The making of Robert Boyle's free enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature (1686)

Early Science and Medicine

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 204-271

  Hunter, Michael ^a   Davis, Edward B ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b MESSIAH COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039433490     PISSN: 13837427     EISSN: 15733823     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157338296X00024     Document Type: Review

References (172)

1. M. Osler, "The intellectual sources of Robert Boyle's philosophy of nature: Gassendi's voluntarism and Boyle's physico-theological project," in Philosophy, Science and Religion in England 1640-1700 eds. R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft and P. Zagorin (Cambridge, 1992), 178-98, on 187;
2. David Abercromby, "Traductoris Praefatio" in R. Boyle, De Ipsa Natura, sive Libera in Receptam Naturae Notionem Disquisitio ad Amicum (London, 1687), sig. A4v.
3. J.E. McGuire, "Boyle's Conception of Nature," Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972), 523-42, esp. 525;
4. T. Shanahan, "God and Nature in the Thought of Robert Boyle," Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1988), 547-69, on 567.
5. See J. Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London, 1691), 32-3
6. (see also the extended version in the fourth edition, London, 1704, 53-7, quoted and discussed in R.S. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-century England (New Haven, 1958), 94-5);
7. C. Wilson, "De Ipsa Natura: Sources of Leibniz's Doctrines of Force, Activity and Natural Law," Studia Leibnitiana 19 (1987), 148-72;
8. G. Giglioni, "Automata Compared: Boyle, Leibniz and the debate on the notion of life and mind," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), 249-78. For J.C. Sturm's description of the book on receipt of the copy sent him by Boyle as "opusculo⋯ aureo," see Sturm to Boyle, 1 March 1688, Royal Society Boyle Letters [hereafter BL] 5, fol. 137. For a text comprising what appear to be the critical remarks on the book of an anonymous French Aristotelian, see "Annotationes in Aristotelicam naturae definitionem," Royal Society Boyle Papers [hereafter BP] 44, fols. 51-4. Unfortunately, "a Curious Philosoph[ical] Letter" from the Durham virtuoso, Peter Nelson, "proposing some Objections to Mr B[oyle] about his Treatise on the Vulgar Notion of Nature," though included in a list of Boyle letters made in the early eighteenth century by Henry Miles (BP 36, fol. 145), no longer survives.
9. McGuire, "Boyle's Conception of Nature";
10. Keith Hutchison, "Supernaturalism and the mechanical philosophy," History of Science 21 (1983), 297-333.
11. See also E.M. Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Grand Rapids, 1977), esp. ch. 6;
12. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-century England, 83-9;
13. M.A. Stewart, ed., Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle (Manchester, 1979), xxii, with substantial extracts printed as pp. 176-91.
14. Oddly, the work was overlooked by R.G. Collingwood in his important book, The Idea of Nature (Oxford, 1945).
15. See also e.g. L.J. Rather, "Pathology at Mid-Century: a Reassessment of Thomas Willis and Thomas Sydenham," in Medicine in Seventeenth-century England, ed. A.G. Debus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), 71-112, at 89f.;
16. G.B. Deason, "Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature," in God and Nature, eds. R.L. Numbers and D.C. Lindberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), 167-91, at 180-1.
17. Other recent studies include M. Osler, "Intellectual sources," esp. 186-7;
18. E.F. Keller, "Secrets of God, Nature, and Life," History of the Human Sciences 3 (1992), 229-42;
19. B.B. Kaplan, "Divulging of Useful Truths in Physick": the Medical Agenda of Robert Boyle (Baltimore, 1993), 71-5, 122-6;
20. R-M. Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment (Chicago, 1995), 93f.
21. J.R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution (New York, 1977), 159f,
22. "Robert Boyle and Subversive Religion in the Early Restoration," Albion 6 (1974), 275-93,
23. "Boyle's Atomism and the Restoration Assault on Pagan Naturalism," Social Studies of Science 8 (1978), 211-33,
24. and Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), 56-7, 143f.
