This book presents the first integrated treatment of the philosophy of Robert Boyle, one of the leading English natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution.

This study presents a substantial and often radical reinterpretation of some of the central themes of Locke's thought. Professor Alexander concentrates on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and aims to restore that to its proper historical context. In Part I he gives a clear exposition of some of the scientific theories of Robert Boyle, which, he argues, heavily influenced Locke in employing similar concepts and terminology. Against this background, he goes on in Part II to provide an account of Locke's (...) views on the external world and our knowledge of it. He shows those views to be more consistent and plausible than is generally allowed, demonstrating how they make sense and enable scientific explanations of nature. In examining the views of Locke and Boyle together, the book throws light both on the development of philosophy and the beginnings of modern science, and in particular it makes a considerable and original contribution to our understanding of Locke's philosophy. (shrink)

Early modern experimental philosophers were opposed to speculation, and yet many endorsed speculative theories. This chapter gives a partial explanation of why this is so, using Robert Boyle’s acceptance and promotion of the corpuscular philosophy as a case study. It argues that, in addition to furnishing experimental evidence for the corpuscular hypothesis in his Forms and Qualities, Boyle attempted to establish its epistemic superiority over other speculative theories on the grounds that it is founded upon superior principles. In his ‘Excellency (...) and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis’, Boyle claims that the principles of the corpuscular philosophy are more intelligible, more parsimonious, ontologically primary, simpler and more comprehensive than those of its rivals. On grounds of comparative plausibility then, according to Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy is eminently preferable to its rivals. The final section of the chapter traces the legacy of Boyle’s appraisal of the epistemic status of the corpuscular philosophy in the writings of many of his compatriots from the mid-1660s to the Cyclopedia of Ephraim Chambers of 1728. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant was one of the leading lights of 18th-century philosophy; his work provided the foundations for later revolutionary thinkers such as Hegel and Marx. This work contains the keystone of his critical philosophy - the basis of human knowledge and truth.

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)

It is a tempting exercise, both historically and psychoanalytically, to contribute to a psychoanalytic understanding of Robert Boyle. Over many years, historians of science have been amassing evidence of science as a social activity, part of the culture of its time. As these studies progress, they stumble into psychoanalytic territory willy nilly. Indeed, the very notion of enquiry into nature becomes a psychoanalytic issue, as soon as we think of it as an emotionally charged approach to an object. If we (...) think of Boyle as an early modern scientific investigator and as a personification of the tensions surrounding the investigation of nature as an object in the psychoanalytic sense, then we have a double reason for bringing a psychoanalytic understanding to bear upon him.One of the criticisms of a psychoanalytic enquiry into any historical figure or situation is that the object of study is not present in the way a patient is present. It is not simply that the patient is not there – after all, there is documentary evidence to stand in for the missing person – but that the key feature that makes the enquiry psychoanalytic is missing. There is no transference, and no way to monitor the accuracy of interpretations. That means that the analyst cannot sit in the place of the objects in which the subject has an intense emotional investment, and from which vantage the subject of these investments can be studied. In that sense, the enquiry cannot be said to be properly psychoanalytic in method. (shrink)

On 31 May 1936 Professor Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, wrote a letter to the Austrian littérateur Arnold Zweig, warning him about the dangers of undertaking biographical research. Freud intoned that ‘anyone turning biographer commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to flattery, and even to hiding his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth is not to be had, and even if it were it couldn't be used’.As a psychoanalyst, Freud knew only too well how readily each (...) individual person employs the ubiquitous mechanisms of defence such as repression, projection, splitting and idealization, all of which operate to conceal our deepest, innermost affective states; and he questioned therefore how accurately someone could write a life history. Freud harboured other anxieties about the craft of biography. In his classic monograph on Leonardo da Vinci, published in 1910, the great Viennese analyst not only lamented ‘the uncertainty and fragmentary nature of the material relating to him which tradition makes available’, but also questioned the very enterprise of psychologically informed biographical work itself. (shrink)

The book also includes a chronological table of significant events, select bibliography, succinct explanatory notes, and an index--all of which supply ...

