Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Department of Philosophy and Moral Science
Chair: Prof. Dr. E. Weber
Robert Boyle
and
the relation between religion and science
by
Merel Lefevere
Promotor: Dr. S. Ducheyne
Dissertation submitted to obtain the postgraduate diploma in
Logic, History and Philosophy of Science
Academic year 2009–2010
ii
Contents
Inhoudsopgave
i
Introduction
1
1 Robert Boyle a unification of voluntarism, reformism, physico-theology
and early modern science?
2
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
Religion and science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
1.1.1
A mutual influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
1.1.2
Signs and meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
1.1.3
Revival of the physical world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
1.1.4
Textual methodologies endangered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
1.1.5
New methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6
The meaning of nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
1.2.1
Cartesianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
1.2.2
Physico-theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
Voluntarism, empirical science and the reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
1.3.1
Voluntarism and empirical sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
1.3.2
Boyle and the reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14
i
2 Boyle’s Notion of Nature and causation
15
2.1
Occasionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
2.2
Concurrentism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18
2.3
Notion of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
2.4
Refined concurrentism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
29
2.5
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31
Conclusion
33
Bibliography
34
ii
Introduction
This dissertation is divided in two chapters. In first chapter I start with a more general
framework to discuss the relation between science and religion, by following Harrison’s
[1998] claim that early modern science developed as a re-reading of the two books, nature
and scripture, because of changing methodology in reading the Bible. After sketching this
evolution there were two possibilities to assign a new meaning to nature, Cartesianism or
physico-theology. I will focus on physico-theology with Robert Boyle as my main character.
Still in the first chapter I will discuss the relation between voluntarism, reformism and
Boyle’s modern, empirical science.
In the second chapter two possible interpretations of Boyle’s relationship between God
and nature will be looked into. The first interpretation is the occasionalist account, which
states that God is the only efficacious cause in the world, the second interpretation states
that both God and bodies in the natural world can produce phenomena, however not
separately but by cooperating. In this chapter I will use Boyle’s A free enquiry into the
vulgarly received notion of nature to test both interpretations with Boyle’s actual claims.
It will be clear that a concurrentist interpretation is best suited to deal with Boyle’s view
that God created the universe, settled the laws of motion and is needed to maintain the
order, although bodies in nature have the capacity to transfer motion from one to another.
By using Anstey’s arguments [2000], this concurrentist interpretation can be refined.
1
Chapter 1
Robert Boyle a unification of
voluntarism, reformism,
physico-theology and early modern
science?
1.1
1.1.1
Religion and science
A mutual influence
The relation between science and religion is still a widely discussed topic. Osler [1997]
describes different metaphors that have been used in historiography of science and adds another. The first metaphor focusses on conflicts between science and religion, with Galileo’s
trial as a paradigm case, as complete opposites of each other. The harmony metaphor
emphasizes the positive influence that religion had on the rise of modern science, as exemplified by the famous but strongely discussed merton-thesis. The segregation metaphor
preserves the autonomy of science and religion by considering them as seperate but equal
disciplines. Osler self suggests there was a conceptual influence and interaction between
religion and science, between theology and natural philosophy. This mutual influence can
be conceived by two metaphors: appropriation and translation.
By speaking of ‘appropriation, we acknowledge the change in a previously
2
established idea, theory, technique, or practice as it enters a new historical
(and perhaps geographical) location. [...] ‘Translation’ refers to a relationship
between abstract symbol systems mediated by individuals in specific historical
contexts. [Osler, 1997, p.101-102]
With this metaphors Osler wants to emphasize the deep interconnectedness between both
disciplines. This interconnectedness is also what makes Harrison’s claim when he argues
that it is the changed hermeneutics of reading the Scripture that had a crucial influence
on the rise of early modern science [Harrison, 1998].
1.1.2
Signs and meaning
One of the main figures for the medieval hermeneutics for reading the Bible is Origen
(185-254). For him every visible thing can teach us about that which is unvisible. Origen
demonstrated that the physical world could be made intelligible by a process of exposing
the spiritual realities that were symbolized by material things. The key in this interpretation methodology was allegory. For Origin, scripture had three senses, corresponding to
body, soul and spirit. The literal sense was the obvious sense. The second sense, corresponding with the soul is the moral sense; Scripture learned us how to live. The highest
sense, corresponding with the spirit, was the allegorical sense and contained timeless theological truths. By using this method, passages that seemed nonsensical in the literary
reading, could have sence when read allegorically. The same methodology was applied to
the physical world. The lowest reading of nature was to serve physical needs, animals and
plants are used for food. The problem of dangerous, annoying and useless animals could be
explained on the moral or allegorical level. Nothing was without purpose, and if no meaning could be found on the basic level, things in nature became signs for a deeper meaning.