25. S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), 202n and 201f.
26. passim. See also N. Steneck, "Greatrakes the Stroker: the Interpretations of Historians," Isis 73 (1982), 161-77;
27. K. Hutchison, "Supernaturalism."
28. E.g., McGuire, "Conception of Nature," 528;
29. Stewart, Selected Philosophical Papers, xxii;
30. Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," 216;
31. Steneck, "Greatrakes the Stroker," 171-2.
32. For more general comments see J. Harwood, "Science Writing and Writing Science: Boyle and Rhetorical Theory," in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. M. Hunter (Cambridge, 1994), 37-56, on pp. 42, 54 nn. 70, 74.
33. The Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle, ed. T. Birch, 6 vols. (2nd ed., London, 1772) [hereafter Works), 5: 159-61.
34. E. Arber, ed., The Term Catalogues, 1668-1709, 3 vols. (London, 1905), 2: 179.
35. On Abercromby, see E.B. Davis, "The Anonymous Works of Robert Boyle and the Reasons why a Protestant should not turn Papist (1687)", Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (1994), 611-29.
36. M. Hunter, Letters and Papers of Robert Boyle: a Guide to the Manuscripts and Microfilms (Bethesda, Md., 1992), xxx-xxxix.
37. Letters and Papers, xxxvii-viii.
38. On hands A and B, see Letters and Papers, xxxvi.
39. As far as hand A is concerned, it is worth pointing out that these passages in it are more rapidly written than those in (for instance) MS 198. The identification of hand C supersedes that in Letters and Papers, xxxvii.
40. "C" is there linked with a hand in Royal Society Early Letters B 1, of which no unproblematic specimens in fact survive within the Boyle archive. That identification has been abandoned, and instead "C" has been used to identify a hand which was not then given a systematic identification. This change will be recorded in a revised edition of Letters and Papers in due course. A dated specimen of this hand is to be found in BL 1, 112-5, a letter of 27 September 1681 (mistakenly identified as Boyle's own hand in Letters and Papers, xxx); for other dated specimens see Royal Society Cl. P. xi(1)21, dated 30 Sept. 1680 (deposited 14 Oct.), and BP 21, pp. 227-8, 246, 253-4, 257 (ranging from 1683 onwards).
41. Letters and Papers, xxxi-iv.
42. See M. Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry (Cambridge, 1958), 209-12;
43. M.B. Hall, "Boyle's Method of Work: Promoting his Corpuscular Philosophy," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 41 (1987), 111-43, esp. 111-6 (though the paragraph on handwriting on p. 114 should be read in the light of the discussion of this topic in Letters and Papers, referred to in n. 18),
44. and Harwood, "Science writing," esp. 42, 46-8.
45. The "Essay Of the holy Scriptures," BP 7, fols. 1-94, would have run to over 100 pages had it not been truncated (see n. 26). For sections of drafts of Usefulness with pagination running over 100 see BP 8, fols. 47-59; BP 10, fols. 7, 17-18, 63-4. For other continuously paginated sections, see BP 8, fols. 3-28, 61, 193. In his previous, "moralistic" phase, Boyle had written his MSS even more densely, on both sides of the page: on the transition from this to his "scientific" phase, see M. Hunter, "How Boyle Became a Scientist," History of Science 33 (1995), 59-103, esp. n. 48.
46. Works, 2: 252. On Seraphic Love, another work published in much altered form, which had originally been composed as a continuous text, see L. Principe, "Style and thought of the early Boyle: Discovery of the 1648 manuscript of Seraphic Love," Isis 85 (1994), 247-60.
47. For examples, see e.g. BP 3, fols. 96-7; 8, fols. 190-5 (with sections of earlier draft inserted); 17, fols. 108-13; 26, fols. 130-2 (lettered "A" to "C"). The use of sheets of paper in this way was standard practice at the time: see H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford, 1993), 104.
