Robert Boyle's early intellectual evolution: A reappraisal

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Peter Anstey, Elizabethanne Boran, David Cram, and Michelle DiMeo for their careful reading of a draft of this article.

Notes

1. See Browne, Charles Darwin: Voyaging, 13 and passim; Highfield and Carter, Private Lives of Albert Einstein, 16 and passim.

2. Quoted in Manuel, Portrait of Isaac Newton, 38. See ibid., pp. 38–41, passim.

3. Baily, An Account of the Revd John Flamsteed, 10–11; Aubrey, Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries, vol. 1, 35–37, 409–410; vol. 2, 140.

4. For Philaretus see Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 1ff. On p. 9, Boyle does mention his discovery of mathematics as an antidote to the “raving” to which he was prone from his schooldays onwards, but this evidently occurred later: see ibid., 14–15. On the sources associated with Cork, see Hunter, Between God and Science, 264 and passim.

5. Birley, “Robert Boyle's Head Master at Eton,” 104–114, 107.

6. See Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 14–15, and also Hunter, Between God and Science, 47, 53–56. On the discovery of the Geneva notebook, Royal Society MS 44, see Principe, “Newly Discovered Boyle Documents.”.

7. Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 19. Boyle also recorded looking through a telescope while in Florence: see Boyle, Works, vol. 1, 88; vol. 13, 166. For other references to observations made in Italy of a kind consonant with the Grand Tour see ibid., vol. 2, 73, 175; vol. 3, 308; vol. 4, 361; vol. 6, 411; and vol. 7, 23.

8. More, Life and Works of Boyle, 48.

9. For a recent example see Buyse, “Spinoza, Boyle, Galileo,” 56.

10. See especially Hunter, “How Boyle Became a Scientist,” reprinted in Hunter, Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science, 15–57. References are here given to the version in Scrupulosity and Science, but for the reader's convenience these are followed by bracketed references to the version in History of Science.

11. See Principe, “Virtuous Romance and Romantic Virtuoso,” 380–381, 386.

12. Harwood, Early Essays and Ethics, xxiii. Cf. Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 20 (62–63), and the important study by Principe, “Style and Thought of the Early Boyle,” which demonstrated that the references in the published version of Seraphic Love (1659) which had often previously been taken to indicate scientific interests on Boyle's part when he originally composed the work in 1648, had all been added at a later date.

13. For these writings see Harwood, Early Essays and Ethics, and Boyle, Works, vol. 13, 3–144.

14. For all this, see Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, esp. xvff., and Hunter, Between God and Science, ch. 4.

15. See Webster, “Introduction to the Second Edition,” in Webster, Great Instauration, xxxix, referring to Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 3. See also above, n. 10.

16. See www.livesandletters.ac.uk/wd/index.html.

17. Boyle, Works, vol. 13, 145–172.

18. Ibid., vol. 1, cxiii; Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 82–83.

19. See Hunter, Between God and Science, chs. 5–7 and passim. For the key role of Starkey see also Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire.

20. See Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 27; Boyle, Works, vol. 12, 55–56 and vol. 13, 173–223. See also Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 32–35 (71–73), and Between God and Science, 79ff.

21. Boyle Papers 41, fols 64–65. Adjacent to this is a set of mnemonic verses relating to Latin phonetics and metres (fols 66–67), the date and significance of which are unclear. I am grateful to David Cram for sharing his provisional findings on this document with me.

22. The works in question are de Dieu, Grammatica linguarum orientalium; Gerhard, Institutiones linguæ Ebreæ; and Bythner, Lingua eruditorum. Interestingly, the latter two were recommended by Boyle to John Mallet in January 1653: Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 140–141.

23. Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 42ff. (79ff.) The possible influence of Hartlibians like Worsley, on whom see below, is also there discussed.

24. BP 38, fol. 80, printed in Hall, Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy, 177–179. The MS is damaged and the name that Hall reads as “Ba[con]” is in fact probably “Bas[so].”

25. See the discussion in Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 21n., 26n. (nn. 25, 47–48).

26. Boyle, Works, vol. 12, 356–357.

27. E.g. O'Brien, “Samuel Hartlib's Influence,” 2.

28. Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself, 28–29.

29. Ibid., 26.

30. See the discussion in Hunter, Between God and Science, 49–50.

31. Highmore, History of Generation, sigs ¶3–4. I am grateful to Peter Anstey for discussion of this text.

32. Birch, “Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle,” vol. 1, vff. The quotation is from xlii. In addition to Philaretus, Birch briefly quoted the Burnet Memorandum on Boyle's interest in Stoicism (though not the specific passage quoted above): ibid., xxvi. For Birch's comments on Hartlib, see xxxvii; for the Invisible College references, see xxxiv–xxxv, xl. See also Birch, History of the Royal Society, 4 vols., vol. 1, 2.

33. See Masson, Robert Boyle: A Biography, 148–149; More, Life and Works of Boyle, 54, 64–65; a later reassertion of the identification appears in Turnbull, “Samuel Hartlib's Influence,” 102–3, 129. For the contrasting view see Syfret, “The Origins of the Royal Society,” 119–129; Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry, 5–7, 31–33 and ch. 1 passim; McKie, “Origins and Foundation of the Royal Society,” 21–23; Maddison, “Studies in the Life of Robert Boyle,” 109–111; and Maddison, Life of the Hon. Robert Boyle, 67–69; Purver, The Royal Society, 193–205.

