mind, independent of the use of notes. He was therefore potentially receptive to Beale's emphasis on memory training, and on abbreviation, reduction and systematic display of information. However, Boyle was suspicious of premature systems and also aware of the need for rich empirical detail gathered over a lifetime. Moreover, in Boyle's case, deep personal memory consolidated by his episodic memory, enriched his scientific thinking.Less
This chapter considers Robert Boyle's views on memory and note-taking in the light of his relationship with Samuel Hartlib, and especially as revealed in his correspondence in the 1660s with John Beale. The young Boyle thought and wrote about the mental and moral cultivation of the mind, independent of the use of notes. He was therefore potentially receptive to Beale's emphasis on memory training, and on abbreviation, reduction and systematic display of information. However, Boyle was suspicious of premature systems and also aware of the need for rich empirical detail gathered over a lifetime. Moreover, in Boyle's case, deep personal memory consolidated by his episodic memory, enriched his scientific thinking.
Margaret C. Jacob
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195117257
- eISBN:
- 9780199785995
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195117255.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Because some historians of 17th-century science did not understand the vast differences in the political positions taken by Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes, they concluded that not much difference ...
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Because some historians of 17th-century science did not understand the vast differences in the political positions taken by Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes, they concluded that not much difference would have resulted had Hobbes’s absolutism become the English form of government in the 17th century. The actual autonomy of parliament and relative freedom of civil society seemed relatively insignificant. Not being an historian but undeterred by his inexperience, Bruno Latour jumped into the field and argued that modernity, representative institutions, and the freedom of civil society, like the science of either of these great theorists, offered little that was distinctively different from the forms of government in France or Spain at the time. “We Have Never Been Modern” argued that position, and this essay seeks to show how wrong-headed it is.Less
Because some historians of 17th-century science did not understand the vast differences in the political positions taken by Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes, they concluded that not much difference would have resulted had Hobbes’s absolutism become the English form of government in the 17th century. The actual autonomy of parliament and relative freedom of civil society seemed relatively insignificant. Not being an historian but undeterred by his inexperience, Bruno Latour jumped into the field and argued that modernity, representative institutions, and the freedom of civil society, like the science of either of these great theorists, offered little that was distinctively different from the forms of government in France or Spain at the time. “We Have Never Been Modern” argued that position, and this essay seeks to show how wrong-headed it is.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226576961
- eISBN:
- 9780226577036
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226577036.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The matter-theory of the physicist refers to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life's work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. ...
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The matter-theory of the physicist refers to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life's work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. Although Boyle's mechanical philosophy certainly owed a heavy debt to other thinkers in the “new science,” particularly Gassendi and Descartes, the fact is that the main experimental support for Boyle's matter theory flowed in a direct line from the scholastic alchemical tradition articulated and refined by Daniel Sennert. This chapter shows that Boyle relied on Sennert's reductions to the pristine state in two quite different, though related, ways. First, the Sennertian examples of metals simply dissolved in acids and then reduced or metals combined with other substances and then restored to their former state by reduction, provided Boyle with the necessary evidence to make the claim that “minima of their own genus” really did exist in nature. Second, he extends the reduction to the pristine state to form an integral part of his program of revealing the mechanical origins of “particular qualities.” The chapter also shows how the British naturalist has reformulated the Sennertian reductio in pristinum statum to become an important weapon in his antihylomorphic arsenal.Less
The matter-theory of the physicist refers to the very corpuscularian philosophy to which Boyle devoted his life's work, the explanation of phenomena in terms of matter and motion at the microlevel. Although Boyle's mechanical philosophy certainly owed a heavy debt to other thinkers in the “new science,” particularly Gassendi and Descartes, the fact is that the main experimental support for Boyle's matter theory flowed in a direct line from the scholastic alchemical tradition articulated and refined by Daniel Sennert. This chapter shows that Boyle relied on Sennert's reductions to the pristine state in two quite different, though related, ways. First, the Sennertian examples of metals simply dissolved in acids and then reduced or metals combined with other substances and then restored to their former state by reduction, provided Boyle with the necessary evidence to make the claim that “minima of their own genus” really did exist in nature. Second, he extends the reduction to the pristine state to form an integral part of his program of revealing the mechanical origins of “particular qualities.” The chapter also shows how the British naturalist has reformulated the Sennertian reductio in pristinum statum to become an important weapon in his antihylomorphic arsenal.