Harrison gives the pelican in the Physiologus as an example, it became an enduring symbol
of Christ’s atonement [Harrison, 1998, p.24etseq.].
Augustine argued that scripture only talked about faith or morals, references to natural
objects did not communicate information about the physical world. It was the other
way around, knowledge of physical objects in nature could only serve understanding the
resemblances of scripture. To use the metaphors of the two books, for Augustine the book
of nature was completely subordinate to the book of scripture. The study of nature itself
was only possible by studying the scripture.
3
1.1.3
Revival of the physical world
In the renaissance of the 12the century nature was rediscovered. The physical world was
regarded as a place of divine activity. This physical emphasis was also evident in the
experience of sacraments:
In the mass, the centrepiece of medieval religion, priests were to rehearse
the process of incarnation by transforming the matter of bread and wine into
the very substance of God. The elemnts of the mass were not simply naked
signs, significant for what they symbolised: now they were vested with intrinsic importance for what they literally were - the body and blood of Christ.
Participants in the eucharist saw themselves as ‘eating God’. [Harrison, 1998,
p.37]
This elevation of the physical world resulted in a new status of the senses. Knowledge
of things was now accessible through our sense organs. Aquinas claimed that all our
knowledge comes from sensation. This reversed Augustine’s view, it is not God who makes
the knowledge of the world possible, it is the world that makes possible our knowledge of
God. This re-apriciation of the physical world had as an outcome that the empirical world
was considered a coherent entity, accessable for systematical investigation. This means
that the empirical world no longer is a dull reflection of the intelligble world, but it became
valuable to investigate the patterns of that world itself. The book of nature needed to be
read in itself, but this happened with the methodologies that were previously used on the
book of scripture. “Nature was a new authority, an alternative text, a doorway to the divine
which could stand alongside the sacred page” [Harrison, 1998, p.45]. In this framework the
idea grows that with this new knowledge of God one can restore the similtudo that was
lost after the Fall, the restoration of the human likeness to God.
Through knowledge, the world would be reunited, and both knower and
known would be redeemed. The human begin was to comprehend all things in
both ontological and epistemological senses of that term. [Harrison, 1998, p.59]
Turning away from the book of scripture to the book of nature was thus not motivated by
a secular impulse. The natural knowledge was pursued as part of the human redemption,
it was a religious process. Neither was it driven by secular methodologies. It is important
to notice that this turn towards the physical world was in no way a turn to an empirical
science. The study of nature happened by studying texts.
4
For the scholastics, nature existed primarily in books, and if from time to
time they were to add glosses to the authorities on the basis of their own observations of the world, they nonetheless saw as their main task the preservation
and transmission of a world which had already been closely observed by great
minds in the past. [Harrison, 1998, p.65]
They had the idea that men used to be in possession of a complete knowledge of the world,
but it was lost with the Fall, although it was partially maintained in oral traditions and
in scripture. This knowledge had to be rebuilt by reconstructing the ancient texts and
eliminate the contradictions by the tools of logic and dialectic. The study of nature was
thus a study of the books about nature. The idea was that one only encounters individuals
in the world, but in those individual bodies there is an essence which enables us to attain
a universalization. The culture of books is something that allowed putting trust in the
world, since everything one could encounter is already told about; if one learned about the
universal essence one can understand the individual manifestation.
1.1.4
Textual methodologies endangered
Irreconcilable differences formed a major threat for this methodology. And according
to Harrison, this is exactly what happened in the sixteenth century. The movement of
textual criticism to return to the original, unedited texts revealed disagreements amongst
authorities. It’s still a culture of books, but one wants to return to the earliest most
accurate text. This movement switched the focus to the content of the texts. In natural
history knowledge was increased by etymological research, but the involvement with nature
grew, since the texts were corrupted, the authors had to consult nature itself to see if the
description matched a known species. One also became interested in the used methods
of the ancient ‘scientists’. Next, the explorations to the new world disclosed major black
holes in the ancients’ knowledge of the natural world. With al the new plants and animals,
as they were not in the books, the allegorical reading became more difficult, because these
new discoveries were potentially unintelligible symbols.
But for Harrison, the main force behind this change was the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther extricated the original Bible from al its glosses and commentaries and read
it as a new text, detached from the tradition and the authority of the Church. The authority
was given to the scripture itself and the meaning of the scripture could be determined by
every individual itself. Freeing the book of scripture of authority was also applied to the
5
book of nature. For Protestantism the Bible was the ultimate source to settle theological
disputes, so in order to reduce ambiguities a literal reading was promoted and the whole
chain of moral and allegorical references was eliminated, only content was left. This freed
the nature of the biblical categories and objects could now be related by mathematics,
mechanics or other categories.