48. It is perhaps worth noting that, in most cases, such components were more than "loose pages" (Harwood, "Science writing," 47). It should also be noted that we have used the familiar term "foolscap," though in fact most of Boyle's paper seems to have been of "pot" size: see Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972), 74-5.
49. For Newton's use of pot-sized paper, see A.E. Shapiro, "Beyond the dating game: watermark clusters and the composition of Newton's Opticks," in The investigation of difficult things, eds. P.M. Harman and A.E. Shapiro (Cambridge, 1992), 181-227, on 192.
50. Love, Scribal Publication, 117.
51. BP 7, fols. 186-93; 18, fols. 103-21 (but fols. 112-3 and 118-20 are written on one side only). It is perhaps worth noting that Harwood is mistaken in thinking that the use of a single-sided format was a late development on Boyle's part: if anything, the evidence cited here suggests that it was the other way round (Harwood, "Science writing," 47).
52. See Philosophical Transactions, 11 (1676), 766-7;
53. Works 1: 592-3; 4: 230-1, 469-70, 508-9.
54. See also "An Advertisement of the Publisher to the Reader, Before the Latine Edition" in A Continuation of New Experiments Physico-Mechanical⋯ The Second Part (London, 1682), sigs. a3-4,
55. which is truncated in Works, 4: 508-9;
56. Nocliluca Aeria (London, 1682), sigs. 54-5;
57. and De Specificorum Remediorum cum Corpusculari Philosophia Concordia (London, 1686), 179-80
58. On Boyle's concern in the 1660s, and on this issue more generally, see M. Hunter, "The Reluctant Philanthropist: Robert Boyle and the "Communication of Secrets and Receits in Physick"," in Religio Medici, eds. O.P. Grell and A. Cunningham (forthcoming).
59. See esp. Works, 5: 38-9. See also the footnote added to the preface of The Sceptical Chymistin the 1680 edition (Works, 1: 462); and the MSS printed by Birch in his Life of Boyle in Works, 1: cxxv-viii (from BP 36, fols. 6, 17, 9, and BP 10, fol. 98, the two latter in the hand of Robin Bacon, who appears to have begun working for Boyle in the late 1670s); cf. ibid., 1: ccxxii-iv. We are also inclined to think that the well-known letter to Oldenburg expounding this view, published in The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, 4: 98-9, is likelier to date from the very end of Oldenburg's life rather than from the 1660s, as suggested by the Halls.
60. Letters and Papers, xxii.
61. But cf. Hall, "Boyle's Method of Work," 113-4.
62. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself and his Friends (London, 1994), lxxxiv n. 67.
63. Quoted in [Sir W. Wilde], "Gallery of Illustrious Irishmen, no. XIII: Sir Thomas Molyneux, bt., MD, FRS," Dublin University Magazine 18 (1841), 305-27, 470-90, 604-19, 744-64, on 320. We are grateful to Joseph Gross for this reference.
64. cf. Certain Physiological Essays (London, 1661), 106, 107 and the unpaginated leaves between.
65. See Shapiro, "Beyond the dating game;"
66. I.B. Cohen, Introduction to Newton's "Principia" (Cambridge, 1971), pt. 2.
67. Arber, Term Catalogues, 2: 170;
68. Philosophical Transactions 16 (1686), 116-8;
69. T. Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London 4 vols. (London, 1756-7), 4: 487.
70. J.F. Fulton referred to it, but did not call attention to the errors it describes (A Bibliography of the Hon. Robert Boyle, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961, 113).
71. More recently, it has been cited in Harwood, "Science writing," 54-5, n. 74.
72. See Hunter, "How Boyle Became a Scientist," 71f.
73. Hall, "Boyle's Method of Work," 113.
74. See E.B. Davis, "'Parcere nominibus': Boyle, Hooke and the rhetorical interpretation of Descartes," in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Hunter, 157-75, esp. 167.