The seventeenth century saw dramatic advances in mathematical theory and practice. With the recovery of many of the classical Greek mathematical texts, new techniques were introduced, and within 100 years, the rules of analytic geometry, geometry of indivisibles, arithmatic of infinites, and calculus were developed. Although many technical studies have been devoted to these innovations, Mancosu provides the first comprehensive account of the relationship between mathematical advances of the seventeenth century and the philosophy of mathematics of the period. Starting with (...) the Renaissance debates on the certainty of mathematics, Mancosu leads the reader through the foundational issues raised by the emergence of these new mathematical techniques, including the influence of the Aristotelian conception of science in Cavalieri and Guldin, the foundational relevance of Descartes' Geometrie, the relation between geometrical and epistemological theories of the infinite, and the Leibnizian calculus and the opposition to infinitesimalist procedures. In the process Mancosu draws a sophisticated picture of the subtle dependencies between technical development and philosophical reflection in seventeenth century mathematics. (shrink)

Privilege brings obligations – noblesse oblige. Boyle came from a deeply privileged background. If we are to locate him through twentieth-century eyes in order to rediscover his psychic space, then this background needs to be borne in mind. It was a constant shaping force for him. Twentieth-century eyes mean a new perspective. As Eliot wrote of Pascal, Boyle's contemporary, ‘every generation sees preceding ones differently. Pascal is one of those writers who will be, and who must be, studied afresh by (...) men in every generation. It is not he who changes, but we who change. It is not our knowledge of him that increases, but our world that alters and our attitudes towards it’ – and so it is with Boyle.Boyle's childhood was beset by tragedy. From a psychological point of view, there can be fewer worse tragedies than the premature loss of a mother. His mother died of consumption when he was three. She was forty-two and he was her fourteenth and penultimate child. It seems clear that this early loss haunted him for the rest of his life, its unconscious effect always there. At some level he may have felt partly responsible for her death – that his birth had helped to wear her out, to finish her off, to consume her. It would seem that he missed out on mourning in the conventional sense, or rather in the sense that Freud emphasized as being all-important in his paper ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. Boyle did use, in his autobiographical writing as ‘Philaretus’, the word ‘disaster’ to describe this early tragedy, and it is a powerful enough word in the context. But what happened to his grief ? Was it worked through? Was it lived with? Or was it just sublimated into his work, his wide range of preoccupations? Was it something that remained as a constant, underlying refrain in his life, that he needed to defend himself against? (shrink)

When Michael Hunter first publicized the idea of ‘Psychoanalysing Robert Boyle’ I understood that his main aim was to test three competing psychoanalytical theories against the historical evidence provided by the life and work of Robert Boyle. Although this would have been a valuable exercise, and one that the British Society for the History of Science meeting partly engaged, the papers by Brett Kahr, John Clay and Karl Figlio published here raise some far more compelling issues which I shall explore (...) in the ensuing discussion. Before turning to this discussion I offer a few introductory remarks. (shrink)

THERE IS WIDESPREAD AGREEMENT among historians that the writings of Robert Boyle (1697-1691) constitute a valuable archive for understanding the concerns of seventeenth-century British natural philosophers. His writings have often been seen as representing, in one fashion or another, all of the leading intellectual currents of his day. ~ There is somewhat less consensus, however, on the proper historiographic method for interpreting these writings, as well as on the specific details of the beliefs expressed in them. Studies seeking to explicate (...) Boyle's thought have been, roughly speaking, of two general sorts. On the one hand there are those studies of a broadly "intellectualist" orientation which situate his natural philosophy within the intellectual context provided by metaphysics, religion, and early modern science. In this connection his corpuscularianism has been shown to be motivated by specific epistemological, theological, as well as empirical concerns. One of the central aims of such studies has been to show that apparently discordant elements in his scientific thought are rendered coherent by referring them to such "non-scientific" commitments. Among studies of this sort might be mentioned the works of John Hedley Brooke, E. A. Burtt, Gary B. Deason, J. E. McGuire, R. Hooykaas, Robert H. Kargon, Eugene M. Klaaren, P. M. Rattansi, and Richard S. Westfall. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Robert Boyle's strategies for making imperceptible entities accessible to the senses. It is well known that, in his natural philosophy, Boyle confronted the challenge of making imperceptible particles of matter into objects of sensory experience. It has never been noted, however, that Boyle confronted a strikingly similar challenge in his natural theology – he needed to make an equally imperceptible God accessible to the senses. Taking this symmetrical difficulty as my starting point, I propose a (...) new approach to thinking about the interconnections between Boyle's natural philosophy and natural theology. For the most part, studies of science and religion in the early modern period work by seeking out the influence of explicitly stated religious beliefs on scientific ideas. I argue, by contrast, that we need to focus on Boyle's representational practices, using his attempts to represent imperceptible entities as a means of uncovering metaphysical and theological presuppositions that he did not always articulate when stating his religious beliefs. With new interpretations of bothA Discourse of Things Above Reason(1681) andSome Physico-Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection(1675), I show that there were crucial similarities between Boyle's practices for representing both God and atoms. I go on to show, moreover, that Boyle used these practices to enact an ontological stance at odds with one of his most important professed beliefs. (shrink)