1.1.5
New methods
After the allegorical implosion, new methods were to be found to read the two books. A
new attitude grows towards the Bible. It is approached as a text that was written, in,
and for, another world than ours, unlike the medieval tradition where this text functions
as a story in which events are told beforehand and where the spiritual understanding of a
new situation is the locus where the spiritual efficacy of the Trinity manifests itself. This
change can be traced from several angles, according to Harrison. First, understanding
scripture becomes a matter of literal, historical reading, and in theology the idea rises that
this text has a determinate meaning. Second, the meaning of religious rites changes: the
consecration of bread and wine in the Eucharist is no longer an event that literally repeats
another event, but it an act of memory. Harrison refers to the Ten Articles of 1536 of
Anglicanism in which is mentioned that the “sprinkling of the holy water was to put us
in remembrance of our baptism, holy bread to put us in remembrance of the sacrament of
the altar” and so on [Harrison, 1998, p.124]. By considering the Bible as a historical text,
the gap between scripture and other texts started to reduce. It makes it possible that the
Bible is just one account, however with more chronological antiquity, among many of the
same reality. Further, this new status of the Bible had as a result that not every passage
could be read as a moral or theological message, there had to be historical and geographical
knowledge in there as well. This new perspective on the Bible led to a ‘Mosaic philosophy’,
in which the Bible was interpreted as a text of natural philosophy.
Also the utility of things had previously been found only on the symbolical level. Since
this became impossible, alternative, but still divine purposes hidden in natural things had
to be sought. The assumption was that everything in nature was in some way useful.
This was manifested in the re-emergent question of useless or hostile animals and plants.
Several explanatory roads were possible. They could be instruments of divine justice, or
exist because of the principle of plenitude. They could even be made for a spur to human
industry. In the metaphors of appropriation and translation of Osler this could mean that
the idea of individual natures that possess immanent finality was replaced in a mechanical
6
interpretation with the idea that nature as a whole is the product of God [Osler, 1996].
In these circumstances it was possible again to learn about God by studying nature, not
through knowledge of exemplary forms but by investigating the design in the world, since
for everything done in nature there is a purpose and there is a divine providence that
orders all things. This is an attempt to enumerate all the violence that befalls a body, and
an attempt to point up all the features of this body that allow it to maintain itself despite
this violence.
1.2
The meaning of nature
In the seventeenth century there are two opposing programs to deal with understanding
divine intentions. One is associated with Descartes, the other with Boyle.
1.2.1
Cartesianism
The traditional Christian view was that we have sense organs, given by God, so that we can
understand his creation [Gaukroger, 2006]. Descartes denied that our sense organs produce any knowledge, they are simply given to protect our bodies from injuries. Gaukroger
[2006] describes this position by seeing it as a response to the failure of Thomism. In
the Thomist understanding natural philosophy and theology were autonomous disciplines.
Natural philosophy was Aristotelianism and relied on sense perceptions. Theology was
christian and was founded on revelation. Aquinas wanted some sort of neutral superdiscipline which would connect theology with natural philosophy, and thought metaphysics
was suited for this role. At the beginning of the seventeenth century scholars began to
realize the failure of this project; Aristotelianism and Christianiry could not be reconciled.
Descartes proposed a program in which he argues that God transcents our knowledge and
cannot be reached by natural reasoning. For us humans it is impossible to grasps ideas
such as omnipotence or omniscience. This gap cannot be bridged by metaphysics, but it
can be closed by the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. God has given us a faculty so
that we can evaluate supposed truths, but it is necessary that God guarantees the proper
functioning of that faculty. This means that we cannot know God’s purposes in nature
and God is not present in nature.
7
1.2.2
Physico-theology
For Boyle it is the primary goal of natural philosophy to reveal evidence of the purposes of
God in nature. Natural philosophy was the road to natural theology, a theology based on
reason and experience. By admiring and investigating the natural world, we can discover
more about it’s creator. For Boyle the world was created and not a cause of blind chance,
and Boyle transforms natural enquirey into a form of worship [Gaukroger, 2006]. God did
not only create the world, but because of Boyle’s his doctrine of inanimate matter and
mechanistic philosophy, God needed to play an active role in de maintenance and guidance
of natural processes. For Gaukroger it were suchlike projects that increased the succes of
the legitimation and consolidation of science in the early modern times, since the natural
philosophy was not a separated from religion, but is was used to fulfill the projects of
natural theology [Gaukroger, 2005].
In the next section we will look deeper into two further questions. First the relation between
voluntarism and empirical science, of which Boyle is often used as a key paradigm. Second,
the influence of the reformation on Boyle’s thought.
1.3
Voluntarism, empirical science and the reformation
1.3.1
Voluntarism and empirical sciences
Foster [1934] claims that before there could exist a modern science of nature, there first
must be a modern conception of nature. Since the modern doctrine of nature is incompatible with the Aristotelian doctrine, something must have changed. His claims is that it is
the acceptance of the Christian doctrine of creation in science that caused a shift in the
conception of nature, and therefore a change in natural science or natural philosophy.
