Margaret Cavendish and Robert Boyle on the Purpose, Method and Writing of Natural Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Emma Wilkins
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle, Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Experimental Practice ◽  
Robert Boyle

Boyle gave the vocation of a Christian virtuoso its name and exemplified its character in his life. Following Bacon, he affirmed the priority of natural philosophy, and, like Bacon, he prescribed that it be practiced through experimental methods and that it found its explanations either directly upon perceived causes or upon causal hypotheses inferred from experimental practice or trials of nature, chief among them the mechanical or ‘atomicall’ philosophy. In his book The Christian Virtuoso, he prescribed that the study of nature was complemented and completed by the study of Holy Scripture, and he imagined a form of intellectual life in which the scope of natural reason was enlarged by revelation, which in turn was confirmed through trials or experiments of faith.

Francis Bacon and the Origins of Christian Virtuosity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
The Mind

Although the vocation of Christian virtuoso was invented and named by Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon provided the archtype. A Christian virtuoso is an experimental natural philosopher who professes Christianity, who endeavors to unite empiricism and supernatural belief in an intellectual life. In his program for the renewal of the learning Bacon prescribed that the empirical study of nature be the basis of all the sciences, including not only the study of physical things, but of human society, and literature. He insisted that natural causes only be used to explain natural events and proposed not to mix theology with natural philosophy. This became a rule of the Royal Society of London, of which Boyle was a principal founder. Bacon’s rule also had a theological use, to preserve the purity and the divine authority of revelation. In the mind of the Christian virtuoso, nature and divine revelation were separate but complementary sources of truth.

Early British Reactions to Absolutism: 1664 to 1687

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Ralph Cudworth

This chapter considers early British reactions to absolutism between the start of Barrow’s pertinent lectures in 1664, and the publication of Newton’s Principia in 1687. Although the amount of discussion absolutism received in Britain during this period was much less than it would receive later, it was already capturing the attention of some important thinkers. The reactions to absolutism were mixed. Different kinds of absolutism about space or time was adopted by thinkers such as Samuel Parker, Robert Boyle, and John Turner. In contrast, absolutism was rejected by philosophers such as Margaret Cavendish, Ralph Cudworth, Nathaniel Fairfax, and Anne Conway.

Animism, Aristotelianism, and the Legacy of William Gilbert’s De Magnete

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-188
Author(s):  
Jeff Kochan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Physical Experiments ◽  
Modern Natural

Abstract William Gilbert’s 1600 book, De magnete, greatly influenced early modern natural philosophy. The book describes an impressive array of physical experiments, but it also advances a metaphysical view at odds with the soon to emerge mechanical philosophy. That view was animism. I distinguish two kinds of animism – Aristotelian and Platonic – and argue that Gilbert was an Aristotelian animist. Taking Robert Boyle as an example, I then show that early modern arguments against animism were often effective only against Platonic animism. In fact, unacknowledged traces of Aristotelian animism can be found in Boyle’s mechanical account of nature. This was Gilbert’s legacy.

Literary Knowledge

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-43
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Fundamental Component ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Tool

Natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century connoted a sense of modernity and enlightenment, attributes that bound science to meanings in excess of its practice and consumption. The pliancy of science as a trope finds support in reflections on language as a scientific tool by Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and other natural philosophers. The two dominant technologies of the experimental imagination are the observed particular and the modest witness. Observed particulars of empirical study are those nuggets of data that disclose themselves and, in their revelation, produce knowledge. The modest witness is the individual who is objective by virtue of erasing himself through his privilege. Tropes are literary tools that not only enable practitioners to describe scientific findings, but also enable an even more fundamental component of experimentalism: literariness makes possible the conceptualization of scientific findings and the individual who produces them.

What did Charles II call the Fellows of the Royal Society?

1977 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-16 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Accademia Del Cimento

I have shown elsewhere that in 1660 and 1661 both Robert Southwell (1635-1702, later Sir Robert and P.R.S.), and Sir John Finch (1626-1682) tried to establish a correspondence between the virtuosi in England and in Florence, more especially between Prince Leopold de’ Medici and Robert Boyle, by far the most widely known English man of science at that time. For some mysterious reason the desired correspondence did not take place; Boyle did not write, but did send through Oldenburg two copies of the Latin edition of his New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall , one for the Prince and one for Vincenzo Viviani. This was in October 1661. Indeed, the only knowledge that the Royal Society obtained about the Florentine Accademia del Cimento came through Oldenburg’s French correspondents. They learned nothing substantial except that the experiments made by the Accademia were to be published all together in a book. Finally, in 1667, they were; but for several years the appearance of this work had been expected and in fact eagerly awaited throughout the learned world. As far as the experiments are concerned it could have been published as early as 1662, and the long delay can largely, though not entirely, be blamed on the Secretary who wrote it, Count Lorenzo Magalotti (1637-1712), who was a perfectionist, and a fussy one, not about natural philosophy, but about language.

Margaret Cavendish

Philosophy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Own Name

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (b. 1623–d. 1673), published at least six works of natural philosophy under her own name (the number depends on how one counts various second editions she published). Her prolific output also included poems, plays, essays, speeches, stories, science fiction, and letters to fictional correspondents. Despite Cavendish’s own desire for fame, her reputation has suffered at the hands of readers and biographers who dismissed her philosophical writings without giving them any serious consideration. However, interest in Cavendish’s philosophical theories has increased exponentially since the 1980s. Much of the secondary literature published in the 1980s and 1990s aimed to dispel the idea that Cavendish is not worthy of study and to establish both that Cavendish’s writings were informed by her careful readings of the work of her contemporaries, and that Cavendish’s own philosophical thinking consisted of a detailed, internally consistent alternative to the mechanistic natural philosophy embraced by many of those contemporaries. Now, fortunately, scholars do not feel the need to justify their study of Cavendish. Secondary literature published since the early 2000s on Cavendish’s philosophical work starts from the assumptions that studying Cavendish’s works enriches our understanding of the landscape of 17th-century philosophy and that the details of Cavendish’s views are inherently worth analyzing. The secondary literature on Cavendish is now extensive and comes from many disciplines—English literature, philosophy, history, history of science, political science, and cultural studies, among others—and, accordingly, draws on a variety of methodological approaches. For this bibliography, secondary literature has been chosen which is based on close textual analysis and sensitivity to the historical and philosophical contexts in which Cavendish was writing. Works are divided into the following sections: Primary Sources, Modern Editions, Biographies, Overviews, Online Resources, Anthologies, Natural Philosophy, Epistemology, Political Philosophy, Religion and Theology, and Rhetorical Style.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document