THE ORIGINS OF EARLY MODERN EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY

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Notes

¹ We would like to thank Helen Hattab, Gideon Manning and audiences at the University of Bucharest and the University of Otago for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

²  J. Dunton, The Young-Students-Library (London, 1692), vi.

³ J. Sergeant, The Method to Science (London, 1696), Preface, sig. b6r–v.

⁴ See, e.g., R. Boyle, Defence against Linus (1662), in The Works of Robert Boyle, edited by M. Hunter and E. B. Davis, 14 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto,1999–2000), vol. 3, 12.

⁵ See, e.g., R. Boyle, Certain Physiological Essays, in Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 2, 13 and Things above Reason, in Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 9, 373.

⁶ See P. R. Anstey, ‘Experimental versus Speculative Natural Philosophy’, in The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century: Patterns of Change in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by P. R. Anstey and J. A. Schuster (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 215–42; S. Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 352–451.

⁷ See, e.g., ‘The Text of Robert Boyle's “Designe about Natural History”’, edited by M. Hunter and P. R. Anstey, 2008 [1666], http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/researchers/works/Occasional_Papers/occasional_paper_3.pdf (Robert Boyle Occasional Papers, no. 3), 2.

⁸ See T. Hobbes, Dialogus physicus (London, 1661), translated in S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 345–91; M. Cavendish, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, edited by E. O'Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [1666]); Sergeant, The Method to Science, esp. sig. d5r–d6r.

⁹ For Locke and experimental philosophy see P. R. Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For experimental philosophy and medicine see P. R. Anstey, ‘The Creation of the English Hippocrates’, Medical History, 55 (2011), 457–78.

¹⁰ D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1739–1740]). On experimental philosophy and aesthetics, see, e.g., G. Turnbull, A Treatise on Ancient Painting (London: 1740, repr. Munich: W. Fink, 1971), 146–8.

¹² Diderot, Pensées, article XXIII, in Diderot Interpreter of Nature: Selected Writings, translated by J. Stewart and J. Kemp (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1937), 46: ‘deux sortes de philosophies, l'expérimentale et la rationnelle. L'une a les yeux bandés, marche toujours en tâtonnant, saisit tout ce qui tombe sous les mains, et rencontre à fin des choses précieuses. L'autre recueille ces matières précieuses, et tâche de s'en former un flambeau; mais ce flambeau prétendu lui a, jusqu’à présent, moins servi que le tâtonnement à sa rivale'.

¹¹ See, e.g., D. Diderot, Pensées sur l'interpretation de la nature (Amsterdam, 1754); J. N. Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1777, repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1979), vol. 1, iii–iv, vii.

¹³ E. Platner, Neue Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise: Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Physiologie, Pathologie, Moralphilosophie und Aesthetik (Leipzig, 1790), vol. 1, Preface, sig. a5.

¹⁴ J. G. H. Feder, Ueber Raum und Caussalität zur Prüfung der kantischen Philosophie (Göttingen, 1787), xviii. Feder's sketches of the experimental approach can be found in Ueber Raum und Caussalität, ix–x, and in his Untersuchungen über den menschlichen Willen, dessen Naturtriebe, Verschiedenheiten, Verhältniß zur Tugend und Glückseligkeit und die Grundregeln, die menschlichen Gemüther zu erkennen und zu regieren (Göttingen, 1779–1783, repr. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1968), §4.

¹⁵ See, for example, Nichomachean Ethics 1139b14–1141b25; Topics 145a16, 157a10; Metaphysics 1025b19–27, 1064a10–19. For the bipartite classification, see Metaphysics 981b25–982a1; Eudemian Ethics 1216b11–17; Topics 152b2–4. For details, see J. Mariétan, Problème de la classification des sciences d'Aristote à St-Thomas (St-Maurice: St-Augustin and Paris: Alcan, 1901), http://www.archive.org/details/problmedelaclas01marigoog, and J. Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000), 40.

¹⁶ See, for example, De anima 433a9–20 and Nichomachean Ethics 1139a130.

¹⁷ J. Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), IV.21. A major ancient source for this classification is Diogenes Laertius. See his Vitae philosophorum, edited by H. S. Long (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), VII.40.

¹⁸ For overviews and further references, see J. A. Weisheipl, ‘Classification of Sciences in Medieval Thought’, Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 54–90; A. M. Blair, ‘Organizations of Knowledge’, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, edited by J. Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 287–303 (287–93); J. S. Freedman, ‘Classifications of Philosophy, the Sciences, and the Arts in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Europe’, Modern Schoolman, 72 (1994), 37–65.