Greek natural science assumes that the essences of natural objects are definable, this presupposes that definition is an act of pure reason. Therefore there is something in an object
which is intelligible and distinct from sensible. This is what the Greek called the form,
distinct from the matter of an object. For an object to be definable, it is thus the form
that makes the thing to be what it is. The corresponding theory of nature distinguishes
the natural world in a similar way. Since only intelligent knowledge is sufficient for under8
standing what is and what happens in the actual world, the sensuous experience can only
be an illustration of that knowledge. This theory of nature presupposes that neither form
neither matter is created. If matter is created it would possess a positive being, and thus
contradict with the view that only form defines an object. If form were created, it would
not be intelligible. As Foster summarizes, “nature may be conceived as dependent upon a
supernatural power for the activity by which its two elements are conjoined, but not for
the being of either element” [Foster 1934, p.456]. A created nature, as in the Christian
doctrine, contradicts the two conditions for an object to be definable, since the work of
creation is not purposive, natural objects can have no form that is distinct as the object
of the intellect. The form of an object is in this doctrine no longer intelligible and it is
not the real essence of an object. Where a Demiurge is wholly subordinated to theoretical
activity, a Christian God has an autonomous activity of will.
Moreover by an act of Divine will, it follows that contingency is an essential to the creation.
The contingency is no longer an imperfection in the embodiment of form, but it is what
constitutes a natural object. But this contingent aspect is only accessible by the senses. So
if nature is necessary contingent, this should be reflected in the science of nature. Because
there is something in nature, depending on Divine will, that is not knowable by pure reason,
the science of nature must depend on the evidence of sensuous experience. Foster claims
thus that modern science could only rise when the Greek view on nature was replaced; and
this change in conception was only possible by accepting the Christian conception of God
as the object of understanding.
Harrison [2002] doubts that voluntarism had a direct causal influence on early modern
science, as Foster claimed. He sees several problems for this claim: there were important
modern voluntarists who were not empiricists, central concepts in voluntarism such as
‘necessity’ and ‘contingency’ are used in an ambiguous way and voluntarism is inconsistent
with the physico-theological motivations.
Harrison defines voluntarism as “that view of the Deity that elevates his will over his
intellect [ı̈¿½] those identified as medieval voluntarists argued that the will is more noble
than the intellect, and that the will commands the intellect in both God and the human
soul. Some knowledge of divine will is required, and access to such knowledge is gained
through revelation. [ı̈¿½] Because God might have instituted any natural order he desired,
nature must be directly consulted in order to determine which specific laws he actually
promulgated.” [Harrison 2002, p.2] Classic examples of voluntarism are Pierre Gassendi,
Isaac Barrow, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. For Harrison it is conspicuous that Rene
9
Descartes is not in this list, since he was a radical voluntarist and simultaneously commited
to the possibility of a priori knowledge of the laws of nature. Harrison quotes a letter from
Descartes to Mersenne (1630) in which Descartes claimed that “the mathematical truths,
which you call eternal, were established by God and totally depend on him, just like all the
other creatures” and a passage in Objections and Replies in which Descartes states that
God’s will precedes his intellect, it is because God willed that three angles of a triangle
should equal two right angle, that this is true, not the other way around [Harrison 2002,
p.3]. For Descartes there is no necessary connection between voluntarism and empiricism.
He claimed that we can have a priori knowledge of the laws of nature, because those truths
are in our minds.
Another important remark on the supposed relation between voluntarism and empiricism
can be found in the changing reception of the Bible in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
As we already told, the reading of the scripture changed drastically in the seventeenth
century. The Bible was read as a historical text, containing historical and geographical
knowledge. The assumption was that legitimate knowledge of both nature and God could
be found in the scriptures, and thus knowledge without sensuous experience was still taken
very seriously.
