Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Virtue, providence and political neutralism: Boyle and Interregnum politics
- 3 Science writing and writing science: Boyle and rhetorical theory
- 4 Learning from experience: Boyle's construction of an experimental philosophy
- 5 Carneades and the chemists: a study of The Sceptical Chymist and its impact on seventeenth-century chemistry
- 6 Boyle's alchemical pursuits
- 7 Boyle's debt to corpuscular alchemy
- 8 Boyle and cosmical qualities
- 9 The theological context of Boyle's Things above Reason
- 10 ‘Parcere nominibus’: Boyle, Hooke and the rhetorical interpretation of Descartes
- 11 Teleological reasoning in Boyle's Disquisition about Final Causes
- 12 Locke and Boyle on miracles and God's existence
- Bibliography of writings on Boyle published since 1940
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Virtue, providence and political neutralism: Boyle and Interregnum politics
- 3 Science writing and writing science: Boyle and rhetorical theory
- 4 Learning from experience: Boyle's construction of an experimental philosophy
- 5 Carneades and the chemists: a study of The Sceptical Chymist and its impact on seventeenth-century chemistry
- 6 Boyle's alchemical pursuits
- 7 Boyle's debt to corpuscular alchemy
- 8 Boyle and cosmical qualities
- 9 The theological context of Boyle's Things above Reason
- 10 ‘Parcere nominibus’: Boyle, Hooke and the rhetorical interpretation of Descartes
- 11 Teleological reasoning in Boyle's Disquisition about Final Causes
- 12 Locke and Boyle on miracles and God's existence
- Bibliography of writings on Boyle published since 1940
- Index
Summary
The state of Boyle studies
By any standards, Robert Boyle (1627–91) is one of the commanding figures of seventeenth-century thought. His writings are remarkable for their range, their significance and their sheer quantity: during his life he published over forty books, which between them will occupy twelve substantial volumes in a forthcoming new edition, about which more will be said later in this Introduction. Boyle achieved wide fame in the early 1660s through a series of experimental treatises in which he investigated the characteristics of air, outlined what he called ‘corpuscularianism’ and sought to extend its applicability to a wide range of natural phenomena. His early publications also included more programmatic statements about the principles of experimentation and about the great potential of the new philosophy for understanding and controlling the natural world. For the rest of his life he published various longer or shorter treatises about a wide range of natural phenomena, many of them purely descriptive, others more speculative in character. Equally important were a number of books in which he sought to define the relationship between God and the natural realm and the role of human understanding in assessing this; he also wrote a series of theological works, including some of a devotional character.
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- Information
- Robert Boyle Reconsidered , pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994