¹⁹ Freedman, ‘Classifications of Philosophy’, 39.

²⁰ Aquinas, Summa theologiæ (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, third edition 1999 [1265–1274]), translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province as Summa theologica (London: Oates & Washbourne, 1920–1924), I.79, 11.

²¹ Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, I–II.94, 4.

²² Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, I.79, 11.

²³ See L. Blanchet, Campanella (Paris: Alcan, 1920), http://www.archive.org/details/campanella00blan, 231.

²⁴ F. Bacon, De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, in The Works of Francis Bacon, edited by J. Spedding, R. Ellis and D. D. Heath, 7 vols. (London, 1857–1874), vol. 4, 292.

²⁵ H. Power, Experimental Philosophy (London, 1664), 82.

²⁶ F. Burgersdijck, Idea philosophiae tum naturalis, tum moralis, third revised edition (Oxford, 1631), 2: ‘Speculative philosophy resides in the speculative intellect […]; practical philosophy is related to the practical intellect’ (philosophia speculativa residet in intellectu speculativo […] Philosophia practica haeret in intellectu practico). Other authors who associated disciplinary domains with mental faculties are referred to in G. Tonelli Olivieri, ‘Galen and Francis Bacon: Faculties of the Soul and the Classification of Knowledge’, in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by D. R. Kelley and R. H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 61–81 (71–3).

²⁷ See F. Toletus, Commentaria, una cum quaestionibus, in octo libros Aristotelis de physica auscultatione: Item, in lib. Arist. de generatione et corruptione (Cologne, 1585), http://books.google.com/books?id=xTg8AAAAcAAJ, sig. A2 1.

²⁸ D. Sennert, Epitome naturalis scientiae (Wittenberg, 1618), 12–15; translated as Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy (London, 1660), 5–6.

²⁹ Sennert, Epitome, 8; Thirteen Books, 3.

³⁰ Sennert, Epitome, 7; Thirteen Books, 3.

³¹ Sennert, Epitome, 5; Thirteen Books, 3.

³² Sennert, Epitome, 17; Thirteen Books, 6.

³³ Sennert, Epitome, 10; Thirteen Books, 7; see J. Zabarella, ‘De natura logicae’, in his Opera Logica, third edition (Cologne, 1597, repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0001/bsb00014535/images/?nav=1&viewmode=1, col. 3.

³⁴ For a similar scheme that omits politics, see also A. Deusing, Naturae theatrum universale (Harderwijk, 1644), 21.

³⁵ P. Reif, ‘The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy, 1600–1650’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 30 (1969), 17–32 (20), notes that this was typical for natural philosophy textbooks published between 1600 and 1650. At least one author before Bacon claimed that there was a non-theoretical, practical part of physics, namely, Johann Grün, a Protestant theologian in sixteenth-century Wittenberg. He included the following disciplines within practical physics: medicine and the practical parts of mathematics (practical arithmetic, practical music, optics, astronomy, geodesy and mechanics). See J. Grün [Grunius], Philosophiae origo, progressus, definitio, divisio, dignitas, utilitas (Wittenberg, 1587), http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN663601754, 80–100.

³⁶ A. Poliziano, Praelectio, cui titulus Panepistemon (1491), in Opera omnia (Basel, 1553), 462.

³⁷ Zabarella, ‘De natura logicae’, col. 2.

³⁸ Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, in octo libros physicorum Aristotelis Stagiritæ (Lyon, 1594, repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1984), col. 22–27. Toletus, whom we discussed above, was from Spain.

³⁹ E. à Sancto Paolo, Summa philosophiae quadripartita, de rebus dialecticis, moralibus, physicis, & metaphysicis, third edition (Paris, 1614), vol. 1, 2; P. de Saint-Joseph, Idea philosophiae naturalis seu physica, Paucis multa complectens de iis quæ spectant ad cognitionem rerum Naturalium, second edition (Paris, 1659), http://books.google.com/books?id=KrNoPW2GoasC, 3–4.

⁴⁰ B. Keckermann, ‘Positiones de philosophiæ natura & partibus, ex duobus praecognitorum philosophicorum Capitibus’, in his Disputationes philosophicæ, physicæ praesertim (Hanau, 1606), 1–3; J. H. Alsted, Encyclopædia (Herborn, 1630, repr. Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1989), vol. 1, 3.