Victor Nuovo
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198800552
- eISBN:
- 9780191840449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198800552.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Boyle gave the vocation of a Christian virtuoso its name and exemplified its character in his life. Following Bacon, he affirmed the priority of natural philosophy, and, like Bacon, he prescribed ...
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Boyle gave the vocation of a Christian virtuoso its name and exemplified its character in his life. Following Bacon, he affirmed the priority of natural philosophy, and, like Bacon, he prescribed that it be practiced through experimental methods and that it found its explanations either directly upon perceived causes or upon causal hypotheses inferred from experimental practice or trials of nature, chief among them the mechanical or ‘atomicall’ philosophy. In his book The Christian Virtuoso, he prescribed that the study of nature was complemented and completed by the study of Holy Scripture, and he imagined a form of intellectual life in which the scope of natural reason was enlarged by revelation, which in turn was confirmed through trials or experiments of faith.Less
Boyle gave the vocation of a Christian virtuoso its name and exemplified its character in his life. Following Bacon, he affirmed the priority of natural philosophy, and, like Bacon, he prescribed that it be practiced through experimental methods and that it found its explanations either directly upon perceived causes or upon causal hypotheses inferred from experimental practice or trials of nature, chief among them the mechanical or ‘atomicall’ philosophy. In his book The Christian Virtuoso, he prescribed that the study of nature was complemented and completed by the study of Holy Scripture, and he imagined a form of intellectual life in which the scope of natural reason was enlarged by revelation, which in turn was confirmed through trials or experiments of faith.
Rose‐Mary Sargent
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195172256
- eISBN:
- 9780199835546
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195172256.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Experimental philosophers of 17th-century England recognized a complex relationship between scientific values and civic virtues. Francis Bacon, motivated by his desire to promote the common good by ...
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Experimental philosophers of 17th-century England recognized a complex relationship between scientific values and civic virtues. Francis Bacon, motivated by his desire to promote the common good by producing useful knowledge, noted that the advancement of learning required a cooperative research effort guided by civility, charity, toleration, and intellectual modesty. This essay examines how the founders of the Royal Society of London, including Robert Boyle, put his advice into action by their efforts to establish an expanded and inclusive society of investigators that would strengthen the habits of discourse in a civil society, while furthering the economic, political, and social benefits of scientific inquiry.Less
Experimental philosophers of 17th-century England recognized a complex relationship between scientific values and civic virtues. Francis Bacon, motivated by his desire to promote the common good by producing useful knowledge, noted that the advancement of learning required a cooperative research effort guided by civility, charity, toleration, and intellectual modesty. This essay examines how the founders of the Royal Society of London, including Robert Boyle, put his advice into action by their efforts to establish an expanded and inclusive society of investigators that would strengthen the habits of discourse in a civil society, while furthering the economic, political, and social benefits of scientific inquiry.
Jonathan I. Israel
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206088
- eISBN:
- 9780191676970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206088.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas, European Modern History
The most important and exceptional element in Spinoza's scientific thought is simply that natural philosophy, or science, is of universal applicability and that there is no reserved area beyond it. ...
