Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Canon in Question
- Part II Canonical Disciplines Re-Formed
- 4 The Role of Religion in the Lutheran Response to Copernicus
- 5 Catholic Natural Philosophy: Alchemy and the Revivification of Sir Kenelm Digby
- 6 Vital Spirits: Redemption, Artisanship, and the New Philosophy in Early Modern Europe
- 7 “The Terriblest Eclipse That Hath Been Seen in Our Days”: Black Monday and the Debate on Astrology during the Interregnum
- 8 Arguing about Nothing: Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Theological Implications of the Void
- Part III Canonical Figures Reconsidered
- Part IV The Canon Constructed
- Index
8 - Arguing about Nothing: Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Theological Implications of the Void
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Canon in Question
- Part II Canonical Disciplines Re-Formed
- 4 The Role of Religion in the Lutheran Response to Copernicus
- 5 Catholic Natural Philosophy: Alchemy and the Revivification of Sir Kenelm Digby
- 6 Vital Spirits: Redemption, Artisanship, and the New Philosophy in Early Modern Europe
- 7 “The Terriblest Eclipse That Hath Been Seen in Our Days”: Black Monday and the Debate on Astrology during the Interregnum
- 8 Arguing about Nothing: Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Theological Implications of the Void
- Part III Canonical Figures Reconsidered
- Part IV The Canon Constructed
- Index
Summary
Those who are philosophers cannot see [Pascal's vacuum experiments] without wonder; and those who are not, become philosophers when they consider them. There, is observed that brave nothingness against which so many excellent Philosophers have fought for such a long time, that fearful void that frightens all nature, and against which she uses all her forces, that fine nothing which is going to supply arms for its defence, and solid matter to construct discourses in its favour.
As people learned of Robert Boyle's exciting air-pump experiments, published in 1660 as New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects, the question of whether a vacuum could exist in nature was more keenly debated than ever before. Matthew Hale remarked that the subject of the experiments “is seeingly trivial …yet it hath exercised the wits and pens of many learned men.” Some of the “many excellent Philosophers” debating the possible existence of “that brave nothingness” continued to uphold the view that nature was frightened by empty space, that “fearful void,” and would fight to prevent it. This view had long been accepted as a fundamental tenet of Aristotle's, who had predicted that after reading arguments in his Physics the concept of “the so-called void will be found to be really vacuous.”
In the 1660s, however, the view that nature abhors a vacuum was no longer widely held. Of course, the Cartesian version of the mechanical philosophy of nature reflected the Aristotelian notion that there were no empty spaces in nature. The atomic version of mechanism, however, asserted the existence of void between the atoms.
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- Rethinking the Scientific Revolution , pp. 153 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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