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26. - Boyle, Robert (1627–1691)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Stephen Harrop
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Robert Boyle was perhaps the finest experimental natural philosopher of his age. He was active in the Republic of Letters, being one of the founding members of the Royal Society and a correspondent with scientific luminaries of his day. He was in broad strokes an adherent of what was then called the mechanical philosophy, which held that all qualities of natural things could be reduced to the properties of matter in motion. He was a reductionist about qualities, holding that “almost all sorts of qualities … may be produced … by such corporeal agents as do not appear either to work otherwise than by virtue of the motion, size, figure, and contrivance, of their own parts” (Boyle 1666, preface)

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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 62 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Buyse, F. A. A. (2013). Boyle, Spinoza, and the Hartlib circle: The correspondence which never took place. Society and Politics, 7, 34–53.Google Scholar
Hall, A. R., and Hall, M. B. (1964). Philosophy and natural philosophy: Boyle and Spinoza. In Taton, R. & Braudel, F. (eds.), L’aventure de l’esprit: Mélanges Alexandre Koyre (pp. 281–99). Hermann.Google Scholar
Peterman, A. (2014). Spinoza on physical science. Philosophy Compass, 9(3), 214–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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