⁴¹ See the above discussion of Sennert and note 33 on Deusing.

⁴² J. Magirus, Physiologiae peripateticæ libri sex (London, 1619), 5–6; C. Scheibler, Philosophia compendiosa, sixth edition, revised and enlarged (Oxford, 1639), 4; Burgersdijck, Idea philosophiae, 3. Newton ‘was introduced to Aristotelian physics via Magirus’s textbook' (R. S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 84). Locke criticized Scheibler and Burgesdijck in Some Thoughts concerning Education, edited by J. W. Yolton and J. S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 [third edition, 1695]), 157. For other mentions of Burgersdijck, Magirus and Scheibler in Locke's writings, see J. R. Milton, ‘The Scholastic Background to Locke's Thought’, Locke Newsletter, 15 (1984), 25–34.

⁴³ C. Timpler, Physicae seu Philosophiae naturalis systema methodicum in tres partes digestum (Hanau, 1613), vol.1, http://books.google.com/books?id=lH8PAAAAQAAJ, 5–6.

⁴⁴ J. Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta, Spring 2009 Edition, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/roger-bacon/, §5.4.3.

⁴⁵ This also applies to Robert Grosseteste, pace A. C. Crombie, for whom the qualitative aspects of modern science originated with Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. See A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953); J. Hackett, ‘Scientia Experimentalis: From Robert Grosseteste to Roger Bacon’, in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, edited by J. McEvoy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 89–119.

⁴⁶ Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon’, §5.4.3.

⁴⁹ J. Dee, ‘Mathematicall Præface’, sig. A.iij. On Dee's reference to Cusanus, see F. Nagel, ‘Scientia experimentalis: Zur Cusanus-Rezeption in England’, Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft, 29 (2005), 95–109.

⁴⁷ See Milton, ‘The Scholastic Background’, 30–1, for Locke. This also applies to Hobbes, whose knowledge of Aristotelianism largely relied on early modern sources. See M. Sgarbi, ‘La logica di Hobbes e la tradizione aristotelica’, Lo sguardo, 5 (2001), 1–14.

⁴⁸ J. Dee, ‘Mathematicall Præface’, in The elements of geometrie of the most auncient philosopher Euclide of Megara: Whereunto are annexed certaine scholies, annotations, and inuentions, of the best mathematiciens, both of time past, and in this our age, translated by H. Billingsley (London, 1570).

⁵⁰ According to Nagel (‘Scientia experimentalis’, 106), this is the first occurrence of ‘experimental science’ in English.

⁵¹ See N. H. Clulee, ‘At the Crossroads of Magic and Science: John Dee's Archemastrie’, in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, edited by B. Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 57–71.

⁵² See J. Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science, second edition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 55; W. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 194.

⁵³ See, e.g., Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis, col. 21.

⁵⁴ H. C. Agrippa, ‘Censura sive retractatio de magia ex sua declamatione de vanitate scientiarum & excellentia Verbi dei’, in his De occulta Philosophia libri tres (Cologne, 1533), http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/77-1-quod-2f-2/start.htm (not included in the 1992 critical edition of the De occulta philosophia), ccclii, echoing G. Pico della Mirandola, ‘On the Dignity of Man’ (1486), translated by C. G. Wallis in G. Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man; On Being and the One; Heptaplus (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 26.

⁵⁵ G. B. della Porta, Magiae naturalis libri XX, second enlarged edition (Naples, 1589), http://books.google.com/books?id=L2kjTEvXAdUC, 2; translated as Natural Magick (London, 1658), 2. See G. Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones Nongentae, translated by S. A. Farmer in Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486). The Evolution of Traditional, Religious, and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), thesis II.9.9: ‘There is no department of knowledge that gives us more certainty of Christ's divinity than magic and cabala’ (Nulla est scientia, quae nos magis certificet de divinitate Cristi, quam Magia et Cabala). This claim is echoed in T. R. S. Calabrese, Apologeticus adversus cucullatos, edited by L. De Franco (Cosenza: Periferia, 1991 [1519]), cit. in B. P. Copenhaver, ‘Astrology and Magic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, 273. The most famous medieval book of natural magic, a collection of recipes widely read in the early modern age, calls magic ‘Scientia magicalis’ (pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Liber aggregationis seu liber secretorum Alberti Magni [London, s.d.], sig. a ii 1, translated as The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Certain Beasts, also a Book of the Marvels of the World, edited by M. R. Best and F. H. Brightman [Oxford: Clarendon, 1973], 3 [italics added]).