Alan Chalmers uses Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy as an example of the irrelevance of ‘philosophy’ to ‘science’ and criticizes my 2006 book Atoms and alchemy for overemphasizing Boyle’s successes. The present paper responds as follows: first, it argues that Chalmers employs an overly simplistic methodology insensitive to the distinction between historical and philosophical claims; second, it shows that the central theses of Atoms and alchemy are untouched by Chalmers’s criticisms; and third, it uses Boyle’s analysis of subordinate causes and his (...) debate with Henry More in the 1670s to demonstrate the inadequacy of Chalmers’s construal of the mechanical philosophy.Keywords: Robert Boyle; Alan Chalmers; Geber; Paul of Taranto; Daniel Sennert; Alchemy; Chymistry; Mechanical philosophy; Reduction to the pristine state. (shrink)

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper presents a comprehensive study of Robert Boyle’s writings on seminal principles or seeds. It examines the role of seeds in Boyle’s account of creation, the generation of plants and animals, spontaneous generation, the generation of minerals and disease. By an examination of all of Boyle’s major extant discussions of seeds it is argued that there were discernible changes in Boyle’s views over time. As the years progressed Boyle became more sceptical about the role of seminal principles in the (...) generation of minerals and he came to reject the spontaneous generation of insects and animals from putrefying matter. It is also argued that Boyle’s notion of a generative or ‘plastick’ principle creates a tension within his mechanical philosophy. He appeals to a plastick power in order to explain those phenomena of generation that are beyond the explanatory resources of the corpuscular hypothesis. However, when pressed to explain the nature of this power he either hints, somewhat paradoxically, that it too can be explained mechanically or admits his nescience. (shrink)

Weder historisch noch philosophisch kann man zu nur einer einzigen Unterscheidung zwischen primären und sekundären Qualitäten gelangen. Es gibt vielmehr eine große Zahl von Unterscheidungen, die miteinander vermengt und wie eine einzige behandelt werden, und zwar einfach deshalb, weil man bei der Diskussion des Problems wahllos einige Beispiele herausgreift. In diesem Aufsatz werden zweiundzwanzig solcher Unterscheidungen angeführt, wobei Bezug genommen wird auf Philosophen, die diese Unterscheidungen vertreten haben. Im Anschluß daran wird die Vermutung geäußert, daß der Grund für diesen verworrenen (...) Zustand zum Teil im Fehlen einer plausiblen Theorie der Qualitäten zu suchen sei. Da eine solche Theorie fehlt, ist es nicht verwunderlich, daß die Einteilung von Qualitäten und vermeintlichen Qualitäten in primäre und sekundäre Schwierigkeiten bereitet. (shrink)

Robert Boyle's treatise, 'On the diversity of religions', remains a little-known work, and was unpublished during his lifetime. Nonetheless it is of considerable historical and philosophical interest. In it, Boyle attempts to answer the question of how one can hope to obtain religious truth amidst the many competing claims to revelation, a concern which had grown acute in the early modern period. In this paper I examine Boyle's arguments, considering along the way their relationship to the various contemporary debates on (...) diversity and evaluating their present relevance. (shrink)