75. See the letter from Collins to Boyle of 1 September 1663 printed in Works, 6: 639, which alludes to a conversation between them. See also DNB and L. Loewenson, "The Works of Robert Boyle and 'The Present State of Russia' by Samuel Collins (1671)," Slavonic and East European Review 33 (1955), 470-85.
76. See BP 29, fois. 219-48. The Boyle Papers contain Latin translations of several works, many of them by Thomas Ramsay, that are different from the published translations; in some cases, there is more than one translation of the same work. This puzzling fact might indicate a desire by Boyle to extend patronage to as many persons as possible, leading him to commission more translations than he actually intended to use. See Letters and Papers, xliii.
77. See Davis, "Parcere nominibus."
78. Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 72f.;
79. Davis, "Parcere nominibus."
80. See Hunter, "Introduction" in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, 12-13.
81. See Hunter, "How Boyle Became a Scientist," esp. 75-7. In A Free Enquiry, on the other hand, though canvassing its irreligious implications, Boyle acknowledged that "the received notion of nature doth neither subvert, nor much endanger any principle of religion." Works, 5: 188.
82. Cf. McGuire, "Boyle's Conception of Nature," 528.
83. Works, 5: 165, 168, 175, 178. Cf. ibid., 191, 203, 222. For similar usage on Boyle's part elsewhere in his writings see, e.g., ibid., 1: 355-6, 2: 468-9, 4: 235. For an interpretation of "vulgar" as meaning "vulgarised," see Jacob, "Subversive Religion," 292;
84. Robert Boyle, 176.
85. Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," 214-6, 217-8.
86. Boyle was usually careful not to engage in anti-Catholic polemics and did not write Reasons Why a Protestant Should not Turn Papist
87. (contrary to what is stated in Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," 223;
88. Henry Stubbe, 149).
89. See Davis, "Anonymous Works of Boyle," esp. 621-2.
90. See also Hunter, "How Boyle Became a Scientist," 74, 80.
91. Works, 3: 10. For a recent overview stressing the significance of Aristotelianism in the period, see C. Mercer, "The Vitality and Importance of Early Modem Aristotelianism," in The Rise of Modern Philosophy, ed. T. Sorell (Oxford, 1993), 33-67.
92. See Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 201f.: however, Shapin and Schaffer arguably exaggerate Boyle's concern with Hobbes in this particular context.
93. For claims to this effect see esp. Westfall, Science and Religion, 84;
94. Steneck, "Greatrakes the Stroker," 173f.
95. But see also Hutchison, "Supernaturalism," 329 n. 4.
96. See esp. McGuire, "Boyle's Conception of Nature," 529. See also below, pp. 254-55.
97. Works, 5: 183. For a further, similar allusion, see ibid., 250-1, where he speaks of "divers modern professors of Christianity, who have of late revived, under new names and dresses, the impious errors of the Gentiles." For the passage in Lucan, see Pharsalia, 9: 578-80.
98. Jacob, "Subversive Religion," 277-8, 286;
99. Robert Boyle, 161-2, 169-70. Cf. ibid., 175-6; "Subversive Religion," 291-2. It is perhaps worth noting that, though Heydon's views may have very generally partaken of the reification of nature to which Boyle was opposed in the treatise, the specific ideas on his part that Jacob itemises are quite tangential to the main thrust of the Free Inquiry.
100. Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," 218.;
101. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, 56-7.
102. See M. Hunter, "The Conscience of Robert Boyle: Functionalism, 'Dysfunctionalism' and the Task of Historical Understanding," in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen & Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, eds. J.V. Field and F.A.J.L. James (Cambridge, 1993), 147-59, on 153. Dr Peter Elmer is currently preparing a new study of the Greatrakes affair.
103. See also A Brief Account of Mr Valentine Greatraks, and divers of the Strange Cures by him lately Performed (London, 1666), esp. 43f.
