Download or read book The Diffident Naturalist written by Rose-Mary Sargent and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-04-03 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a provocative reassessment of one of the quintessential figures of early modern science, Rose-Mary Sargent explores Robert Boyle's philosophy of experiment, a central aspect of his life and work that became a model for mid- to late seventeenth-century natural philosophers and for many who followed them. Sargent examines the philosophical, legal, experimental, and religious traditions—among them English common law, alchemy, medicine, and Christianity—that played a part in shaping Boyle's experimental thought and practice. The roots of his philosophy in his early life and education, in his religious ideals, and in the work of his predecessors—particularly Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo—are fully explored, as are the possible influences of his social and intellectual circle. Drawing on the full range of Boyle's published works, as well as on his unpublished notebooks and manuscripts, Sargent shows how these diverse influences were transformed and incorporated into Boyle's views on and practice of experiment.
Download or read book Robert Boyle A Free Enquiry Into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature written by Robert Boyle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important treatise by one of the leading mechanical philosophers of the seventeenth century.
Download or read book The Very Idea of Modern Science written by Joseph Agassi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-14 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the scientific revolution as a movement of amateur science. It describes the ideology of the amateur scientific societies as the philosophy of the Enlightenment Movement and their social structure and the way they made modern science such a magnificent institution. It also shows what was missing in the scientific organization of science and why it gave way to professional science in stages. In particular the book studies the contributions of Sir Francis Bacon and of the Hon. Robert Boyle to the rise of modern science. The philosophy of induction is notoriously problematic, yet its great asset is that it expressed the view of the Enlightenment Movement about science. This explains the ambivalence that we still exhibit towards Sir Francis Bacon whose radicalism and vision of pure and applied science still a major aspect of the fabric of society. Finally, the book discusses Boyle’s philosophy, his agreement with and dissent from Bacon and the way he single-handedly trained a crowd of poorly educated English aristocrats and rendered them into an army of able amateur researchers.
Download or read book The Scientist s Atom and the Philosopher s Stone written by Alan Chalmers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the results of his own scholarly research as well as that of others the author offers, for the first time, a comprehensive and documented history of theories of the atom from Democritus to the twentieth century. This is not history for its own sake. By critically reflecting on the various versions of atomic theories of the past the author is able to grapple with the question of what sets scientific knowledge apart from other kinds of knowledge, philosophical knowledge in particular. He thereby engages historically with issues concerning the nature and status of scientific knowledge that were dealt with in a more abstract way in his What Is This Thing Called Science?, a book that has been a standard text in philosophy of science for three decades and which is available in nineteen languages. Speculations about the fundamental structure of matter from Democritus to the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophers and beyond are construed as categorically distinct from atomic theories amenable to experimental investigation and support and as contributing little to the latter from a historical point of view. The thesis will provoke historians and philosophers of science alike and will require a revision of a range of standard views in the history of science and philosophy. The book is key reading for students and scholars in History and Philosophy of Science and will be instructive for and provide a challenge to philosophers, historians and scientists more generally.
Download or read book Experimental Philosophy and the Birth of Empirical Science written by Michael Ben-Chaim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did empirical research become the cornerstone of modern science? Scholars have traditionally associated empirical research with the search for knowledge, but have failed to provide adequate solutions to this basic historical problem. This book offers a different approach that focuses on human understanding - rather than knowledge - and its cultural expression in the creation and social transaction of causal explanations. Ancient Greek philosophers professed that genuine understanding of a particular subject was gained only when its nature, or essence, was defined. This ancient mode of explanation furnished the core teachings of late medieval natural philosophers, and was reaffirmed by early modern philosophers such as Bacon and Descartes. Yet during the second half of the 17th century, radical transformation gave rise to innovative research practices that were designed to explain how empirical properties of the physical world were correlated. The study unfolded in this book centres on the works of Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Isaac Newton - the most notable exponents of the 'experimental philosophy' in the late 17th century - to explore how this transformation led to the emergence of a recognizably modern culture of empirical research. Relating empirical with explanatory practices, this book offers a novel solution to one of the major problems in the history of western science and philosophy. It thereby provides a new perspective on the Scientific Revolution and the origins of modern empiricism. At the same time, this book demonstrates how historical and sociological tools can be combined to study science as an evolving institution of human understanding.
