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Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Elizabethanne Boran, Patricia Fara, Michael Hunter, Alberto Vanzo and anonymous referees for the Journal for assistance and comments.
Notes
1. See “The Advertisement of the Publisher,” Specific Medicines in Boyle, Works, vol. 10, 357.
2. Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science, 251–252.
3. On the origins of experimental philosophy see Anstey and Vanzo, “The Origins.”
4. See Anstey, “Experimental versus Speculative Natural Philosophy.”
5. See Anstey and Hunter, “Robert Boyle's ‘Designe’.”
6. See Ogilvie, Science of Describing.
7. Bacon, Parasceve, in Instauratio magna Part II; see also Corneanu, Giglioni and Jalobeanu, Early Science and Medicine, on Bacon's notion of natural history.
8. See Jalobeanu, “Cartesians of the Royal Society.”
9. For one of the last, perhaps the last, discussions of Boyle and the Baconian method of natural history see Appendix II to Bacon, Philosophical Works, vol. 2, 567–568.
10. Philosophical Transactions 34 (1727): sigs A2–3.
11. See The Tatler number 216 (1710) and King, The Transactioneer, especially 16 and 55–62.
12. Hunter, “Robert Boyle and the Dilemma of Biography,” 262.
13. See Serjeantson, “Proof and Persuasion,” 173.
14. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science.
15. Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 1, Preface.
16. Henry, “Keill, John (1671–1721).”
17. Carpenter, John Theophilus Desaguliers, 21.
18. See Feingold, “Mathematical Sciences and New Philosophies,” 422; Jones, Balliol College: A History, 149.
19. Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, iv–vii, and Keill, Introductio ad veram physicam, sigs b1v–b3r.
20. Keill, Examination of Dr Burnets Theory, 16–17.
21. Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 1–3.
22. Ibid., 3.
23. Keill, Examination of Dr Burnet's Theory, sig. a3, 15–16.
24. Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 7. Keill appears only to have used the term “experimental philosophy’ once in his published writings and that instance is suggestive of ambivalence. In his critique of Whiston's theory of the earth he says ‘I thought that this Gentleman had known so much of the new Experimental Philosophy, as not to be ignorant, that heat does not pass into the interior parts of a solid of considerable thickness, till it has dissolv'd the Exterior parts,” Examination of the Reflections, 83–84.
25. Keill, Examination of Dr Burnets Theory, 16.
26. Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 24.
27. See Arbuthnot, Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning; Harris, Preface, Short, but yet Plain Elements; and Harris, Lexicon Technicum, vol. 1, sig a2v.
28. Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, viii.
29. Ibid., ix.
30. Ibid., xi–xii.
31. Ibid., 88, 91–92.
32. Ibid., 95.
33. See Boyle, Effluviums, in Works, vol. 7, 241–242; 248 and Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 47–54.
34. Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical Experiments, sig. ar.
35. Ibid., sig. av.
36. Ibid.
37. Boyle, Spring of the Air, in Works, vol. 1, 161–163; Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical Experiments, 1–4.
38. The same style of numbering is used in Boyle's Spring, 1st Continuation.
39. Boyle, Spring of the Air, in Works, vol. 1, 181 and 176; Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical Experiments, 5 and 6.
40. Boyle, Defence against Linus, in Works, vol. 3, 12. See also Boyle's Examen of Hobbes, ibid., 164.
41. This term was introduced by Steven Shapin in his analysis of the nature and style of Boyle's published experimental reports. See his “Pump and Circumstance.”
42. Wotton, “Chapter from Wotton's Life of Boyle,” 112.
43. See Hunter, “Robert Boyle and the Dilemma of Biography,” 260–261.
44. Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings, vol. 1, 118. In fact, Cotes' Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures contains 16 lectures.
45. See Pumfrey, “Hauksbee, Francis (bap. 1660, d. 1713).”
46. See, for example, Bodleian Add. MS C. 272, 67 = Cotes, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures, 14; 81 = 45; 115–18 = 68–71; 157–160 = 114 and 132–136.
47. See Rowbottom, “Teaching of Experimental Philosophy in England,” 50.
48. Bodleian MS Add. C. 272, 62. The sentence referring to ‘Almighty Fiat’ was omitted in the published version. See Cotes, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures, 5.
49. See Cotes, Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures, 137. For other references to Hauksbee see 159–162, 183.
50. The Cartesian materia subtilis is criticized in Bodleian MS Add. C. 272 on page 62, Henry More's Principium Hylarchicum on 69–70 and Linus' funicular hypothesis on 122–127.
51. Cotes, “Editor's Preface” to Newton, The Principia, 385–386.
52. See Fara, “Desaguliers, John Theophilus (1683–1744),” and Stewart, Rise of Public Science, 213–215.
53. It is not known why Keill left Oxford abruptly in 1709. One interesting contemporary explanation that has hitherto been overlooked is Archibald Pitcairne's claim that “Keill fell upon him [Whiston] scurrilouslie i.e. upon Mr Neuton reallie (this lost him the profession at Oxford),” Pitcairne to Doctor Walkinshaw, 27 December 1709, in Johnston, “The Best of Our Owne,” 56.
54. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, Preface, sig. A2v.
55. Ibid., 1.
56. Ibid., 1–12.
57. Ibid., 1–2.
58. Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 332–336.
59. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, 5.
60. Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 226.
61. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, 6.
62. Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, in Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 266.
63. Boyle, Works, vol. 8, 414–415.
64. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, 7, 8.
65. Boyle, Forms and Qualities, in Boyle, Works, vol. 5, 305–306.
66. Ibid., 306.
67. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, 11.
68. Boyle, Forms and Qualities, in Boyle, Works, vol. 5, 395–397.
69. Boyle, Works, vol. 5, 521.
70. Ibid., vol. 6, 26.
71. Stewart, Rise of Public Science, 225.
72. Vream, Description of the Air-Pump. Desaguliers was apparently using Vream's air-pump for experimental work in 1715, see Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 2, 557 and plate XXIV.
73. Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, sig. A3r.
74. Compare Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy: the five machines 120–131; the laws of nature 133–161, with Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy: the five machines 31–47; Newton's laws 47–74. For direct borrowings see, for example, Keill, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 147, 151 and Desaguliers, Lectures of Experimental Philosophy, 62, 63 respectively.
75. Desaguliers, Physico-Mechanical Lectures, 1, 2.
76. Ibid., 39.
77. Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 1, Preface.
78. Not all of the natural philosophical pedagogues were so dismissive of hypotheses. See, for example, chapter four of Martin's Philosophical Grammar.
79. Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 1, Preface. Desaguliers alludes to the instrument maker and author of The Newe Attractive (1720) Robert Norman (fl. 1560–1584), and the astronomer James Pound (1669–1724).
80. Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 1, Preface.
81. The references to Boyle are in Desaguliers, Course of Experimental Philosophy, vol. 2, 259, 275, 283, 290 and 369. The reference to Shaw's The Philosophical Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq., 3 volumes (London: Printed for W. and J. Innys, 1725) is at 334.
82. Quoted from Carpenter, John Theophilus Desaguliers, 238.