34. O'Brien, “Samuel Hartlib's Influence.”

35. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution, 16ff. and passim. Of the earlier articles see especially Jacob, “The Ideological Origins.”

36. See especially their joint article, “The Anglican Origins of Modern Science.” For a contextualised view of the impact of Jacob and of Shapin and Schaffer see Hunter, “Scientific Change.”

37. See Henry, “Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy”; Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 8, 51ff. (86ff.), 63–64; and Oster, “Virtue, Providence and Political Neutralism.” However, I should note here my reservations about Oster's alternative reading of Boyle's development in the 1640s as set out in his “Biography, Culture and Science”: see Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 23–24 (65), and Between God and Science, 317 n. 74.

38. Webster, Great Instauration, xxxix. It is interesting to contrast the rather fuller and more balanced exposition of my views in his “La Reinvenzione di Robert Boyle.”

39. See Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, passim.

40. Hunter, Between God and Science, chs. 4–7.

41. Hall, “Science, Technology and Utopia.”

42. On Worsley, see Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 46–47 (82–83); much the same may also be said for Culpeper, on whom see Webster, Great Instauration, 67ff, 369ff., and Clucas, “Correspondence of a 17th-century ‘Chymicall Gentleman’.” Webster's view of the internal working of the Hartlib Circle is also undercut by the analysis of the circle's impact on the young Boyle given in Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, esp. 207–272.

43. Mandelbrote, “The Uses of Natural Theology.”

44. See Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, esp. 56–57 (91) and 223ff.

45. Webster, Great Instauration, 57 and 57–67 passim, and Webster, “New Light on the Invisible College.”

46. For the passages in question see Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 42, 46 and 58.

47. Harwood, Early Essays and Ethics, 186.

48. Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 22–23 (64–65) (the italics are mine). See also Hunter, Between God and Science, 66–67.

49. Webster, “New Light on the Invisible College,” 33, 34, 37, 42.

50. See Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 29–64. See also ibid., xxviii–xxx.

51. Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 44, 52, 56; see Hunter and Money, “Robert Boyle's First Encomium.”

52. It is perhaps worth noting that, though generally agreeing with Maddison over the personnel of the college, Webster rejected Maddison's inclusion of Dury as a member: Great Instauration, 59n.

53. Webster, Great Instauration, xxxviii; Webster, “New Light on the Invisible College,” 26–27. See Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 42–44, 47–49. For later letters from Worsley to Boyle see ibid., 241–243 (and 208, 247 for two lost letters from Boyle to Worsley), and below. For background, see Leng, Benjamin Worsley, esp. ch. 5.

54. E.g. Maddison, “Studies in the Life of Robert Boyle.”

55. Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, esp. 53, 55, 59–60, and see the commentary in Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 21–22 (63–64), and Between God and Science, 66.

56. See esp. Correspondence, vol. 1, 49–50, and the commentary in Between God and Science, 70–71.

57. See the allusion to “Mercury (that Proteus that is not more Various in it's Shapes then Constant to it's Nature)” in a moral epistle dated 15 April 1647 (Boyle, Works, vol. 13, 57). See also the reference to Sennert's Institutions of Physick in another dated 15 August 1647 (ibid., 70), and the chemical metaphors used in Boyle's letter to Worsley of late February 1647 (Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 48).

58. See Hunter, “Robert Boyle and Secrecy,” 88–89.

59. Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 22–23 (64–65).

60. For important comments on this theme, see Principe, “Virtuous Romance,” 392ff.

61. See Boyle, Works, vol. 5, xi–xv and 3–187, and vol. 13, xxx–xxxii, xxxvii, 101–116 and 147.

62. See Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 34–35 (73), and Between God and Science, 82.

63. Clericuzio, “Mercury in Mind.” See also Clericuzio, “Many Facets,” 118–120, and his review of Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, 407.

64. Clericuzio, “Mercury in Mind.” See also Clericuzio, “Many Facets,” 119, where he makes the same claim in virtually identical words except that he uses the date 1650 rather than 1649, which means that some of his supposed counter-evidence relates to 1649, i.e., the very point at which I claim that Boyle's intensive scientific activity began. It is also worth noting that on 120 he claims that Boyle “made experiments” with a camera obscura in Leiden in 1648, whereas in fact he was shown it as any tourist might have been (Boyle, Works, vol. 2, 13), and that, though he cites Boyle's letter to Worsley about his attempts to construct a furnace, he ignores that to Lady Ranelagh about their failure (see above, n. 56).

65. See Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 21–22 (63). It might be added that the same applies to the references to experiments in the Petty letter invoked in Clericuzio, “Many Facets,” 120.

66. Principe, “Virtuous Romance and Romantic Virtuoso,” 392. See also ibid., 378; Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire, esp. 10, 208–209; Levitin, “The Experimentalist as Humanist.” For an intermediate view see Leng, Benjamin Worsley, 28 and 25ff. passim.

67. See Hunter, Between God and Science, ch. 7.

68. Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 1, 301–318. For a commentary see Leng, Benjamin Worsley, 127–129. On Boyle's later adaptation of the Hartlibian ethos, see esp. Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 212.

69. See Boyle, Correspondence, vol. 2, 530; see also ibid., 450–451.

70. Hunter, Between God and Science, 176 and passim.