The philosophy of Robert Boyle (1627-1691) is a hot topic in early modern philosophy. Boyle was at the centre of the scientific community of 17th-century England, and an accurate view of the Enlightenment scientific revolution is impossible without recognition of the contributions that he made. Work on Boyle's philosophy is also shedding light on contemporary issues in the philosophy of science - it can help us understand the nature of scientific explanation and the role that the mechanical model of explanation (...) plays in present-day science. Boyle's mechanical philosophy ushered in a new explanatory model for science and even though his corpuscular hypothesis failed, its failure does not entail the failure of the explanatory model of which it was an instance. Boyle on Fire demonstrates these points by examining Boyle's work concerning a method of experiment common in the seventeenth century called Fire Analysis. In the Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle attacks elemental theories of chemical explanation primarily by raising objections against Aristotelian and Paracelsian interpretations of fire analysis. The book reconstructs Boyle's corpuscular account of fire analysis and then compares it to these objections. This process reveals those characteristics of mechanical explanations that make them epistemologically superior to elemental theories of chemical explanation, and it is these characteristics that survive the death of the corpuscular hypothesis and have become an enduring feature of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

Summary The early background of Robert Boyle, a leading advocate of the mechanical philosophy at the Restoration, helps to illuminate his later understanding of both the relationship between gentleman naturalists and artisans, as well as that of theoretical abstraction and practical application in experimental philosophy and the manual arts. Boyle's agenda for ethical reconstruction emphasized practical moral knowledge and a transformation in intellectual values which, reinforced by the general outlook of the Hartlib circle, postulated the desirability of knowledge gleaned from (...) scholars and artisans alike. The promotion of the manual arts, as contained in the general programme of Baconianism espoused by the Royal Society, helped Boyle's own unusual position as a chemist of high social rank. He hoped that chemical experiments could raise esteem for the ?useful art? of chemistry among naturalists if they would help establish the principles of the mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

In a new introduction, the authors describe how science and its social context were understood when this book was first published, and how the study of the history of science has changed since then.

In Warranted Christian Beliet Alvin Plantinga claims that “The Enlightenment looked askance at testimony and tradition; Locke saw them as a preeminent source of error.” Locke, Plantinga suggests, is the “fountainhead” of this stance. This is importantly wrong about Locke and Locke”s views, and an examination of the views of Locke’s much admired friend and slightly older contemporary, Robert Boyle, reveals that the claim is mistaken about him as well, reinforcing the view that Plantinga is in general mistaken about the (...) intellectual milieu in which Locke wrote. In this paper I consider the views of Locke and Boyle on demonstration, observation, experiment, and testimony with a view to showing what, in the case of science and religion, their views actually were. For Locke I draw mainly on the Essay, while for Boyle I draw heavily on the MSS in the Royal Society Library, as well as on the printed works. (shrink)

In this paper I look at two connections between natural philosophy and theology in the late 17th century. In the last quarter of the century there was an interesting development of an argument, earlier but sketchier versions of which can be found in classical philosophers and in Descartes. The manoeuvre in question goes like this: first, prove that there must, necessarily, be a being which is, in some sense of "greater", greater than humans. Second, sketch a proof that such a (...) being is necessary. Move from the fact that there must be at least one such being to the conclusion that there is precisely one such being. Raise the question: could this necessary being be matter, the entire material universe, or must it be God? Produce an argument from natural philosophy to show that matter cannot be the required necessary being. Either explicitly or implicitly run the obvious disjunctive syllogism and conclude with a few remarks about the foolishness of atheism. The argument, which has classical roots, found a number of 17th-century exponents. Cudworth provided the most important version, and Locke, Bentley and Clarke adapted Cudworth's version with varying success. The argument touches on natural philosophy in two ways. First, the basis of the argument invites consideration of a problem in the philosophy of science - the relation between micro properties and macro properties - which was seen clearly enough in some contexts but which was overlooked in others, particularly when the theological aspect was uppermost. The second point of contact involves a direct application of a scientific result - the existence of a vacuum - to the theological issue. (shrink)

