How Boyle became a scientist

History of Science

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 59-103

  Hunter, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84972605680     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: 17538564     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327539503300103     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. The words ‘scientist’ and ‘science’ are used in my title and throughout this paper as a shorthand to avoid repeated recourse to cumbersome phrases such as ‘experimental natural philosopher’ and ‘experimental natural philosophy’: In my view, almost any word used by a twentieth-century commentator to describe a seventeenth-century state of affairs requires a mental act of translation, but if readers are particularly worried by potentially anachronistic overtones in these words, they should mentally substitute ‘experimental natural philosopher’ and ‘experimental natural philosophy’ thoughout.
2. BirchThomas,(ed.), The works of the honourable Robert Boyle … to which is prefixed the life of the author (2nd edn, 6 vols, London, 1772), i, pp. v–cl. Hall Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and seventeenth-century chemistry (Cambridge, 1958), ch. 1. Maddison's researches are usefully (though not comprehensively) collected in his The life of the honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1969). For a complete list of his earlier writings, and of other publications on Boyle since 1940, see the bibliography in HunterMichael,(ed.), Robert Boyle reconsidered (Cambridge, 1994), 215–26.
3. See esp. Webster Charles, The great instauration: Science, medicine and reform 1626–60 (London, 1975) and Jacob J. R., Robert Boyle and the English revolution (New York, 1977). See also O’Brien J. J., “Samuel Hartlib's influence on Robert Boyle's scientific development”, Annals of science, xxi (1965), 1–14, 257–76; Wilkinson R. S., “The Hartlib papers and seventeenth-century chemistry”, Ambix, xv (1968), 54–69; and Barnard T. C., Cromwellian Ireland, 1649–60 (Oxford, 1975), ch. 8. For a critique of the claims for the primacy of Hartlib's influence on Boyle made by such writers, see Canny Nicholas, The upstart earl: A study of the social and mental world of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982), esp. ch. 7, though, on Canny's claims about the impact on Boyle of his Irish background, see Hunter Michael, Robert Boyle by himself and his friends (London, 1994), p. lxxvi. A further study of this period is Teague B. C., “The origins of Robert Boyle's philosophy”, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1971.
4. Jacob, Boyle (ref. 3), ch. 2. See also Jacob J. R., “The ideological origins of Robert Boyle's natural philosophy”, Journal of European studies, ii (1972), 1–21.
5. HarwoodJohn,(ed.), The early essays and ethics of Robert Boyle (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1991).
6. Oster Malcolm, ‘“The Beame of Divinity’: Animal suffering in the early thought of Robert Boyle”, The British journal for the history of science, xxii (1989), 151–79; idem, “Biography, culture and science: The formative years of Robert Boyle”, History of science, xxxi (1993), 177–226.
7. Principe Lawrence M., “Style and thought of the early Boyle: Discovery of the 1648 manuscript of Seraphic love”, Isis, lxxxv (1994), 247–60, esp. pp. 250–2.
8. Works (ref. 2), v, 255–311; Hunter Michael, “A new Boyle find”, BSHS newsletter, xlv (Oct. 1994), 20–21.
9. See Hunter Michael, Letters and papers of Robert Boyle: A guide to the manuscripts and microfilm (Bethesda, Md., 1992). The Boyle Letters and Papers will hereafter be referred to as “BL” and “BP”.
10. Dated items are as follows:.
11. i. The manuscript of Aretology states on its title-page that it was begun in 1645 (Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), 1); references in Boyle's correspondence show that he was still working on it in 1646 (Works (ref. 2), i, pp. xxx, xxxiv).
12. ii. Certain of the “Scripture Observations” and “Occasionall Meditations” in BP 14, fols 7–13, are dated 7–28 March and 3–26 May 1647.
13. iii. The following items in BP 37 are dated:.
14. “To my Mistris”, 2 May 1645 (fols 164–5).
15. “The Duty of a Mother's being a Nurse, asserted”, 15 Aug. 1647 (fols 196–202).
16. “For Fidelia”, 2 Dec. 1647 (fols 144–9).
