Abstract
Until recently historians have characterised the seventeenth century as a time of transformation in epistemology, not only in natural philosophy, but in all areas of intellectual endeavour. By the end of the century, it is claimed, vast changes had occurred in methods of argument, in what counted as evidence and in the degree of certainty which it was possible to achieve for natural knowledge. Robert Hoopes, Barbara Shapiro and Christopher Hill, arguing from different stand points, all emphasize that ‘reason’ by the end of the century came to be used for the unaided operations of the mind to make logical connections in all fields of knowledge. The triumph of ‘science’ meant the victory of mechanical reasoning to the exclusion of other forms.2
This essay was published in a shorter form as “Robert Boyle, Right Reason and the Use of Metaphor”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55 (1994). It has since been extensively revised and brought up to date.
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Notes
Robert Hoopes, Right Reason in the English Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1962); Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983); Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity in 17th Century England (London, 1974, rev. ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991 ), pp. 103–23.
Richard W.F. Kroll, The Material Word: Literate Culture in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991), p. xvii.
Eugene Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science:.Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1977). Like Hill and Shapiro, Klaaren is involved, perhaps necessarily, in a search for the roots of `modernity’ in the discourse of the seventeenth century, as when he writes of “Boyle’s epochal contribution… to the advancement of carefully differentiated scientific writing” (p.118).
Timothy Shanahan, “Teleological Reasons in Boyle’s Disquisitions about Final Causes” in Michael Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge:. Cambridge UP, 1994 ) p. 191.
J.J. Macintosh, “Locke and Boyle on Miracles and God’s Existence”, in M. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, p. 208.
Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, “De-centring `the Big Picture’: The Origins of Modern Science and the Modem Origins of Science”, BJHS, 26(1993), pp.407–32; see also Andrew Cunningham, “How the Principia got its Name: Or, Taking Natural Philosophy Seriously”, History of Science 26 (1991), pp.380ff. See also Jane E. Jenkins, “Arguing about nothing, p. Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Theological Implications of the Void”, in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution edited by Margaret J. Osier (Cambridge:.Cambridge U.P. 2000) pp.157 ff
I am grateful to the contribution made to my understanding of some of Boyle’s work by Deborah Hall, whose Honours thesis, “A Christian Virtuoso”, was submitted to the History Department of La Trobe University in 1987.
J. Jenkins, “Arguing about nothing…”, p.155.
Appendix to the First Part of The Christian Virtuoso (1690) in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle edited by Thomas Birch (6 vols, 1772, rep. Hildesheim, 1965), vol. 6, p.713.
See Hoopes, Right Reason, passim; Herschel Baker, The Wars of Truth, (London, p. 1952 ), Chapter. 7.
Charles, I. Eikon Basilike, edited by Philip A. Knachel, Cornell,. 1966 ), pp. 52–60.
Gerrard Winstanley, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, in The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, edited by G.H. Sabine, New York, p. 1965 ), pp. 251.
Winstanley, Truth Lifting Up Its Head, in Works, p.105.
Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium or the Rule of Conscience, 2 vols., (London 1660 ), I, p. 231.
Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity, pp.118–20.
Taylor, Ductor, pp.47–56.
Barbara Beigun Kaplan, `Divulging of Useful Truths in Physick’, p.the Medical Agenda of Robert Boyle (Baltimore:.Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), p. 51.
Jan W. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997 ), 214.
John Spurr, “’Rational Religion’ in Restoration England”, JHI, 50, (1989), pp. 563–85.
Ibid, p.571.
The case for the persistence of `Right Reason’ in the earlier part of the century has been argued by the present writer in “’Reason’, ‘Right Reason’ and `Revelation’ in MidSeventeenth-Century England”, in Brian Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), pp.375–401.
Wojcik, Robert Boyle, p.216.
Robert Boyle, The Excellency of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy, in Works, vol. 4, p.2.
The Christian Virtuoso, showing, that by being addicted to Experimental Philosophy, a man is rather assisted than indisposed to be a good Christian, Works, vol.5, p.509.
Excellency of Theology, Works, vol. 4, p.1–3.
Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society (1667), edited by J. Cope and H.W. Jones, ( St. Louis, 1958 ), pp. 375–76.
Excellency of Theology, Works, vol. 4, pp.11–12.
See R. Colie, “Spinoza and the Early English Deists”, JHI, 20 (1959), p. 33.
A Discourse of Things Above Reason, Works, vol. 4, p.408.
The work was composed between 1671 and 1690.
John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, (1690), edited by Peter H. Nidditch, (Oxford: OUP 1975), p.302, Bk II, xxiii, 12.
A Discourse of Things Above Reason, Works, vol. 5, p.508.
The Christian Virtuoso, Part I, Works, vol. 5, p. 508.
Michael Hunter, “The Problem of `Atheism’ in Early Modem England”, TRHS, 5th Series, 35, (1985), p.147. Here, and in G.E. Aylmer, “Unbelief in Seventeenth-Century England” in Puritans and Revolutionaries edited by D. Pennington and K. Thomas (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978) the use of `atheist’ and the polemical purposes of this term and its ambiguous definitions are discussed.
See Blount’s Miracles no Violations of the Laws of Nature, (1683), discussed in John Redwood, “Charles Blount: Deism and English Free thought”, JHI, 35, (1974), pp.490–498; P. Harth, Contexts of Dryden’s Thought, ( Chicago; Chicago UP, 1968 ), pp. 74–94.
An Appendix to the First Part of the Christian Virtuoso, Works, vol. 6, pp.673–715. Wojcik wishes to throw doubt upon relying on the Appendix to theChristian Virtuoso for evidence of Boyle’s views unless supported by other passages of his published works. My interpretation of Boyle’s views — while it uses the Appendix — rests on a wide range of his published works. Wojcik, Robert Boyle, pp.108ff.