Download or read book The Aspiring Adept written by Lawrence Principe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aspiring Adept presents a provocative new view of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), one of the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution, by revealing for the first time his avid and lifelong pursuit of alchemy. Boyle has traditionally been considered, along with Newton, a founder of modern science because of his mechanical philosophy and his experimentation with the air-pump and other early scientific apparatus. However, Lawrence Principe shows that his alchemical quest--hidden first by Boyle's own codes and secrecy, and later suppressed or ignored--positions him more accurately in the intellectual and cultural crossroads of the seventeenth century. Principe radically reinterprets Boyle's most famous work, The Sceptical Chymist, to show that it criticizes not alchemists, as has been thought, but "unphilosophical" pharmacists and textbook writers. He then shows Boyle's unambiguous enthusiasm for alchemy in his "lost" Dialogue on the Transmutation and Melioration of Metals, now reconstructed from scattered fragments and presented here in full for the first time. Intriguingly, Boyle believed that the goal of his quest, the Philosopher's Stone, could not only transmute base metals into gold, but could also attract angels. Alchemy could thus act both as a source of knowledge and as a defense against the growing tide of atheism that tormented him. In seeking to integrate the seemingly contradictory facets of Boyle's work, Principe also illuminates how alchemy and other "unscientific" pursuits had a far greater impact on early modern science than has previously been thought.
Download or read book Leviathan and the Air Pump written by Steven Shapin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump. The issues at stake in their disputes ranged from the physical integrity of the air-pump to the intellectual integrity of the knowledge it might yield. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild. The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer use the confrontation between Hobbes and Boyle as a way of understanding what was at stake in the early history of scientific experimentation. They describe the protagonists' divergent views of natural knowledge, and situate the Hobbes-Boyle disputes within contemporary debates over the role of intellectuals in public life and the problems of social order and assent in Restoration England. 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.
Download or read book Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle written by Robert Boyle and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability. . . . Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle's works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania
Download or read book The Sceptical Chymist written by Robert Boyle and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original: The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle
Download or read book The Works of Robert Boyle written by Robert Boyle and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boyle written by Michael Hunter and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Boyle ranks with Newton and Einstein as one of the world's most important scientists. This biography of Boyle navigates Boyle's voluminous published works as well as his personal letters and papers.
Download or read book Boyle on Fire written by William Eaton and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-05-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle written by Robert Boyle and published by . This book was released on 1744 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Skeptical Chemist written by Roberta Baxter and published by Morgan Reynolds Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Boyle, the favorite son of the wealthiest man in England and Ireland, could have lived a life of luxury. Instead he committed himself to advancing scientific knowledge and to helping lay the foundation of modern chemistry. Boyle used his wealth to help found the Royal Society, the first state chartered scientific organization, and to build an elaborate laboratory in which he performed dozens of experiments in chemistry and physics. Robert Boyle lived during an exciting time of revolution and scientific advancement, and his life and work are vividly portrayed for a new generation of young readers in Skeptical Chemist: The Story of Robert Boyle. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Correspondence of Robert Boyle 1636 1691 Vol 2 written by Michael Hunter and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was one of the most influential scientific and theological thinkers of his time. This is the first edition of his correspondence, transcribed from the original manuscripts. It is fully annotated, with an introduction and general index. The four volumes cover the time periods of Volume 1: 1936-91, Volume 2: 1662-5, Volume 3: 1666-7 and finally Volume 4 1668 to 77.
Download or read book Gender and Boyle s Law of Gases written by Elizabeth Potter and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boyle's Law, which describes the relation between the pressure and volume of a gas, was worked out by Robert Boyle in the mid-1600s. His experiments are still considered examples of good scientific work and continue to be studied along with their historical and intellectual contexts by philosophers, historians, and sociologists. Now there is controversy over whether Boyle's work was based only on experimental evidence or whether it was influenced by the politics and religious controversies of the time, including especially class and gender politics. Elizabeth Potter argues that even good science is sometimes influenced by such issues, and she shows that the work leading to the Gas Law, while certainly based on physical evidence, was also shaped by class and gendered considerations. At issue were two descriptions of nature, each supporting radically different visions of class and gender arrangements. Boyle's Law rested on mechanistic principles, but Potter shows us an alternative law based on hylozooic principles (the belief that all matter is animated), whose adherents challenged social stability and the status quo in 17th-century England.
Download or read book The Philosophical Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq Abridged Methodized and Disposed Under the General Heads of Physics Statics Pneumatics Natural History Chymistry and Medicine written by Robert Boyle and published by . This book was released on 1725 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