17. “Against Painting”, 12 Feb. 1647/8 (fols 204–8).
18. iv. In addition, two related items in the Boyle Letters are dated:.
19. BL 1, 109–10, probably to Mrs Dury, 15 April 1647.
20. BL 1, 137–8, to “Prince of the Round Table”, 18 April 1647.
21. Shapin Steven, “Personal development and intellectual biography: The case of Robert Boyle”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 335–45.
22. Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), passim. See also BP 7, fols 128–33; 14, fols 1–14.
23. BP 3, fols 91–92.
24. Principe, “Early Boyle” (ref. 8), 255–8.
25. See Harwood's notes on such instances in Essays (ref. 5): E.g. 29 concerning natural philosophy and religion, 180 concerning atheism, or 183 concerning reason.
26. Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), 118; Works (ref. 2), ii, 638-[41] (pp. 641–8 are mispaginated). For further examples, see Harwood, Essays, 121, 167–8, 233, 243.
27. Works (ref. 2), i, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii; vi, 39–41.
28. Works (ref. 2), i, p. xli; vi, 40.
29. Hartlib Papers (hereinafter “HP”) 60/14/36A.
30. Works (ref. 2), vi, 40; Ephemerides, 1648 (31/22/2B). On intellectual arrogance, see Hunter Michael, Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), ch. 4.
31. Works (ref. 2), i, p. xxxiv (my italics); vi, 40.
32. Webster, “New light” (ref. 32), 21 (based on information supplied by Jacob J. R.); Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), 186–7.
33. Webster, “New light” (ref. 32), 19, 33, 34, 37, 42; Great instauration (ref. 3), 61, 66. The only use of the word ‘Experiment’ by Boyle in connection with the college occurs in the passage from “The Doctrine of Thinking” just quoted.
34. Works (ref. 2), vi, 48.
35. Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), p. xxiii.
36. BP 37, fols 166–7.
37. Highmore Nathaniel, History of generation (London, 1651), sig. ¶4.
38. BP 44, fols 94–112; BP 8, fols 118–22. BP 3, fol. 146 is a replacement first page belonging with the latter (of which the title and first two entries are deleted, the first being identical with the first in BP 3, fol. 146, which is retitled “A Miscellaneous Collection”). The verses include some marked “Lrd. Br.”, presumably Broghill.
39. BP 28, pp. 309–11. This item has been previously noted by Maddison, Life (ref. 2), 63.
40. BP 8, fols 140–8 (1654/55)); BP 25, pp. 153–6 (1655), 157–72 (1655/56, 1656/57), 173–83 (1656, though with some entries dated 1655), 343–6 (dated both 1651/52 and 1653/54), 347–62 (n.d.); BP 26, fols 1–2 (Sept., no year), 96–99 (continuing the sequence in BP 25, pp. 161–72).
41. See above, ref. 25. This incomplete text is partly in Boyle's hand and partly in that of an amanuensis. It is possibly the introduction to the work referred to in the “Essay Of the holy Scriptures”, BP 7, fol. 31, where Boyle states that his view of Aristotle was “largely enough express’d” in “some Philosophicall Papers”. For further links between this document and other texts of this period, see refs 48, 123.
42. BP 36, fols 65–66. See below. Dating indications are as follows. A similar title is to be found not only in the 1649/50 list (see ref. 53), but also in the list in BP 36, fol. 70, of Boyle's “Philosophicall Essays”, etc., evidently dating from c. 1654, which includes the item “Of Naturall Philosophy & Philosophers”. The document clearly precedes the separate essays on the utility of science and the theory of experimentation that Boyle began later in the 1650s. A dating clue may be provided by Hartlib's Ephemerides s.v. 1651 (28/2/3B), where there is a passage which echoes one of the themes of the latter part of this intended treatise, and which perhaps represents Hartlib's garbled recollection of a conversation with Boyle: Hartlib noted how “Hee care's not for Optical Niceties but as they are subordinate to Natural Phil[osophy]. For by the Microscopes and Tubes that may bee learn’t and discerned w[hi]ch canot bee done neither by Reason or Experiments but only sense”.
