Lecturer:   John Hedley Brooke

Responder:   Geoffrey Cantor

Robert Boyle 1627 ? 1691

In a well known study of the ?scientific revolution? of the seventeenth century, Stephen Shapin pointed to an interesting paradox: ?The more a body of knowledge is understood to be objective and disinterested, the more valuable it is as a tool in moral and political action.?  Elaborating the paradox, he added that ?the most powerful storehouse of value in our modern culture is the body of knowledge we consider to have least to do with the discourse of moral value.?  For many of those who pioneered new methods of studying nature in the seventeenth century, what we retrospectively see as the scientific enterprise was catalysed by hopes and fears, beliefs and values that in some cases are difficult to recapture and often prove to be out of kilter with modern secular cultures.  

Robert Boyle is a prime example because he devoted much of his intellectual energy to proving not only that it was possible for a pious Christian to be a scientific virtuoso, but also that the world revealed by scientific study testified unequivocally to divine wisdom.  One of the attractions of science that was made explicit in England after the Restoration in 1660 ? the year the Royal Society was founded ? was its promise of a consensual knowledge in contrast to religious doctrines that had recently proved so divisive.  Boyle shared that hope but was also at pains to repel what was widely perceived as the materialism of Thomas Hobbes and the rationalism of religious radicals who sought to denude Christianity of all mystery.  The current series of Boyle lectures represents a revival of the series that Boyle himself endowed and it therefore seemed appropriate to re-examine some of the beliefs and values that informed his enduring contribution to an emerging scientific culture.

LECTURE OUTLINE

• The original legacy: lectures to prove the Christian religion ?against notorious Infidels, viz. Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans? but not descending to controversies among Christians themselves.
• Boyle?s philanthropy

WHO WAS BOYLE?

•         Born 25 January 1627, youngest son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork.

•         Education at Eton and through study with a private tutor abroad

•         His religious conversion and fascination with stories of magic and the supernatural.

•         From 1645 to 1655 Boyle lives at the family estate in Dorset. His conversion to science, especially chemistry.

•         From 1655- 68 lives in Oxford. The Wilkins circle and Boyle?s role in the early Royal Society.  In 1668 moves to London where he resides with his sister Katherine until his death in 1691.

•         The strength of his religious convictions: a ?priest in the temple of nature?

•         His reputation in science:  his provision of an experimental foundation for a mechanical philosophy of nature; a scepticism towards alchemy (?); Boyle?s law.

•         But: did Boyle discover Boyle?s law? How much scope did he give to the mechanical philosophy; and was he really sceptical of alchemical practices?

•         A lifelong concern: the refutation of atheism.  The ?philosophers stone? and the spirit world.

DETERRENTS TO THE RESURRECTION OF BOYLE

•         Many obvious discontinuities between ?then? and ?now?, especially in the state of scientific knowledge. 

•         The Dawkins barrier: any philosophy of nature constructed before Darwin will be worthless.

•         However:

•         Parallels between ?now? and ?then?: challenge of a new atheism; religious anti-intellectualism; suspicion of scientific authority; philosophies threatening to undermine the affirmation of purpose and direction in the world.

•         Boyle?s enduring legacy in his contribution to the scientific movement

• BOYLE AND THE PROMOTION OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE

• •         Exaggeration in the claim that without Christianity there would have been no modern science.
• •         But why an enduring scientific culture in Europe?
• •         Christian resources for raising the respectability of the new ?experimental philosophy?: the two books analogy; the virtue of humility; meeting the need for trustworthy witnesses; evidence of a divine craftsman in the mechanics of nature; the analogy of the Strasbourg clock and its role in creating the space for both scientific investigation and religious belief; a biblical justification for increasing dominion over nature.

BOYLE AND THE REVIVAL OF NATURAL THEOLOGY

• The raised profile of natural theology in Boyle helps us to appreciate recurring reasons for its appeal
• to sanctify the sciences against religious suspicion; to assist in countering the damage from internecine religious divisions; to address the challenge of a practical as well as cerebral atheism; to reassure those whose faith might be wavering; to express a genuine sense of the wonders of nature revealed through scientific innovation (the microscope as an ally); and to reinstate a place for ?final causes?.
• The Darwinian challenge? A partial resemblance between Boyle and Darwin: the laws are ordained by the deity; Boyle?s analysis of a figurative expression.