One of the important implications of voluntarism, as shown by Foster [1934], is the contingency of the created order, as opposed to a necessary act. Descartes shows us that it could
be that God freely chooses to create necessary truths. Does the contingency determines
the Divine will or is it a view about the relation of the creation to God? Contingency
could be an antonym for necessity or it could be a synonym for dependence. For Harrison
it is problematic to speak of contingency as dependence, since this would mean classical
theism, meaning that all operations in nature are solely and directly dependent on Divine
will. An immediate dependence can be found with the occasionalists, for whom God is
the only causally efficacious agent in nature. But such a direct dependence subverts the
very idea of laws of nature, since there are no active principles needed anymore to mediate
between God and nature. This dependency position is thus not necessarily associated with
empiricism. Moreover, if everything in nature is directly dependent on Divine will, there
are no contingent events, in the sense of opposed to necessity, in the world. There can only
be laws of nature if God’s will is constant and immutable. If nature is directly dependent
on God’s will than that will needs to be stable or if it is unstable there can be no laws
of nature. The pure voluntarist claim that everything is dependent on God’s will, is thus
inconsistent with the physico-theological program, since this whole project rests on the
possibility to discover a rational design in the empirical world. Harrison points out that
10
Boyle, and others, was therefore not a pure voluntarists, since he emphasizes God’s wisdom
and beneficence a lot. For the physico-theological program to succeed, nature could not
be a random collection of phenomena, there had to be a design, a structure in the world;
and this is what Boyle repeats several times in his Notion of Nature:
I think it probable [...] that the great and wise author of things did, [...],
put its parts into various motions [...]. And that, by his infinite wisdom and
power, he did so guide and overrule the motions of there parts at the beginning
of things, as [...] they were finally disposed into that beautiful and orderly
frame we call the world; [...]. And I further conceive that he settled such laws
or rules of local motion among the parts of the universal matter, that by his
ordinary and preserving concourse the several parts of the universe, thus once
completed, should be able to maintain the great construction [...]. I suppose no
other efficient [cause] of the universe but God himself [...]. [Boyle, 1996, p.39,
my italics]
In order to maintain the relation between voluntarism and early empirical science a particular interpretation of the power distinction potentia absoluta et ordinata was used. The
traditional meaning is that God set up our present world with his absolute power, although
he could have constituted any type of world. In this sense God’s absolute power was never
actualized, it consisted of the possible worlds that God could have created. God’s ordinary power is manifested in everything that happens in the created world, the regular
phenomena and the irregularities. In another usage of this distinction, God remained the
possibility to use his absolute power in the created world to go against the settled course
of things, as constituted by God’s ordinary power. This is one of McQuire’s [1972] basic
assumptions. According to him seventeenth-century thinkers supported a basic doctrine,
originating from William of Ockham, in which two modes of Divine omnipotence are distinguished. God has absolute and ordinary power, potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata.
Voluntarist theologists then claim that it is God’s power which set up the natural and
moral order, by means of absolute creation. In order for this creation to happen, God does
not need a sufficient reason, he is absolutely free to create any world he wants. Once the
framework is established, secondary causes and moral laws are immutable. But, “though
all laws and causes have their continual source in Divine Will, that Will itself is not arbitrary and capricious” [McGuire, 1972, p.526], thus God operates through the laws that
are being nurtured by his own will. However, God also possesses absolute power, by which
he is capable of going against the established order, since this order is not ultimate. It
11
was regarded that God’s absolute power was manifested through miracles. God’s use of
his absolute power was seen as a suspension or alternative use of the secondary causes.
This doctrine is connected with other dogma’s, such as creation ex nihilo and Providence:
“...the initial act of absolute creation was of the same type as a contingent thing’s being
made to endure and to exist” [McGuire, 1972, p.526]. Both the creation and the continuance in existence required God’s omnipotence, since there was nothing in nature that could
self-endure or subsist. Moreover, this absolute creation suggests that God is providentially
in contact with his creation, both in termins of ordinary and extraordinary providence.
For Harrison [2002] points out that other interpretations of this distinction include William
Courtenay [1974] who claims that the power distinction rules out an arbitrary God who
changes his mind and goes against the established laws of nature, which is precisely what
voluntarists want to account for. Harrison also doubts that medieval nominalists were
directly relevant for the seventeenth century, since Reformers could have misinterpreted
them. But even then, there is no evidence that Calvin and Luther transmitted the medieval
ideas of divine power to early modern times. Harrison further writes that the use of the
power distinction in the seventeenth century always refers to the classical distinction and
was not considered equivalent to the distinction between ordinary and extraordinaty power.
However, according to McGuire [1972] the ideas of voluntarism and the power distinction
are closely linked to a theological tradition which includes William of Ockham, Augustine,
Calvin and the German encyclopaedists of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.
In his argument Robert Boyle was strongly influenced by calvinism, we will discuss this in
the next subsection.
1.3.2
Boyle and the reformation
First we will question if Boyle had a nominalist ontology. According to McGuire [1972] this
means that only individual objects exist and since everything is only dependent on God,
their are no relations between those individual things. In this description this is indeed
similar to what Boyle argues. Anstey describes how nominalism in the seventeenth century
existed in two forms, the ontological form, according to which universals do not exist and
a semantic thesis of Ockham, who stated that the references to ostensibly unversals do
not refer to any objective existents [Anstey, 2000a]. It was the first, ontological, use that
McGuire ascribed to Boyle. The position that everything in the natural world are unrelated
particulars is consistent with ontological nominalism, but Anstey shows that it does not
entail it. For Boyle everything was dependent on God for its existance and in some cases
12
also for the relations to each other. By quotes of Christian Virtuoso I Anstey [2000] shows
that if God’s assistance would cease, the collisions between matter would still occur, since
they have the causal efficacy to transmit motion to one another and to change direction,
but the great construction would fall apart in chaos, because “God established the lines
of motion” [Boyle, 1996, p.75]. But non of this is situated in a discourse of nominalism.