This monograph investigates the development of hydrostatics as a science. In the process, it sheds new light on the nature of science and its origins in the Scientific Revolution. Readers will come to see that the history of hydrostatics reveals subtle ways in which the science of the seventeenth century differed from previous periods. The key, the author argues, is the new insights into the concept of pressure that emerged during the Scientific Revolution. This came about due to contributions from (...) such figures as Simon Stevin, Pascal, Boyle and Newton. The author compares their work with Galileo and Descartes, neither of whom grasped the need for a new conception of pressure. As a result, their contributions to hydrostatics were unproductive. The story ends with Newton insofar as his version of hydrostatics set the subject on its modern course. He articulated a technical notion of pressure that was up to the task. Newton compared the mathematical way in hydrostatics and the experimental way, and sided with the former. The subtleties that lie behind Newton's position throws light on the way in which developments in seventeenth-century science simultaneously involved mathematization and experimentation. This book serves as an example of the degree of conceptual change that new sciences often require. It will be of interest to those involved in the study of history and philosophy of science. It will also appeal to physicists as well as interested general readers. (shrink)

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), membre fondateur de la Royal Society de Londres, est une figure emblematique de la philosophie anglaise moderne. Heritier de Bacon et des alchimistes, celui qui aimait se donner le nom de Sceptical Chymist ou de Christian Virtuoso entremele experiences de laboratoire et discours apologetiques. A travers ses debats avec Hobbes, More, Huygens ou Spinoza, son principal souci reste de mettre la methode experimentale au service des theories mecanistes: Boyle contribue ainsi largement aux progres scientifiques et techniques de (...) l'age classique. On redecouvre aujourd'hui l'originalite de sa philosophie naturelle. Le present volume, reunissant des contributions de specialistes internationaux, propose ainsi pour la premiere fois en France une etude complete de cette oeuvre eclectique et complexe. (shrink)

In early life, the philosopher, theologian and scientist Robert Boyle wrote extensively on moral matters. One of the extant early documents written in Boyle's hand deals with the morality of our treatment of non-human animals. In this piece Boyle offered a number of arguments for extending moral concern to non-human animals. Since the later Boyle routinely vivisected or otherwise killed animals in his scientific experiments, we are left with the biographical questions, did his views change, and if so, why? as (...) well as with the philosophical questions, what were his arguments and how good are they? (shrink)

This paper documents an important development in Robert Boyle's natural-philosophical method – his use from the 1660s onwards of ‘heads’ and ‘inquiries’ as a means of organizing his data, setting himself an agenda when studying a subject and soliciting information from others. Boyle acknowledged that he derived this approach from Francis Bacon, but he had not previously used it in his work, and the reason why it came to the fore when it did is not apparent from his printed and (...) manuscript corpus. It is necessary to look beyond Boyle to his milieu for the cause, in this case to the influence on him of the Royal Society. Whereas the Royal Society in its early years is often seen as putting into practice a programme pioneered by Boyle, this crucial methodological change on his part seems rather to have been stimulated by the society's early concern for systematic data-collecting. In this connection, it is here shown that a key text, Boyle's influential ‘General Heads for a Natural History of a Country, Great or small’, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1666, represents more of a shared initiative between him and the society than has hitherto been appreciated. (shrink)

Summary Historians of science have neglected early modern natural philosophers' varied attitudes to the history of philosophy, often preferring to use loose labels such as ?Epicureanism? to describe the survival of ancient doctrines. This is methodologically inappropriate: reifying such philosophical movements tells us little about the complex ways in which early modern natural philosophers approached the history of their own discipline. As this article shows, a central figure of early modern natural philosophy, Robert Boyle, invested great intellectual energy into his (...) depiction of the history of philosophy. Boyle's historical worldview was mediated through an array of textual traditions: classical, patristic, humanist and contemporary. Drawing extensively on his manuscript notes, this is examined for three topics. First, from his turn to natural philosophy in the late 1640s, Boyle combined a sceptical attitude towards philosophy's potential ? stemming from humanist historicisations of the ?speculative? heritage of Greek philosophy ? with a belief in natural philosophy's efficacy as a spiritual exercise, as performed by ancient ?priests of nature?. Second, Boyle's attitude to the history of matter theory was far more complex than any simple comparison with ?ancient atomism? can convey. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Boyle held Epicurus to be a speculative and reductionist philosopher, leading him to posit a different lineage for a non-reductionist corpuscularianism which depended on exploitation of non-standard historiographical traditions. Appreciating this allows us to make an intervention in the ongoing debate about the relationship between corpuscularianism, chymistry and experiment in Boyle's philosophy. Third, Boyle's historicisation of supposedly anthropomorphic philosophies in his famous Free Enquiry (1686) exploited recent theological historiography, most importantly Samuel Parker's combination of the history of idolatry with the history of Greek philosophy, which itself relied on developments in continental sacred history. It was this historicisation, rather than any philosophical realities, which led to the positing of the mechanical philosophy as more compatible than Aristotelianism with Christian doctrine. (shrink)

