Empowering Lay Belief: Robert Boyle and the Moral Economy of Experiment

Abstract

ArgumentHow did Boyle’s religious concerns and views cause his experimental philosophy to differ from received views on the goals and methods of natural philosophy? I argue that Boyle predicated his experimental philosophy on two fundamental doctrines. The first claimed that attributing causality to natural entities was idolatrous, that is, intellectually and morally erroneous. The second doctrine claimed that causal relations in the natural world were the property of God’s benevolent government. Boyle’s experimental studies were accordingly intended to identify specific manifestations of this property, while philosophers traditionally construed experiment as an aid to observation of phenomena. Boyle rendered experiment a learning tool that enabled believers to accommodate themselves, theoretically and practically, to God’s benevolent rule. As a servant of the public good, this experimental philosopher formed an important turning point in the emergence of modern science and its role in the social division of labor.

Animism, Aristotelianism, and the Legacy of William Gilbert’sDe Magnete

“…Several historians have observed that Boyle, like Gassendi, could not stem an undercurrent 21. On the theological aspects of seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy, see Fisch 1953, Schaffer 1986, and Ben-Chaim 2002. Amos Funkenstein observes that "to many seventeenth-century thinkers, theology and science merged into one idiom, part of a veritable secular theology" (Funkenstein 1986, p. ix).…”

A Preliminary Study of the Appropriation of Van Helmont's oeuvre in Britain in Chymistry, Medicine and Natural Philosophy

“…According to Boyle, Helmont did not err by combining natural philosophy and theology -on the contrary. 46 The reason to distrust him was scientifi c: he proposed a theory on the weapon salve that was inexplicable by direct contact and depended on mysterious "sympathies". Such sympathies were accepted by Kenelm Digby.…”

Judith Rich Harris: The Miss Marple of Developmental Psychology

“…He was a "priest of nature" who mediated between God as He revealed Himself through the workings of nature and the general public (Fisch 1953;Jacob 1977;Ben-Chaim 2002). 3 Science was considered to be a special kind of knowledge that could only be gained by a special kind of man.…”

“…The early modern scientist, therefore, somewhat resembled the priest. He was a "priest of nature" who mediated between God as He revealed Himself through the workings of nature and the general public (Fisch 1953;Jacob 1977;Ben-Chaim 2002). The ascetic or priestly virtues of the scientist were an emblem of his disinterestedness and impartiality and hence, of his truth-telling capacity.…”