Anstey claims that Calvin himself did not even engage in the question of nominalism versus
realism, so how could Boyle have been influenced by it?
McGuire [1972] argues further that nominalism is closely related to voluntarism, but again,
neither position entails the other. Anstey agrees with McGuire’s claim that Boyle was a
voluntarist, but disconnects this from any nominalist position. There were a lot voluntarist
influences in his immediate sources, such as Descartes and Gassendi, but non of them were
Protestant and Boyle never discusses calvinism in his treatments.
Anstey strengthens his thesis by investigating the references in Boyle’s writings [Anstey, 2000a,
p.16 etseq.] and finds only one reference to Calvin and one to Luther. Further Anstey
mentions the Seraphic Love, the Essay of the Holy Scriptures and Style of the Scriptures
to show the paucity of reformist references. The Seraphic Love discusses the disagreements
between the Calvinist and Arminian position on predestination, but Boyle remains neutral,
since his aim is to show that either position allows one to still celebrate God’s love. But
Boyle never mentioned Calvin himself in this treaty, but he refers to socianism. Boyle’s
Essay of the Holy Scriptures defends biblical translation into vernacular, a Lutheran idea,
but again Boyle only makes one reference to a reformer in this treaty, to Theodore Beza.
McGuire’s claim that Boyle mentions a lot of calvinist writers is invalidated since Anstey
shows that the authors he mentions are not Calvinist theologians, they rather should be
unified arount the theme of Christian apologetics. Also in Style of the Scriptures Boyle
uses the same and similar references, who seem to be Christian defenders of the faith and
ancient authors.
Anstey then situates Boyle theological influence arount the Tew Circle, since Boyle admired Falkland, read Hammond and was intimate with Barlow. This Tew Circle provided
a method for natural philosophy, based on early Anglican theology, that was charactarized by a doctrinal minimalism, avoidance of disputation and a reconciling ‘via media’
[Anstey, 2000a, p.24]. These are all features that are present in Boyle’s natural philosophy.
Anstey does not want to deny that Boyle has been influenced by reformed thought, but
his writings in natural philosophy fir the apologetic framework better, since their is no
evidence of Calvinist theology in his works. Boyle’s voluntarism is inspired by Descartes,
13
Suarez and Gassendi, rather than by the reformers. The conclusion that Robert Boyle is an
epitomized character of the close relation between Reformation and Scientific Revolution
cannot be maintained.
1.4
Conclusion
In this chapter I’ve started with a general framework of the relation between science and religion, in which the changing hermeneutics of reading the Bible has created a new position
for the study of nature. After this allegorical implosion there had to be created a new meaning for nature, and for this there were two candidated: Cartesianism and physico-theology.
In the third section I focus on the latter program by discussing the relation between voluntarism and empirical science and by considering one of the key figures of phsyco-theology,
Robert Boyle and his relationship to the reformers. The further development of Boyle’s
relation between God and nature will be the subject of the second chapter.
14
Chapter 2
Boyle’s Notion of Nature and
causation
2.1
Occasionalism
One of the interpretations of Boyle’s laws of nature can be found with J.E. McGuire
[1972]. In his article he wants to propose an alternative to the ’received’ opinion in which
seventeenth-century thinkers viewed God’s relation to nature as primarily a first efficient
cause. This makes nature relatively independent of God. Thus, “scientific knowledge
establishes nature as a self-contained, self-regulating, law-governed system which can be
likened in its interrelations to a machine” and “as nature came more and more to be
conceived as a system of laws relating matter and motion, the doctrine of divine providence
declined in importance [...] in natural philosophy” [McGuire, 1972, p.524].
One of McGuire’s basic assumptions is that seventeenth-century thinkers supported a basic
doctrine, originating from William of Ockham, in which two modes of Divine omnipotence
are distinguished. God has absolute and ordinary power, potentia absoluta and potentia
ordinata. Voluntarist theologists then claim that it is God’s power which set up the natural
and moral order, by means of absolute creation. In order for this creation to happen, God
does not need a sufficient reason, he is absolutely free to create any world he wants.
Once the framework is established, secondary causes and moral laws are immutable. But,
“though all laws and causes have their continual source in Divine Will, that Will itself is
not arbitrary and capricious” [McGuire, 1972, p.526], thus God operates through the laws
that are being nurtured by his own will. However, God also possesses absolute power, by
15
which he is capable of going against the established order, since this order is not ultimate.
