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Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) First published Tue Jan 15, 2002; substantive revision Tue Jul 6, 2010 Boyle was one of the leading intellectual figures of the seventeenth century. He was a dedicated experimenter, unwilling to construct abstract theories to which his results had to conform. “Our Boyle,” Oldenburg wrote to Spinoza, “is one of those who are distrustful enough of their reasoning to wish that the phenomena should agree with it” (Hall & Hall 1965–1977, 2:38). Boyle, a champion of both the corpuscularian doctrine and the Baconian method of natural history, preferred to report the results of his experiments, including negative results, and frequently lamented the fact that we lacked “histories” (collections of experimental results and accurate observations) in various fields of scientific endeavour. He performed so many experiments that he was able, at one “time to loose … at once near five centuries of Experiments of my own” (BP 9:28). Nor was this an isolated loss; nonetheless the number, variety and scope of his experiments were such that he carried on working and publishing with no particular difficulty. “His books,” as Huygens remarked to Leibniz immediately after Boyle's death, “are full of experiments” (Huygens 1888, 10:239). Moreover, experiments were

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