⁵⁶ Della Porta, Magiae naturalis libri XX, 2 (= Natural Magick, 2). See Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones nongentae, thesis II.9.3.

⁵⁷ This is noted by B. P. Copenhaver, ‘The Occultist Tradition and Its Critics’, in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by D. Garber and M. Ayers, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, 455.

⁵⁸ T. Campanella, De sensu rerum et magia, libri quatuor (Frankfurt am Main, 1620), http://books.google.com/books?id=uCw_AAAAcAAJ, 153.

⁵⁹ F. Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 366–7 (italics added to English text).

⁶⁰ F. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, in Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 4, edited by M. Kiernan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 88. See also Novum organum, in Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 11, edited by G. Rees (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 215 and De augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 365.

⁶¹ For an example of this expression, see J. Wilkins, Mathematicall Magick: Or, The Wonders that May be Performed by Mechanicall Geometry (London, 1648). For a survey, see J. P. Zetterberg, ‘The Mistaking of “the Mathematicks” for Magic in Tudor and Stuart England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 11 (1980), 83–97. On the link between mathematical magic and the new mechanical philosophy, see A. Grafton, Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe: Dibner Library Lecture. 15 October, 2002 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 2005), http://hdl.handle.net/10088/7193.

⁶² Aristotelis Quaestiones mechanicae, translated by N. Leonico Tomeo in his Opuscula nuper in lucem aedita (Venice, 1525). On Tomeo's classification, we rely on W. R. Laird, ‘The Scope of Renaissance Mechanics’, Osiris, second series, 2 (1986), 43–68 (49), and H. Hattab, ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism: The Quaestiones Mechanicae and Descartes’ Physics', in The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century, 105.

⁶³ A. Piccolomini, In Mechanicas quaestiones Aristotelis, Paraphrasis paulo quidem plenior (Venice, 1547). Moletti's classifications in a manuscript from the 1580s are summarized in Laird, ‘The Scope’, 61–2. Elsewhere, Moletti states that mechanics is a science because it is subordinated to the sciences of mathematics as well as natural philosophy. See The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti: An Edition and English Translation of His Dialogue on Mechanics, 1576, edited by W. R. Laird (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 78–81, 188–91. Against the classification of mechanics as a part of philosophy, see Sennert's comment in §II above.

⁶⁴ See A. Piccolomini, ‘Praefatio’, in his In mechanicas quaestiones Aristotelis, Paraphrasis paulo quidem plenior, second edition (Venice, 1565; first edition 1547). Piccolomini's classifications are summarized in Laird, ‘The Scope’, 50–1, and Hattab, ‘From Mechanics’, 108.

⁶⁵ Laird, ‘The Scope’, 68.

⁶⁶ Maurolico's classification – in his Problemata Mechanica cum appendice, & ad Magnetem, & ad Pix idem Nauticam pertinentia (Messina, 1613) – is reproduced in Hattab, ‘From Mechanics’, 111. Maurolico's work was published posthumously and composed around 1569.

⁶⁷ Laird, ‘The Scope’, 54. Another important author, Bernardino Baldi, held that the theory of mechanics derives from the combination of mathematics with physical principles (Laird, ‘The Scope’, 57).

⁶⁸ N. Tartaglia, Quesiti et inventioni diverse (Venice, 1546), 81, translated in Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Selections from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, & Galileo, edited by S. Drake and I. E. Drabkin (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 111.

⁶⁹ F. Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 365.

⁷⁰ F. Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 365–6. See also Parasceve, in Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 11, 461.

⁷¹ J. L. Vives, De disciplinis libri XX (Antwerp, 1531); partial translation by F. Watson as On Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), http://www.archive.org/details/vivesoneducation00viveuoft.

⁷² Henry, The Scientific Revolution, 34. See G. Agricola, De re metallica libri XII (Basel, 1556); translated by H. C. Hoover and L. H. Hoover (London: The Mining Magazine, 1912).

⁷³ See P. Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, edited by B. Nelson, translated by S. Attanasio (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 9–10.

⁷⁴ This is noted by Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts, 40–41.