Ibid, p.713–14.
See Rose-Mary Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment (Chicago:.Chicago UP, 1995), pp.87–130 for an extended discussion of “Being a Christian Virtuoso’; but she does not focus on Boyle’s source for inspired knowledge.
Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, (1674) Works, vol. 4, p. 169.
Lawrence M. Pincipe, “Boyle’s Alchemical Pursuits”, in Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, p.101–102 argues that Boyle’s concern about banishing occult explanations from natural philosophy might lead to denying the spiritual realm and increase the tendency to atheism. He sees Boyle’s response as focusing on what he calls his late-career view of alchemy’ as an interface between the spiritual and the material world. It is argued here that Boyle consistently throughout his writings wished to bridge the gap between the two realms. For Boyle’s alchemy see also Antonio Clericuzio, “New Light on Benjamin Worsley’s Natural Philosophy”, in Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (eds.), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation ( Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994 ), pp. 236–246.
The Excellency of Theology, in Works, vol. 4, p.19.
Brian Vickers and Nancy Struever, Rhetoric and the Pursuit of Truth ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 ), p. 45.
Kaplan discusses Boyle’s use of analogy in his scientific and medical works and agrees that he searched for the `most appropriate analogy’ as a useful conceptual tool in the search for explanations of the operations in the microcosmic realm by comparison with those of the macrocosmic world to establish plausible hypotheses. Kaplan, `Divulging of Useful Truth’, p.55; See also Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist, pp.126, 135.
Boyle, Reflections upon a Theological Distinction, (1690), Works, vol. 5, pp.541–49, esp. 543. For an extended discussion of knowledge of the `Incomprehensible, the Inexplicable, and the Unsociable’ in the realms of theology and natural philosophy see Wojcik, Robert Boyle, pp. 152–71.
Wojcik, “Pursuing Knowledge: Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton” in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution edited by Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), p.190. a7 Eg. John Webster, Academiarum Examen (1653) in Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century edited by Allen G. Debus (London, 1970), pp.26–28, 76; Henry More, Antidote Against Atheisme (1653), p.65; Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici in Major Works (Harmondsworth, 1977), passim.
Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, in Works, vol. 2, p.29.
The Christian Virtuoso Pt. II, vol. 6, p.788.
Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness, Works, vol. 2, p.63.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, pp.99–103, esp. 99.
Ibid, p.99.
Ibid, p.110.
Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1998), pp.205ff and passim.
See Wojcik, Robert Boyle, p.143.
Michael Hunter, “Alchemy, Magic and Moralism in the Thought of Robert Boyle” BJHS, 23 (1990), pp. 387–410.
Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness, vol. 2, p.61.
Ibid.
This is not to assume that such access to the truth about natural philosophy was limitless. Boyle believed, as Wojcik argues throughout his work, that reason was limited by God’s design.
See John Redwood, “Charles Blount”, p.491.
Appendix to the First Part of the Christian Virtuoso, Works, vol. 6, p.715.
Ibid.
Ibid.
The Christian Virtuoso Part J, Works, vol. 5, p.509.
Ibid., p.511.
Spun, “Rational Religion”.
See Gilbert Burnet’s funeral sermon for Boyle in 1692 in Michael Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle by Himself and his Friends (London,1994), pp.48ff: “he did thoroughly agree with the Doctrines of our Church, and conform to our Worship; and he approved of the main of our Constitution”, p.49. See also Sargent, The Diffident Naturalist, pp.80, 260. Jan W. Wojcik, “The Theological Context of Boyle’s Things above Reason (1681)”, in Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, pp.139ff. shows how Boyle’s commitment to the Church of England was tempered by support for some nonconformist positions in agreeing that some revealed matters were beyond human understanding. See also Wojcik, Robert Boyle, pp.74–75 on the limits of reason in matters such as `the Christian mysteries’ proposed by latitudinarians like Stillingfleet. The argument of the present paper, however, is that the invoking of `Right Reason, supported by leading figures within the Church, was a way of bridging the gap between the sides. For Boyle’s relationship with the Church and millenarian expectations vis-a-vis other natural philosophers see Malcolm Oster, “Millenarianism and the New Science: the Case of Robert Boyle”, in Greengrass et al., Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation, pp.137–148; and William R. Newman, “The Alchemical Sources of Robert Boyle’s Corpuscular Philosophy”, Annals of Science, 53 (1996), pp.567–585. On Boyle as a Christian Virtuoso see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1994), pp.156ff, 185–188.
Edward Stillingfleet, A Rational Account of the Grounds of the Protestant Religion, (London, 1664), 2 vols., I, pp.210–221, 323–33; John Tillotson, Sermons, (London, 1757) 12 vols., I, p.114–32; II, p.486–7; Seth Ward, An Apology for the Mysteries of the Gospel ( 1673 ); James Arderne, A Sermon Preached at the Visitation, (1677).
Stillingfeet, A Rational Account, pp.323–33.
See Spurr, “Rational Religion571 for further discussion.
John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious was not published until five years after Boyles death but its dangerous precepts were anticipated by Blount and other deists.
For the relationship between Boyle’s gentlemanly social role and his work and its reception see Shapin, The Social History of Truth, p.145–170; and Malcolm Oster, “The Scholar and Craftsman Revisited: Robert Boyle as Aristocrat and Artisan”, Annals of Science, 49 (1992), pp. 255–276.
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Mulligan, L. (2001). Robert Boyle, ’The Christian Virtuoso’ and the Rhetoric of ’Reason’. In: Crocker, R. (eds) Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Archives Internationales d’histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 180. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9777-7_6
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