This paper argues that, contrary to the claims of Alan Chalmers, Boyle understood his experimental work to be intimately related to his mechanical philosophy. Its central claim is that the mechanical philosophy has a heuristic structure that motivates and gives direction to Boyle's experimental programme. Boyle was able to delimit the scope of possible explanations of any phenomenon by positing both that all qualities are ultimately reducible to a select group of mechanical qualities and that all explanations of natural phenomena (...) are to be in terms of the operations of machines and are to appeal only to qualities that are already familiar. This is illustrated by his investigations into the Torricellian experiment. Boyle's explanation of the elevation of the mercurial cylinder by appeal to the spring of the air was an intermediate mechanical explanation. Boyle was convinced that the spring of the air was ultimately reducible to the mechanical qualities. This in turn had implications for his research into the cause of respiration. In a move that was both parsimonious and consistent with the broad requirements of the mechanical philosophy, Boyle was able to solve the problem of the cause of the inflow of air into the lungs by appeal to his research in pneumatics. This application of a mechanical explanation in pneumatics to physiology is just what one would expect if the mechanical philosophy was as universal as Boyle claimed it to be. Therefore, far from Boyle's experiments having a life of their own, they were clearly directed by and understood in terms of the mechanical philosophy.Keywords: Air-pump; Boyle; Chalmers; Experiment; Explanation; Mechanism. (shrink)

Hobbes and Wallis's "battle of the books" illuminates the intimate relationship between science and crucial seventeenth-century debates over the limits of sovereign power and the existence of God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Boyle on Occasionalism: An Unexamined SourcePeter Anstey*1. IntroductionThe question of Robert Boyle’s attitude to occasionalism 1 is central to our understanding of his corpuscular hypothesis, yet there has been little or no consensus in the secondary literature regarding Boyle’s attitude. 2 The doctrine of occasionalism is that matter is causally inefficacious and that God is the only causal agent in nature. It is a doctrine that was particularly attractive (...) to those Cartesian philosophers in the latter part of the seventeenth century who sought to find an active role for God in nature, for it both avoided the remoteness of the deist’s god and provided a ready explanation of the miraculous. Since Boyle was a mechanical philosopher, a Christian, and strongly influenced by Descartes, it seems likely that he too would have found occasionalism attractive; but there is no sustained discussion of occasionalism in his published works. It is therefore of singular importance that three folios in volume 10 of the Boyle Papers comprise a paper containing an explicit philosophical treatment of this doctrine. 3 It appears that Boyle considered these folios to be of sufficient importance to have them translated into Latin, perhaps to be circulated [End Page 57] among some of his non-English speaking acquaintances. Furthermore, this discussion of occasionalism is not simply of philosophical interest for its bearing on our interpretation of Boyle’s corpuscular philosophy, but it also has a degree of intrinsic philosophical interest in its own right. Moreover, the folios are of historical interest as a further important piece of evidence for the reception and dissemination of occasionalist ideas in Britain in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is fitting therefore that they should be published.What follows is the reproduction of folios 38–40 from volume 10 of the Boyle Papers. This is prefaced by a short editorial introduction and is followed by a philosophical commentary, a short history of Boyle’s reception of oc-casionalist ideas and a review of recent interpretations of Boyle’s natural philosophy on the issue of occasionalism. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of Boyle’s philosophical method and method of work. This section attempts to resolve the apparent tension between the guarded defense of occasionalism offered in the folios published here and the incompatible doctrines espoused in Boyle’s published works.2. Editorial Introduction to Boyle Papers volume 10, folios 38–40In folios 38–40 of volume 10 of the Boyle Papers there is a sustained discussion of the thesis that “God himself is the only proper and immediate cause” among things corporeal. In Michael Hunter’s guide to the microfilm edition the folios are identified as a “[f]ragment of discourse discussing Cartesian views” and the reader is there referred to folios 42–46. 4 However, Edward B. Davis has correctly identified these latter folios as draft material for Boyle’s Final Causes. 5 Hunter has confirmed that the hand that wrote these reflections on occasionalism is that of A, an amanuensis who was in Boyle’s employment from c. 1680 and that some of the corrections are in the same hand. This is strong evidence that the passage was composed in the late 1670s or the 1680s. 6 The passage is written on a bifoliate followed by a single leaf linked to the former by a catchword. The hand is legible, and the pages contain only a small number of corrections. The passage itself consists of ninety-one lines. It is endorsed “A Fragment” in pencil, bears no title, and most likely was never completed. At one point Boyle tells us of the grounds of occasionalism that “there will be occasion to enlarge on them when I come to vindicate them,” something which he does not complete in the lines that follow. Rather the discussion comes to an abrupt halt after five and a half lines into the third folio. [End Page 58]Hunter has also identified a Latin translation of these folios in Boyle Papers, volume XXIX, folios 77–82v. The translation is in hand L, who has not been identified but who worked for Boyle in the 1680s. 7 It is... (shrink)