⁷⁵ In Italy, Giuseppe Moletti claimed in lectures from the 1580s that ‘nature uses mechanics in its own works’. In France, Henri de Monantheuil claimed that the whole world is a machine in 1599. See W. R. Laird, ‘Nature, Mechanics, and Voluntary Movement in Giuseppe Moletti's Lectures on the Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica’, in Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution, edited by W. R. Laird and S. Roux (New York: Springer, 2008), 173, 183; H. de Monantheuil, Aristotelis Mechanica Graeca, emendata, Latina facta, & Commentariis illustrata (Paris, 1599), http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuViewfull?mode=imagepath&url=/mpiwg/online/permanent/library/MD6SU509/pageimg&viewMode=images, Dedication, 3. For a thorough discussion of the changing status of mechanics in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and its relation to mechanism, see H. Hattab, Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 85–119.

⁷⁶ F. Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, in Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 336.

⁷⁷ See P. R. Anstey, ‘Francis Bacon and the Classification of Natural History’, Early Science and Medicine, 17:1–2 (2012), 11–31.

⁷⁸ Gordon Miller noted Bacon's influence on Johnston in ‘Beasts of the Divine Jerusalem: John Johnston's Natural History and the Launching of Millenarian Pedagogy in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Science, 46 (2008), 203–43 (215).

⁷⁹ Miller, ‘Beasts of the Divine Jerusalem’, 233.

⁸⁰ J. Johnston, A History of the Constancy of Nature (London, 1657), 82 (=Naturæ constantia (Amsterdam, 1634), 68).

⁸¹ Johnston, A History, 84 (= Naturæ constantia, 69).

⁸² See, e.g., G. Turnbull, The Principles of Moral Philosophy: An Enquiry into the Wise and Good Government of the Moral World (London, 1740), Epistle Dedicatory, i; Preface, i–iii.

⁸³ J. Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, edited by W. von Leyden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 145 (italics added).

⁸⁴ In the ‘Preliminary Discourse’ to the Encyclopédie, d'Alembert does deploy Bacon's three intellectual faculties – memory, imagination and reason – as a partial justification for following the Baconian division of knowledge into history, poesy and philosophy. However, these faculties play no significant explanatory role in d'Alembert's division of the sciences. See Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, translated by R. N. Schwab (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 50–5, 143.

⁸⁵ See R. Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (London, 1654), 230 and Catholick Theologie: Plain, Pure, Peaceable: For Pacification of the Dogmatical Word-Warriours (London, 1675), 153. See also R. South, A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral of St. Paul, Novem. 9, 1662 (London, 1663), 14–5 and M. Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind (London, 1677), 47.

⁸⁶ F. Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, 365–6 = Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 1, 572.

⁸⁷ H. Oldenburg, ‘A preface to the eighth year’, Philosophical Transactions, 8 (1672), 4001–2. Mihnea Dobre alerted us to this reference.

⁸⁸ Dee in England, Gassendi in France, Campanella in Italy, Calvin in Geneva and the royal physician of the Spanish kings all used the expression ‘scientia experimentalis’ in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century. See P. Gassendi, Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (composed between 1620 and 1624), in his Opera Omnia, vol. 3 (Lyon, 1658, repr. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Fromann, 1964), 207; T. Campanella, Apologia pro Galileo, mathematico florentino: Ubi disquisitur, utrum ratio philosophandi, quam Galileus celebrat, faveat sacris scripturis, an adversetur (Frankfurt am Main, 1622), http://diglib.museogalileo.it/rd/bdv?/bdviewer/bid=367745, 15; translated by R. J. Blackwell as A Defense of Galileo, the Mathematician from Florence (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 57; J. Calvin, Praelectiones in duodecim prophetas minores, in his Opera quae supersunt omnia, edited by E. Baum in Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 44 (Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1890), col. 162; A. Ponce de Santa Cruz, ‘De natura Medicinæ’, in his Opuscula medica et philosophica (Madrid, 1624), http://books.google.com/books?id=8wIrhofwb4wC, 3. On John Dee, see §III above.

⁸⁹ See N. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité (1674–5), sixth edition 1712, translated by T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp as The Search after Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), vol. 2, part II, VIII, 4; D. Bartoli, De' simboli trasportati al morale (Venice, 1677), http://books.google.com/books?id=1owDAAAAcAAJ, 305–7.

⁹⁰ University of Sheffield, Hartlib Papers, MS 29/3/37B.