It was regarded that God’s absolute power was manifested through miracles. God’s use of
his absolute power was seen as a suspension or alternative use of the secondary causes. This
doctrine is connected with other dogma’s, such as creation ex nihilo and Providence: “...the
initial act of absolute creation was of the same type as a contingent thing’s being made
to endure and to exist” [McGuire, 1972, p.526]. Both the creation and the continuance
in existence required God’s omnipotence, since there was nothing in nature that could
self-endure or subsist. Moreover, this absolute creation suggests that God is providentially
in contact with his creation.
There are different positions to deal with this relation between Providence and secondary
causation. For Thomas Hobbes causes always necessitate their effects. Hobbes claimed
that God was a first efficient cause and that after the creation the world maintained itself
independently of God by second causes. “For Hobbes, ..., to deny that voluntary acts have
been necessary all along is to envisage a failure of causation: it is to envisage uncaused
events, and this is impossible” [Gaukroger, 2006, p.461]. This view rules out Providence
and was thus inconsistent with Christian cosmology. Another, more common, view is
that of Descartes. He claimed that after the creation, God inspirited the world with an
unchanging amount of motion, so that moving bodies would be self-regulating. He “postulated a conservation principle and three laws of nature which regulated all corpuscular
interactions” [Gaukroger, 2006, p.462]. However, Descartes also argued that “nature was
recreated from moment to moment by God’s arbitrary fiat. Thus secondary causes would
cease to exist were they not continuously maintained by Divine Will” [McGuire, 1972,
p.530]. In this position the secondary causes are still dependent on Divine Providence.
McGuire continues with Malebranche, who restricts any causal powers to the divine level.
According to Gaukroger [2006] Malebranche rationalizes cartesianism to bring out the complete dependence of bodies on God. Since God is the only true cause, then all causes in
nature are “merely occasions of Divine Will” [McGuire, 1972, p.531].
According to McGuire, Boyle did not accept occasionalism. For him God is a transcendent,
first and efficient cause and nature is, once created, maintained by God’s ordinary power:
I think it probable [...] that the great and wise author of things did, [...],
put its parts into various motions [...]. And that, by his infinite wisdom and
power, he did so guide and overrule the motions of there parts at the beginning
of things, as [...] they were finally disposed into that beautiful and orderly
frame we call the world; [...]. And I further conceive that he settled such laws
16
or rules of local motion among the parts of the universal matter, that by his
ordinary and preserving concourse the several parts of the universe, thus once
completed, should be able to maintain the great construction [...]. I suppose no
other efficient [cause] of the universe but God himself [...]. [Boyle, 1996, p.39]
This brings us to Boyle’s famous passage about laws of nature. Since God is sovereign over
nature and settles it’s behaviour, then “a law is but a notional rule of acting according to
the declared will of a superior” [Boyle 1682 (1996), p.24]. This implies that only intellectual
beings are able to receive and act by law. McGuire quotes Boyle in the Christian Virtuoso
where he says: “inanimate bodies which cannot incite or moderate their own actions,
are produced by real power, not by laws” [McGuire, 1972, p.535, his italics]. This real
power is no other than God himself. This means that for Boyle causation is something
that is imposed on observed regularity by the human mind. “A law of nature is the
conceptualization of similarity observed between phenomena, arising from the fact that
the human mind observes phenomena as similar” [McGuire, 1972, p.536]. According to
McGuire it is Boyle’s nominalist interpretation of reality which induced him to this new
concept of laws. Since every existing thing is completely dependent on Divine power, so
there is no reason to presume inherent connections among the particulars. “The laws
of phenomena and their properties are not interrelated. Hence a priori insight into the
structure of nature is not possible since there exists no intrinsic relations among physical
phenomena” [McGuire, 1972, p.528].
The question remains why we should expect future phenomena to act upon the laws of
nature. For Boyle the laws of nature are a way to know about God’s instructions upon
nature. To answer the question, Boyle falls back on Providence. After creation God has
chosen to govern the universe in such or such a way, and as already mentioned “though all
laws and causes have their continual source in Divine Will, that Will itself is not arbitrary
and capricious” [McGuire, 1972, p.526].
According to McGuire the ideas of Notion of Nature are closely linked to a theological
tradition which includes William of Ockham, Augustine, Calvin and the German encyclopaedists of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This influence can be situated
twofold. First, the young Boyle was tutored by a Calvinist called Marcombes, and secondly,
Boyle was closely related to the Hartlib circle, which was Calvinistic in outlook. McGuire
says that Boyle must have found the Calvinistic theological doctrines in widely read works
of Calvin, the encyclopaedists and the Cambridge Puritans and lists some titles of books
that Boyle presumably has read.