43. BP 7, 1–94 (of which fols 93–94 are in the wrong order); hereinafter “Scriptures”. The text is in a scribal hand. The fullest account hitherto is to be found in Wojcik Jan W., “Robert Boyle and the limits of reason: A study in the relationship between science and religion in seventeenth-century England”, Ph.D. thesis, University of Kentucky, 1992, 41–47. It is also mentioned in Jacob, Boyle (ref. 3), 26, 124, 189 n. 80, where it is described as “expressly irenical” (p. 26), though, as will be seen from what is said below about its content, this is not a particularly satisfactory description of it. Dating clues for this work are as follows. The most decisive is that references to J. C. Hottinger's Historia orientalis (1651) are integral to the text (e.g. fols 47, 65). On its possible appearance in the 1649/50 list, see ref. 53. The scientific essays referred to in it (fols 51, 59) — On the weapon-salve, chemistry and cold — are referred to in that list, which links it to that phase of Boyle's career rather than to the mid- to late 1650s. In Style of the Scriptures Boyle states that the longer work from which that was abstracted was written nine or ten years previously, “partly in England, partly in another kingdom, and partly too on shipboard”, which links it to his Irish visit (Works (ref. 2), ii, 251). In addition, Boyle displays his scriptural interests and refers to his incomplete treatise on that topic in his letters to John Mallet of Nov. 1651, March 1652 and Jan. 1653, British Library Harleian MSS 7003, fols 179–80, Add. MS 32093, fol. 293, and Works, i, pp. l–lii (see also appendix, below). There is also reference to information collected in Ireland (fol. 61). A further possible clue is that the Sieur de Ryer's French translation of the Koran (1647) is described as “Recent” (fol. 77). See also ref. 108.
44. Maddison, Life (ref. 2), 64; Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), p. xix.
45. “Study” (ref. 48), fol. 123.
46. “Study” (ref. 48), fols 124v-126, 137–8 and passim; Fisch Harold, “The scientist as priest: A note on Robert Boyle's natural theology”, Isis, xliv (1953), 252–65.
47. “Study” (ref. 48), fol. 123 (Prerogatives replaces Excellencys, deleted); Works (ref. 2), ii, 4 and 1–63 passim. Some of the chief overlaps between this work and Usefulness are noted in Jacob, Robert Boyle (ref. 3), 197 n. 66: The list given there could be extended, and the interrelationship between the two texts will be dealt with in full in the forthcoming Pickering Masters edition of The works of Robert Boyle, ed. by Hunter Michael Davis Edward B., In addition, the concept of the world as a “Conclave Mnemonicum” is echoed in the preface to Occasional reflections (Works (ref. 2), ii, 334). Since, even if it was partially based on texts dating from this period, Part 1 of Usefulness was clearly extended later, I have refrained from using evidence from it to reconstruct Boyle's interests at this point in his career.
48. “Study” (ref. 48), fols 128v, 130, 132v, 133, 135, 137.
49. “Atomicall Philosophy” (ref. 49), fols 174, 167.
50. BP 36, fols 65–66. Scribal hand. The text is written across a double-page spread, with the title in the centre of the two. See also above, ref. 50.
51. Followed by an illegible deleted word, apparently written as “sæmts”, the ‘m’ of which was then altered to ‘s’. The entire passage “Of the destitutions…. Experiments” appears to have been added after the document was originally compiled.
52. Followed by can deleted.
53. Compare “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 46, with Works (ref. 2), iv, 172, and fols 55, 58–61 with iv, 194, 196–8.
54. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 4.
55. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 12–13.
56. Cf. Levine J. M., The battle of the books: History and literature in the Augustan age (Ithaca, 1991).
57. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 41. See also fol. 71, and his comments in his letter to John Mallet of March 1652, cited in the appendix, below.
58. Joy Lynn, Gassendi the atomist: Advocate of history in an age of science (Cambridge, 1987).
59. Works (ref. 2), v, 180–8. It is interesting that on p. 181 he cites one of the authors who appears in “Scriptures”, Hottinger.