⁹¹ A. Kircher, Magnes sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum (Rome, 1641), http://books.google.com/books?id=3pA_AAAAcAAJ, final page of the Prooemium; N. Cabeo, In quatuor libros meteorologicorum Aristotelis commentaria, et quaestiones quatuor tomis compræhensa, quibus non solum meteorologica, tum ex antiquorum dictis, tum maxime ex singularum rerum experimentis explicantur sed etiam vniuersa fere experimentalis philosophia exponitur (Rome, 1646).

⁹² R. Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects, in Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 1, 143, 158, 207. For citations from Cabeo's commentary see 258, 271. An anonymous referee for the journal alerted us to the use of the term ‘experimentall Naturall Philosophy’ in a broadside by Balthazar Gerbier entitled To all Fathers of Noble Families, and lovers of Vertue (London, 1648).

⁹³ A. Kircher, Physiologia Kircheriana Experimentalis: Qua Summa Argumentorum Multitudine & Varietate Naturalium rerum scientia per experimenta Physica, Mathematica, Medica, Chymica, Musica, Magnetica, Mechanica comprobatur atque stabilitur, edited by J. S. Koestler (Amsterdam, 1680), http://books.google.com/books?id=nnwog1ET0XoC; A. B. Denstonius, Pan-sophia enchiretica seu Philosophia Universalis Experimentalis (Nuremberg, 1682), http://books.google.com/books?id=3QsuAAAAcAAJ; N. Cabeo, Philosophia experimentalis: Sive in III. Librum meterologicorum Aristotelis commentaria, et quaestiones (Rome, 1686).

⁹⁴ Yet Cabeo's Philosophia magnetica (Ferrara, 1629) was not an original work. See M. Ugaglia, ‘The Science of Magnetism Before Gilbert: Leonardo Garzoni's Treatise on the Loadstone’, Annals of Science, 63 (2006), 59–84 (72).

⁹⁵ See Daniel Sennert's attack against the empty speculations of authors discussing physica generalis in his Hypomnemata physica (Frankfurt am Main, 1636), http://books.google.com/books?id=HWc5AAAAcAAJ, Prooemium, sig. †† 5 5. Gideon Manning alerted us to this reference.

⁹⁶ This is noted in Ugaglia, ‘The Science of Magnetism’, 67.

⁹⁷ Book VII of della Porta's Magiae naturalis libri XX was entirely devoted to magnetism and provided materials for Gilbert's De magnete.

⁹⁸ P. Dear, ‘Cabeo, Niccolò’, in New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by N. Koertge, 8 vols. (Detroit, MI: Scribner's Sons, 2008), vol. 2, 2.

⁹⁹ A. Dent, A pastime for parents […] contayning the most principall grounds of Christian religion, second edition (London, 1606), sig. b 4–5, cit. in P. Harrison, ‘Experimental Religion and Experimental Science in Early Modern England’, Intellectual History Review, 21 (2011), 413–33 (420).

¹⁰⁰ For a study of the emergence of the term ‘experiment’ see P. Dear, ‘The Meanings of Experience’ in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3: Early Modern Science, edited by K. Park and L. Daston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 106–31.

¹⁰¹ See, for example, R.-M. Sargent, ‘Learning from Experience: Boyle's Construction of an Experimental Philosophy’, in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, edited by M. Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 57–78; M. Hunter, Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989); William T. Lynch, Solomon's Child: Method in the Early Royal Society of London (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–33.

¹⁰² F. Bacon, Novum organum, Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. 11, 97–107.

¹⁰³ C. van Hogelande, Cogitationes quibus Dei Existentia item Animae Spiritalitas, et possibilis cum corpore unio, demonstratur: nec non, brevis Historia Oeconomiae Corporis Animalis, proponitur, atque Mechanice explicatur (Amsterdam, 1646),

http://books.google.com/books?id=yo0PAAAAQAAJ, 195–6; see F. de le Boë Sylvius, disputation De Febribus Prima, held in Leiden in 1661, props. 19–20, in his Opera medica, hoc est, disputationum medicarum decas (Geneva, 1681), http://books.google.com/books?id=wm5EAAAAcAAJ, 26. Evan Ragland alerted us to these references.

¹⁰⁴ See Anstey and Hunter, ‘Boyle's “Designe about Natural History”’, Early Science and Medicine, 13 (2008), 83–126 (97–9), for references and discussion.

¹⁰⁵ Locke, Essay IV.vii. For Newton on hypotheses see I. Newton, Opticks (London, 1717), 380 and The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, translated by I. B. Cohen and A. Whitman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 [1713]), 943.