In this study of Robert Boyle's epistemology, Jan W. Wojcik reveals the theological context within which Boyle developed his views on reason's limits. After arguing that a correct interpretation of his views on 'things above reason' depends upon reading his works in the context of theological controversies in seventeenth-century England, Professor Wojcik details exactly how Boyle's three specific categories of things which transcend reason - the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the unsociable - affected his conception of what a natural philosopher (...) could hope to know. Also covered in detail is Boyle's belief that God had deliberately limited the human intellect in order to reserve a full knowledge of both theology and natural philosophy for the afterlife. (shrink)

This volume examines the influence that Epicureanism and Stoicism, two philosophies of nature and human nature articulated during classical times, exerted on the development of European thought to the Enlightenment. Although the influence of these philosophies has often been noted in certain areas, such as the influence of Stoicism on the development of Christian thought and the influence of Epicureanism on modern materialism, the chapters in this volume forward a new awareness of the degree to which these philosophies and their (...) continued interaction informed European intellectual life well into early modern times. The influence of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies in the areas of literature, philosophy, theology, and science are considered. Many thinkers continue to perceive these philosophies as significant alternatives for understanding the human and natural worlds. Having become incorporated into the canon of philosophical alternatives, Epicureanism and Stoicism continued to exert identifiable influences on scientific and philosphical thought at least until the middle of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

A collection of autobiographical writings and other documents that throw light on the life and career of Robert Boyle (1627- 91) the doyen of experimental science in 17th-century Britain. Among the nine documents are Boyle's account of his childhood, biographical notes dictated to Robin Bacon, Gilbert Burnet's interview and funeral address, and letters between his colleagues. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The first major collection of Boyle’s writings to be published since Thomas Birch’s eighteenth-century edition of his works presents material hitherto available only in the archives of the Royal Society. This edition of Boyle’s _Aretology _ and other moral essays from the late 1640s offers the intellectual and religious origins of Boyle’s most vital themes. John T. Harwood also includes two essays on moral topics, "Of Sin" and "Of Piety"; a sample of Boyle’s private meditations, "Joseph’s Mistress"; a short essay, (...) "Of Time and Idleness"; and two guides to private meditation, "The Dayly Reflection" and "Of Thoughts." Harwood concludes the volume with a previously unpublished account of about seven hundred books in Boyle’s library at the time of his death. (shrink)

Descartes, Boyle and Hooke shared, with many other seventeenth-century figures, the view that mechanical explanations were the only intellectually satisfactory ones. They also all accepted the view that we have incorporeal souls. This generated a problem for them when they wrote about perception. In this area, indeed, Descartes seems to be almost a reluctant Cartesian. When we read his scientific writings, the incorporeal soul is not stressed, and Descartes happily speaks of physical, or of corporeal, ideas in discussing sensation, memory (...) and imagination. (shrink)

This book is about the influence of varying theological conceptions of contingency and necessity on two versions of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes both believed that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of matter and motion alone. They disagreed about the details of their mechanical accounts of the world, in particular about their theories of matter and their approaches to scientific method. This book traces their differences back to theological presuppositions they (...) inherited from the Middle Ages. Theological ideas were transformed into philosophical and scientific ideas which led to the emergence of different styles of science in the second half of the seventeenth century. (shrink)

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, arguing that (...) it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution. (shrink)