60. Principe, “Early Boyle” (ref. 8), 255–8, esp. p. 257. It is revealing that the passages added to Seraphic love included quotations from the Greek text of the New Testament and references to Socinian writings (Works (ref. 2), i, 269, 278, 279, 281, 282, 284).
61. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 60–61. Cf. “Atomicall Philosophy” (ref. 49), fols 171–3.
62. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 60.
63. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 22–23, 24. On early modern atheism, see Allen D. C., Doubt's boundless sea (Baltimore, 1964); Hunter Michael Wootton David (eds), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992); and, with reference to Boyle's later preoccupations, Hunter Michael, “Science and heterodoxy: An early modern problem reconsidered”, in Lindberg D. C. Westman R. S. (eds), Reappraisals of the scientific revolution (Cambridge, 1990), 437–60.
64. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 23, 44–46, 49, 64 and passim. On Socinianism, see esp. McLnchlan H. J., Socinianism in seventeenth-century England (London, 1951), 11f. and passim. For a sensitive account of the ambivalence of the label Socinianism between religious rationalism in general, and anti-Trinitarianism in particular, see Trevor-Roper H. R., Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London, 1987), 186f. On Socinianism see also Walker D. P., The decline of hell (London, 1964), ch. 5, Champion J. A. I., The pillars of priestcraft shaken (Cambridge, 1992), 106f., Reedy Gerard, “Socinians, John Toland, and the Anglican rationalists”, Harvard theological review, lxx (1977), 285–304, and idem, The Bible and reason (Philadelphia, 1985), ch. 6, though the focus of all but the first of these is on the later seventeenth century.
65. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 29. Cf. fol. 23.
66. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 4, 29–30.
67. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 27, 53.
68. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 24–25. Van Helmont's treatise on this subject had been Translated by Charleton Walter as part of his Ternary of paradoxes (London, 1650), and Boyle's reference could be to this.
69. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 44, 54.
70. See Probst Siegmund, “Infinity and creation: The origin of the controversy between Thomas Hobbes and the Savilian professors Seth Ward and John Wallis”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 271–9. See also Tuck Richard, “The ‘Christian atheism’ of Thomas Hobbes”, in Hunter Wootton (eds), Atheism (ref. 90), 111–30.
71. Royal Society MS 1, fols 121–8; Works (ref. 2), ii, 36–49. The relationship between the material in Oldenburg's commonplace book and Usefulness will be tabulated in the forthcoming Masters Pickering Works of Robert Boyle (ref. 56); a further item from Oldenburg's MS is published in Boas Marie, “An early version of Boyle's Sceptical Chymist”, Isis, xlv (1954), 153–68.
72. Compare “Study” (ref. 48), passim, with Works (ref. 2), ii, 1–63, passim. By conflating his account of the two works, Jacob, Boyle (ref. 3), 104f., misses this contrast. On Usefulness, see also Clericuzio, “Redefinition” (ref. 61), 571.
73. Works (ref. 2), iv, 152.
74. “Study” (ref. 48), fol. 136; BP 36, fol. 70.
75. Clericuzio, “Redefinition” (ref. 61), 568–70 and passim.
76. “Study” (ref. 48), fol. 135; Works, ii, 21.
77. Works (ref. 2), i, pp. xxvii f., vi, 45f. See also appendix, below.
78. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fols 11–12.
79. McLachlan, Socinianism (ref. 91), 171–2.
80. Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), 162n (where the words “to bee printed” are unfortunately omitted after “5 Copies” in the quotation from Hartlib's Ephemerides); cf. Aubrey John, Brief lives, ed. by Clark Andrew (2 vols, Oxford, 1898), i, 307.
81. Works (ref. 2), ii, 108; BP 12–13, 15. See also Popkin R. H., “Could Spinoza have known Bodin's Coloquium heptaplomares?”, Philosophia, xvi (1986), 307–14; Iliffe Rob, “Jesus Nazarenus Legislator: Adam Boreel's defence of Christianity”, in Popkin R. H. Daubert F-C. Berti Silvia (eds), Heterodoxy and free-thought: Clandestine manuscripts and the birth of the Enlightenment (forthcoming).
82. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 88. For Boyle's later references to his meeting with ben Israel, see Works (ref. 2), ii, 18, 280, 301; v, 172, 183; vi, 7.
83. See Works (ref. 2), i, pp. xliv–xlv; Maddison, Life (ref. 2), 72–73. Boyle may also have visited France in 1645: Works, i, p. xxvii; Maddison, Life, 65.
84. McLachlan, Socinianism (ref. 91), ch. 3; Colie R. L., Light and enlightenment (Cambridge, 1957), 20. See also appendix, below.
85. See Dury John, A seasonable discourse (London, 1649), 13f. See also Popkin R. H., “The first college for Jewish studies”, Revue des études juives, cxliii (1984), 351–64; van der Wall Ernestine, “The Dutch hebraist Adam Boreel and the Misnah project: Six unpublished letters”, Lias, xvi (1989), 239–63; Katz D. S., “The Abendana brothers and the Christian hebraists of seventeenth-century England”, Journal of ecclesiastical history, xl (1989), 28–52.
86. On Dury's concerns, see esp. Batten J. M., John Dury: Advocate of Christian reunion (Chicago, 1944). Cf. the case of Arnold Boate, who appears in Webster's book as if his interests were exclusively medical and technological, whereas in fact his priorities seem to have been primarly concerned with scriptural learning: See above, ref. 129.
87. Hall to Hartlib, ND (“Munday”), HP 60/14/39A; HP 36/6/1A-6A; HP 36/7/2B-6B.
88. HP 8/27/2B-7B, 9A-13B; HP 42/1/1A-2A.
89. See above, at ref. 19.
90. See above, ref. 108.
91. For accounts of Charleton's ideas, see Rattansi P. M., “Paracelsus and the Puritan revolution”, Ambix, xi (1963), 24–32; Gelbart N. R., “The intellectual development of Walter Charleton”, Ambix, xviii (1971), 149–68; and Mulligan Lotte, “‘Reason’, ‘right reason’ and ‘revelation’ in mid-seventeenth-century England”, in VickersBrian,(ed.), Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984), 375–401.
92. See esp. the studies collected in HuttonSarah,(ed.), Henry More (1614–87): Tercentenary studies (Dordrecht, 1990). See also Hall A. R., Henry More: Magic, religion and experiment (Oxford, 1990).
93. See esp. Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon, Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985). For a more general view, see Henry John, “The scientific revolution in England”, in Porter Roy Teich Mikuláš (eds), The scientific revolution in national context (Cambridge, 1992), 178–209.
94. See esp. Worden Blair, “Toleration and the Cromwellian protectorate”, Studies in church history, xxi (1984), 199–233.
95. “Scriptures” (ref. 51), fol. 5.
96. In addition, Boyle occasionally speaks of “sects” as a synonym for “interests” in his treatises of the mid-late 1640s. See his “Of the Study & Exposition of the Scriptures”, where he was anxious to avoid bias by “the Partiality of Sects & Interests” (BP 3, fol. 92). Cf. Harwood, Essays (ref. 5), 5.
97. Works (ref. 2), i, pp. xxxii–xxxiii. On the blasphemy bill, see Jordan W. K., The development of religious toleration in England, 1640–60 (London, 1938), 89f.
98. Works (ref. 2), i, p. xxxv.
99. British Library Add. MS 32093, fol. 293.
100. Jacob, Boyle (ref. 2), 87 and passim.
101. BP 36, fols 144–5, 2: The comments are those of Henry Miles. See further my forthcoming study of the depredations of the Boyle correspondence in the eighteenth century.
102. Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Rawlinson D 833, fol. 63v; Birch Thomas, The history of The Royal Society (4 vols, London, 1756–57), iii, 351, 363, 366–7, 371.
103. Works (ref. 1), iv, 155.