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The most important and exceptional element in Spinoza's scientific thought is simply that natural philosophy, or science, is of universal applicability and that there is no reserved area beyond it. This implied a stark contrast between Spinoza's scientific rationality and that of every other leading philosopher and scientist of the age, not least Descartes. Various contemporaries attested to Spinoza's skill in preparing lenses and building microscopes and telescopes. Among those most aware of Spinoza's work with microscopes was the preeminent scientist of the Dutch Golden Age, Christian Huygens. Below the surface, the barely suppressed rivalry between Huygens and Spinoza extended far beyond lenses and microscopes. For both men, the central issue in science at the time was to revise and refine Descartes' laws of motion and mechanics. Another central strand of Spinoza's scientific thought is his critique of Boyle. Spinoza relegated observation and experiment to the secondary role of confirming or contradicting hypotheses, and it was on this ground that he was drawn into criticizing Boyle and the empiricism of the Royal Society.Less
The most important and exceptional element in Spinoza's scientific thought is simply that natural philosophy, or science, is of universal applicability and that there is no reserved area beyond it. This implied a stark contrast between Spinoza's scientific rationality and that of every other leading philosopher and scientist of the age, not least Descartes. Various contemporaries attested to Spinoza's skill in preparing lenses and building microscopes and telescopes. Among those most aware of Spinoza's work with microscopes was the preeminent scientist of the Dutch Golden Age, Christian Huygens. Below the surface, the barely suppressed rivalry between Huygens and Spinoza extended far beyond lenses and microscopes. For both men, the central issue in science at the time was to revise and refine Descartes' laws of motion and mechanics. Another central strand of Spinoza's scientific thought is his critique of Boyle. Spinoza relegated observation and experiment to the secondary role of confirming or contradicting hypotheses, and it was on this ground that he was drawn into criticizing Boyle and the empiricism of the Royal Society.
Tita Chico
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781503605442
- eISBN:
- 9781503606456
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503605442.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century connoted a sense of modernity and enlightenment, attributes that bound science to meanings in excess of its practice and consumption. The pliancy of ...
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Natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century connoted a sense of modernity and enlightenment, attributes that bound science to meanings in excess of its practice and consumption. The pliancy of science as a trope finds support in reflections on language as a scientific tool by Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and other natural philosophers. The two dominant technologies of the experimental imagination are the observed particular and the modest witness. Observed particulars of empirical study are those nuggets of data that disclose themselves and, in their revelation, produce knowledge. The modest witness is the individual who is objective by virtue of erasing himself through his privilege. Tropes are literary tools that not only enable practitioners to describe scientific findings, but also enable an even more fundamental component of experimentalism: literariness makes possible the conceptualization of scientific findings and the individual who produces them.Less
Natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century connoted a sense of modernity and enlightenment, attributes that bound science to meanings in excess of its practice and consumption. The pliancy of science as a trope finds support in reflections on language as a scientific tool by Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and other natural philosophers. The two dominant technologies of the experimental imagination are the observed particular and the modest witness. Observed particulars of empirical study are those nuggets of data that disclose themselves and, in their revelation, produce knowledge. The modest witness is the individual who is objective by virtue of erasing himself through his privilege. Tropes are literary tools that not only enable practitioners to describe scientific findings, but also enable an even more fundamental component of experimentalism: literariness makes possible the conceptualization of scientific findings and the individual who produces them.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226116396
- eISBN:
- 9780226116419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226116419.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter examines the views and works of Robert Boyle related to the limits and perfection of reason and his view of experience as paideia. It contends that Boyle's dynamic approach to knowledge ...
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This chapter examines the views and works of Robert Boyle related to the limits and perfection of reason and his view of experience as paideia. It contends that Boyle's dynamic approach to knowledge is at the same time a dynamic approach to the human faculties which emphasizes their educability and progress conjointly with an awareness of their limits. This chapter also suggests that Boyle's concern with the state and possibilities of human faculties is the framework of his approach to the questions of the limits of reason and of certain knowledge.Less
This chapter examines the views and works of Robert Boyle related to the limits and perfection of reason and his view of experience as paideia. It contends that Boyle's dynamic approach to knowledge is at the same time a dynamic approach to the human faculties which emphasizes their educability and progress conjointly with an awareness of their limits. This chapter also suggests that Boyle's concern with the state and possibilities of human faculties is the framework of his approach to the questions of the limits of reason and of certain knowledge.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226116396
- eISBN:
- 9780226116419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226116419.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is ...