104. See Jacob, Henry Stubbe, 1434.
105. Cf. also Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," n. 30.
106. See S. Hutton, "Henry More and and Jacob Boehme," in Henry More (1614-87): Tercentenary Studies, ed. S. Hutton (Dordrecht, 1990), 157-71.
107. We are grateful to John Henry for his advice in this connection. Cf. also Guido Giglioni, "The "Hylozoic" Foundations of Francis Glisson's Anatomical Research," in Religio Medici, eds. Grell and Cunningham, n. 57.
108. See N. Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640-60 (Oxford, 1989), ch. 5.
109. See Wilson, "De Ipsa Natura," 159f.
110. On this aspect of Paracelsian ideas, see W. Pagel, Paracelsus (Basel, 1958).
111. For a reading of Notion of Nature which identifies the "sect" as the "spiritualists," and which emphasises the extent to which it was a response to a "spiritualist" science as represented by Helmont, see Klaaren, Religious Origins, 151 and chs. 3, 6, passim.
112. It is true that there are Stoic elements in van Helmont's thought, but these do not seem to us overt enough to make the Helmontians likely to be Boyle's specific target in his "sect" reference: see W. Pagel, The Religious and Philosophical Aspects of van Helmont's Science and Medicine, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Supplement no. 2 (Baltimore, 1944);
113. id., Foan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge, 1982), 31-2 and passim.
114. Jacob, "Boyle's Atomism," 221f., 224;
115. Henry Stubbe, 143f. It is perhaps worth pointing out that, though the passages attacking the medical view of nature as Purposive might seem relevant to Stubbe's views as expressed in The Miraculous Conformist, the draft material divulged here proves that these were added to Boyle's text after Stubbe's death.
116. See Davis, "Parcere nominibus," esp. 165-6.
117. See M. Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in late Seventeenth-century Britain (Woodbridge, 1995), 1
118. See also Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 207f., and esp.
119. John Henry, "Henry More versus Robert Boyle: the spirit of nature and the nature of providence," in Hutton, Henry More, 55-76.
120. See A. Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale 1609-76: Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1995), part 3.
121. Hale's and Boyle's views on law, however, overlapped in distinction to those of Hobbes: see Sargent, Diffident Naturalist, 47-50.
122. Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 211, 214;
123. Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-pump, 222-4, though they are wrong to state categorically that Boyle did not reply: see Works, 4: 128f, esp. 135; see also BP 26, fols. 202-3.
124. It is perhaps also worth noting that Hale's Difficiles Nugae was greeted with a coolness amounting to hostility in Philosophical Transactions, 9 (1674), 78-83.
125. Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 198-9.
126. Hale, Primitive Origination (London, 1677), 27. Guido Giglioni called this passage to our attention.
127. M. Hale, Difficiles Nugae, or Observations touching the Torricellian Experiment (London, 1674), 238,
128. quoted in Cromartie, Sir Matthew Hale, 216-17.
129. See also Antonio Clericuzio, "From Van Helmont to Boyle: a Study of the Transmission of Helmontian Chemical and Medical Theories in Seventeenth-century England," British Journal for the History of Science 26 (1993), 303-34, on 331.
130. Harvey, De generatione animalium (1651),
131. cited in Giglioni, "'Hylozoic' Foundations," from which this account has been derived.
132. See also R. French, William Harvey's Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), esp. ch. 10.
133. See O. Temkin, "The Classical Roots of Glisson's Doctrine of Irritation," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 38 (1964), 297-328.
134. See also Walter Pagel, "Harvey and Glisson on Irritability, with a Note on van Helmont," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 41 (1967), 497-514,
135. and id., "The Reaction to Aristotle in Seventeenth-century Biological Thought: Campanella, van Helmont, Glanvill, Charleton, Harvey, Glisson, Descartes," in Science, Medicine and History, ed. E.A. Underwood, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1: 489-509.
