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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 Harwood concludes the volume with a previously unpublished account of about seven hundred books in Boyle’s library at the time of his death.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)

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 A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: ...

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)

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)

This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about (...) realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

This dissertation deals with the alchemical activities of the English natural philosopher Robert Boyle . ;The study begins by setting down a consistent and defensible terminology for discussing a period during which time the words alchemy and chemistry were synonymous. A review of the three centuries of secondary literature on Boyle then reveals how his image has been successively reformed and tailored to fit prevailing apologetic or historiographic programmes, almost always with the effect of modernizing him and his interests and (...) further burying his already obscure alchemical interests. A radically new interpretation of the Sceptical Chymist is then presented, developed by a newly rigorous reading of the work--together with its 1680 appendix--in terms of its context and sources, and with a much more nuanced appreciation of the competing schools of seventeenth century "chymistry." The work is thus revealed as not critical of the aims or methods of traditional alchemical masters, or adepti, but rather of the "unphilosophical" practice of Paracelsian pharmacists and the systematizing of textbook writers. Boyle's own positive view of transmutational alchemy is then unambiguously presented by a consideration of his "lost" Dialogue on the Transmutation and Melioration of Metals now reconstructed from scattered surviving fragments and presented here in full for the first time. The text shows Boyle's unflinching belief in the reality of the Philosophers' Stone and its powers, and his dissatisfaction with those who denied it. Different kinds of transmutation within traditional alchemy are described, alongside evidence for Boyle's maintenance of these traditional divisions. Boyle's own witness of transmutation is then recounted along with his attempts to contact adepti, thus involving him in a diverse array of social and scientific networks across Europe. ;Boyle's alchemical programme is next detailed, including his reading and writing of alchemical texts, his adoption of alchemical means of communication , and his experimental attempts to prepare alchemical arcana. In this last regard, his forty-year search for the Philosophical Mercury and its correct manipulation is chronicled. Finally, Boyle's motivations are explored. Boyle's interest in chrysoppoeia was not fueled primarily by the promise of medicines, gold, or new natural philosophical knowledge devolving from the Stone, but rather by his belief that the Stone could function as a medium for facilitating communication with angels and other spirits. As such, it could potentially manifest spirit activity and thus act as a powerful weapon against atheism. ;This study reveals Boyle as much less of a modern and revolutionary than presentist, positivist, heroic, or even the new sociological schools would have him. Rather, he is here resituated in a complex web of contemporary questions and currents of thought, and involved in the debate of an important question of the day. Alchemy was a chief concern of Robert Boyle and as such it must be fully integrated into our portrayal of him, and by extension, of his time--a critical period in the development of modern science as a whole, and of early modern chemistry in particular. The spiritual functions with which Boyle eventually endowed alchemy promoted it to a central position in his thought as a whole, functioning then as a middle term mediating between his two chief missions--the advancement of natural philosophy and the defense and propagation of Christianity. (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)