Robert Boyle and the Epistemology of the Novel

Hunter, J. Paul

doi:10.1353/ecf.1990.0033

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Towards the end of the seventeenth century the narrative of God's second book of Nature is central to the emerging hermeneutical stance of early modern science, in Protestant jurisdictions at least. An important example is found in Robert Boyle's advocacy of the early form of citizen-science known as ‘Occasional Meditation.’ He writes (quoted in Hunter 1990, 284): The World is a Great Book, not so much of Nature as of the God of Nature, … crowded with instructive Lessons, if we had but the Skill, and would take the Pains, to extract and pick them out: the Creatures are the true Aegyptian Hieroglyphicks, that under the rude form of Birds, and Beasts, etc. conceal the mysterious secrets of Knowledge and of Piety.The context is key: Boyle is encouraging his lay readers to keep a notebook always to hand, to record their impressions of nature through everyday encounters, and to ponder their meaning.…”

Section: The Story Of the Book Of Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

A meta-metaphor for science: the true and the fictional within the book of nature

McLeish

2020

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

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Evelyn Fox Keller is unsurpassed in the perspicuity with which she has drawn attention to the power of metaphor within science, to the work it does in defining scientific discourse, and in developing methodologies to analyse the consequences of semantic ambiguity. In this paper I consider a great metaphor for science, rather than within science. The 'Book of Nature' in which we 'read' the structures that science reveals is at least as old as Augustine, and enjoyed strong advocacy in other ages from Hugh of St. Victor, Boyle and Galileo, to name a few. Yet it is not without its dangers. The significance of 'books' changes with their availability, the language they are written in, the communities who are educated to read them, and their hermeneutic context. I will suggest ways that science has been construed differently following these changes in the metaphor's meaning, including a suggestion that part of the early modern shift is from pure 'reading' of the Book of Nature, to writing it.

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Section: The Story Of the Book Of Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

A meta-metaphor for science: the true and the fictional within the book of nature

McLeish

2020

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

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“…21 Boyle's 'meletetics', his reading of the book of nature, was notably similar to Swammerdam's. 22 Essentially meletetics involved a meditative 'reading' of natural and made entities for their lessons in piety-generally through analogy rather than natural theology.…”

Section: Sleighmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jan Swammerdam's frogs

Sleigh

2012

Notes Rec. R. Soc.

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Having discussed insect metamorphosis at length, Jan Swammerdam's Bybel der Natuure (1679/1737) reached its climax with a substantial description of the generation and muscular activity of frogs. This paper explores the rhetorical role of frogs in Swammerdam's ‘great work’, showing how they were the Archimedean point from which he aimed to reorder all of creation—from insects to humans—within one glorious, God-ordained natural history and philosophy. Swammerdam linked insects to frogs through a demonstration that all underwent epigenesis; and frogs were then linked to humans through a demonstration of their identical muscular activity. The success of Swammerdam's strategy required a theological reconstruction of the frog, traditionally an ungodly creature, such that trustworthy knowledge could be obtained from its body. Perhaps surprisingly, this act of theological cleansing is shown to be somewhat prefigured in the distinctly non-experimental natural history of Edward Topsell (1608). The paper also examines Swammerdam's interactions with the mystic Antoinette Bourignon, and his challenges in reconciling a spirituality of meletetics with a material epistemology in natural philosophy. Differences are revealed between the natural analogies given by Swammerdam in his published and unpublished writings, undermining to a certain extent the triumphal insect–frog–human rhetorical structure of the Bybel .

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“…It also encouraged a lay interpretation of nature. Historian J. Paul Hunter (1990) writes of Boyle's commitment to “the universal priesthood of all observers and interpreters.”…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Robert Boyle wrote in The Christian Virtuoso , (Boyle 1690) that “Being addicted to Experimental Philosophy, one is rather Assisted than Indisposed, to be a good Christian.” The title that Boyle eventually chose for his book points to his direction of thought—it is not so much the results of scientific enquiry that he suggests nudge his readers toward the Christian story, but more the practice of it, and especially the devoted (so “virtuous”), trained (so “virtuosic”), open‐eyed study of nature. Further evidence lies in the originally intended title of “Religion and Experience ” (Hunter 1990).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…I suspect that Boyle would have used “speculations” or “suspicions” where we now say “scientific imagination.” The subsequent demise of these terms into a shadow‐vocabulary of censure points to the same late‐modern “turn” to the suppression of imagination. Boyle's series of short books that he termed “Tracts” bears witness to his wisdom that inner imagination must be nurtured if the natural philosopher is to meet experimental observation with inner understanding (Hunter 1990). In the first volume, he argues for as yet “unheeded Relations and Impressions” between bodies and particles that might not be reducible to their shape, size, and motions.…”

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The Re‐discovery of Contemplation Through Science

McLeish¹

2021

Zygon

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Some of the early‐modern changes in the social framing of science, while often believed to be essential, are shown to be contingent. They contribute to the flawed public narrative around science today, and especially to the misconceptions around science and religion. Four are examined in detail, each of which contributes to the demise of the contemplative stance that science both requires and offers. They are: (1) a turn from an immersed subject to the pretense of a pure objectivity, (2) a turn from imagination as a legitimate pathway to knowledge, (3) a turn from shared and participative science to a restricted professionalism, and (4) an overprosaic reading of the metaphor of the “Book of Nature.” All four, but especially the imperative to consider reading nature as poetry, and a deeper examination of the entanglements between poetry and theoretical science, draw unavoidably on theological ideas, and contribute to a developing “theology of science.”

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Robert Boyle and the Epistemology of the Novel

Cited by 13 publications

References 5 publications

A meta-metaphor for science: the true and the fictional within the book of nature

A meta-metaphor for science: the true and the fictional within the book of nature

Jan Swammerdam's frogs

The Re‐discovery of Contemplation Through Science

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