136. J. Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter and Francis Glisson's Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance" Medical History 31 (1987), 15-40, on 16;
137. Giglioni, "'Hylozoic' Foundations;"
138. id., "Automata Compared: Boyle, Leibniz and the Debate on the Notion of Life and Mind," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995), 249-78;
139. id., "Panpsychism versus Hylozoism: an Interpretation of some Seventeenth-century Doctrines of Universal Animation," Acta Comeniana 11 (forthcoming).
140. Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology," 31 and note 63.
141. Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology," 28-32.
142. Both Glisson and Baxter were present at the death of Sir Matthew Hale, which Baxter described in Additional Notes on the Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale (1682):
143. see Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology," 38 n. 95.
144. Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology," 36.
145. Philosophical Transactions, 7 (1672), 5076-7. For a more favourable review of another work by Glisson, his De Ventriculo, see ibid., 11 (1676), 705-8.
146. Henry, "Medicine and Pneumatology," 39 n. 99.
147. Fulton, Bibliography, 161.
148. See also the letter from Sydenham to Boyle quoted in K. Dewhurst, Dr Thomas Sydenham: his Life and Original Writings (London, 1966), 162-4.
149. See Rather, "Pathology at Mid-Century," 90-2, where Rather also notes the extent to which Sydenham qualified these views "as if he had suddenly heard the admonitory voice of Robert Boyle." It is perhaps worth pointing out that Max Neuburger, and through him J.F. Fulton, wholly misconstrue Boyle's views on the vis medicatrix naturae, seeing him as in favour of it rather than hostile to it:
150. M. Neuburger, "Boyle's Erklärungsversuch der spezifischen Arzneimittelwirkung," Archeion 12 (1930), 5-12,
151. cited in Fulton, Bibliography, 113.
152. See M. Hunter, "Boyle versus the Galenists: a Suppressed Critique of Seventeenth-century Medical Practice and its Significance" (forthcoming).
153. For studies of Cudworth see R.L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1957), ch. 5;
154. A. Pacchi, Cartesio in Inghilterra da More a Boyle (Rome-Ban, 1973), esp. 176f.;
155. Hutchison, "Supernaturalism," 319f.;
156. and R. Olson, "On the Nature of God's Existence, Wisdom and Power," in Approaches to Organic Form, ed. F. Burwick (Dordrecht, 1987), 1-48, esp. 20-6.
157. Cudworth, True Intellectual System (London, 1678), sig. 2.
158. On this reading of the history of atomism, see D.B. Sailor, "Moses and Atomism," Journal of the History of Ideas 25 (1964), 3-16,
159. and J.E. McGuire and P.M. Rattansi, "Newton and the "Pipes of Pan"," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 21 (1966), 108-43.
160. Cudworth, True Intellectual System, sig. 2, 13.
161. See Pacchi, Cartesio in Inghilterra, 152-3. See also the essays by Henry and Giglioni cited above.
162. Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 174-5.
163. Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 26, 16, 35; cf. 32.
164. BP 7, fols. 186, 189v, 190v. It is odd that on fol. 187 Boyle speaks of "the learned Men I have been speaking of in connection with an opinion that is almost certainly Cudworth's, which may suggest that Boyle subconsciously conflated his general and specific antagonists: cf. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, 12-13.
165. Quoted in M. Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), 175.
166. Barne, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hall, October 17 1675 (London, 1675), 21-3.
167. Cf. Hunter, Science and Society, 173-5;
168. J. Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1989), 45-6.
169. Hutchison, "Supernaturalism," 322-4.
170. It is perhaps worth noting that the True Intellectual System was favourably reviewed in Philosophical Transactions, 12 (1678), 936-41; on 937 there is a passing reference to Anaxagoras as among "the best of the Ancients."
171. "About the Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis," Works 4: 67-78.
172. See J.W. Wojcik, "The theological context of Boyle's Things above Reason," in Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, 139-55.