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This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is on the figure of the inquirer into nature rather than on natural philosophical methodology and the natural theological argument. This chapter suggests that an approach from the point of view of the inquirer can add important dimensions to methodology and argument and evaluates how this concept applies to Robert Boyle and John Locke's general concern with the rightful conduct of the understanding. It also contends that experimental methodology and physico-theology are construed as transformative exercises for the inquirer's mind.Less
This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is on the figure of the inquirer into nature rather than on natural philosophical methodology and the natural theological argument. This chapter suggests that an approach from the point of view of the inquirer can add important dimensions to methodology and argument and evaluates how this concept applies to Robert Boyle and John Locke's general concern with the rightful conduct of the understanding. It also contends that experimental methodology and physico-theology are construed as transformative exercises for the inquirer's mind.
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199793853
- eISBN:
- 9780199919246
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199793853.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Chapter 5 introduces an indigenous Peruvian ritual. The first part of the chapter is in the voice of an indigenous woman from a Highland Andean community. In her story she recounts why she rejected ...
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Chapter 5 introduces an indigenous Peruvian ritual. The first part of the chapter is in the voice of an indigenous woman from a Highland Andean community. In her story she recounts why she rejected the science of agronomy she was taught at the university and why she formed an organization to revive rituals in her community. The second part of the chapter is a description of the festival of the water, Yarqa Aspiy, in her community where the people ritualistically clean the irrigation canals. The offerings and exchange of gifts among humans and between humans and other-than-humans exemplify the gift economy. The last part of the chapter raises the issue of restoring certainty in seventeenth-century Europe by focusing on Robert Boyle's experimental scientific method for establishing certainty, one established on totally new bases. This new experimental method created an anthropocentric dualist cosmology.Less
Chapter 5 introduces an indigenous Peruvian ritual. The first part of the chapter is in the voice of an indigenous woman from a Highland Andean community. In her story she recounts why she rejected the science of agronomy she was taught at the university and why she formed an organization to revive rituals in her community. The second part of the chapter is a description of the festival of the water, Yarqa Aspiy, in her community where the people ritualistically clean the irrigation canals. The offerings and exchange of gifts among humans and between humans and other-than-humans exemplify the gift economy. The last part of the chapter raises the issue of restoring certainty in seventeenth-century Europe by focusing on Robert Boyle's experimental scientific method for establishing certainty, one established on totally new bases. This new experimental method created an anthropocentric dualist cosmology.
Claire Preston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198704805
- eISBN:
- 9780191780134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704805.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
Robert Boyle never stopped worrying about the language of science. Indeed, his own literariness occupied and disturbed him and he struggled to justify it over the whole of his career. There is almost ...
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Robert Boyle never stopped worrying about the language of science. Indeed, his own literariness occupied and disturbed him and he struggled to justify it over the whole of his career. There is almost no work of his, from the autobiographical Philaretus to The Sceptical Chymist, which lacks an apology or an explanation for his overtly literary practice in the writing of science. His attempts to establish a coherent literary practice in his emerging scientific thought, and the inextricable, unified operations of the empirical and the literary are already clear in Boyle’s very early and only marginally scientific writing of the late 1640s. His propensity thereafter to adapt a wide variety of generic forms—the romance, the dialogue, life writing, the medical consilium, the reflection, the familiar letter, for example—is particularly indicative of his profound but uneasy literary sensibility. This chapter traces the literary development of his work from the 1640s to the 1690s.Less
Robert Boyle never stopped worrying about the language of science. Indeed, his own literariness occupied and disturbed him and he struggled to justify it over the whole of his career. There is almost no work of his, from the autobiographical Philaretus to The Sceptical Chymist, which lacks an apology or an explanation for his overtly literary practice in the writing of science. His attempts to establish a coherent literary practice in his emerging scientific thought, and the inextricable, unified operations of the empirical and the literary are already clear in Boyle’s very early and only marginally scientific writing of the late 1640s. His propensity thereafter to adapt a wide variety of generic forms—the romance, the dialogue, life writing, the medical consilium, the reflection, the familiar letter, for example—is particularly indicative of his profound but uneasy literary sensibility. This chapter traces the literary development of his work from the 1640s to the 1690s.