17
2.2
Concurrentism
Timothy Shanahan [1988] focuses on the question whether or not there are secondary
causes in nature according to Boyle. As we have seen in the previous section, McGuire
denies this and argues that for Boyle everything that happens in nature must be ascribed
to God, and to God alone. The ‘received opinion’, which can be thought of as metaphysical
deism stands at an opposite extreme from McGuire’s occasionalist interpretation1 .
To clarify the meaning of metaphysical deism, and to construct his own argument for an
intermediary interpretation of Boyle, Shanahan considers some medieval formulations of
the arguments. According to William Durandus de Saint-Pourcain (1270-1332), God is
the primary agent which creates secondary agents, and conserves them and their powers in
existence. In causing further effects the secondary agents do not need assistance from God.
If God would act, than he would either act by the same action or by a different action
by which the secondary cause acts. Durandus excludes action by the same action for two
reasons. First, a secondary agent does not need God’s influence to perform his actions.
Second, it is not possible that the same action comes from two or more agents such that
it is completely and immediately from both agents, unless they act from the same power.
Since God and a secondary agent cannot act by the same power, they do not act by the
same action. Analogously, action by a different action is also excluded by Durandus. If
an effect was produced by two different actions, then either one of the actions effects the
thing before the other does, or else simultaneously. If God’s action comes first, then the
creature brings about nothing, and vice versa. If God creates a part, and the secondary
agent another, then the same problem remains. If the different actions occur simultaneous,
then one of the two would be superfluous, and moreover, two actions cannot have the same
terminus. Durandus thus concludes that God does not act immediately in the production
of the effect of a secondary cause.
Shanahan shows by several passages that Boyle understood events in nature to involve
causal activity from both God and natural entities. In his Essay containing a requisite
digression concerning those, that would exclude the Deity from intermeddling with matter
[Boyle, 1663], Boyle argues that God’s guidance and regulation is necessary to maintain
the laws of motion that govern the interactions of bodies. It is noteworthy that Boyle’s
position is not only similar to Aquinas, but he also uses the same analogy:
1
McGuire himself claims that Boyle did not accept occasionalism, but Shanahan will argue that McGuire
did not understood what occasionalism really is, and that it is in fact correspondent with McGuire’s
interpretation of Boyle.
18
... as the quill that a philosopher writes with, being dipped in ink, and then
moved after such and such manner upon white paper, all which are corporeal
things, or their motions, may very well trace an excellent rational discourse;
but the quill would never have been moved after the requisite manner upon the
paper, had not its motion been guided and regulated by the understanding of
the writer. [Boyle, 1663, p.174]
Shanahan points out the context of the development of the concurrentist position. “Recall
that occasionalism was originally a response to the rejection of miracles based on adherence
to a doctrine of the necessity of nature. Concurrentism, in turn, was developed as a
response to occasionalism while trying to avoid the opposite error of supposing that natural
entities produce effects independently of God assistance” [Shanahan 1988, p.565]. This
led Shanahan to look onto Boyle’s position on miracles and in Some physic-theological
considerations about the possibility of the resurrection [Boyle, 1675] he speaks about the
burning, but unharmed young men from the book of Daniel. In this essay Boyle gives two
possible explanation for the miracle. The first option is that God withdraws his confluence
with the flames, he interrupts the fire’s action. The second option is that the fire keeps its
power to burn, but God does not cooperate with the flame to produce the effect in the young
men. The first explanation corresponds with Aquinas position, the second explanation is
how Molina deals with the miracle. This means that for Boyle, God contributes to nature
in two manners: he created the matter and set it in motion, and he continues to preserve
the natural order by maintaining the laws of motions and the effects from secondary agents.
Both God and the natural entities play a causal role in our physical universe.
2.3
Notion of Nature
i In the preface of Notion of Nature, which is dated 29 September 1682, Boyle himself wrote
that he started writing this treaty in the 1660s. However, in the conclusion Boyle says that
it is more a collection of writings, established in different times and different circumstances.
The actual publication took place in the early summer of 1686 and it seems that Boyle
carried out revisions to the book right up to the last minute.
From the preface it is clear that Boyle wants to place himself between two opposites:
atheists, who ascribe to much to nature and theists, who consider nature as necessary to
prove God’s existence and providence. Further, he states that he does not want to question
19
the vulgar notion of nature, because it is vulgarly received, but because he considers it
vast importance that philosophy and physics holds a right notion of nature. Further Boyle
wants “to keep up the glory of the divine author of things from being usurped or entrenched
upon by his creatures” [Boyle, 1996, p.6].
In the first section Boyle clarifies his position. Phenomena in nature are the result of matter
moving according to the ‘laws of local motion’ instead of by “an intelligent overseer, such as
nature is fancies to be” [Boyle, 1996, p.11]. For Boyle, this does not result in an elimination
of divine providence, since a machine-like universe, running on its own like a Strasbourg
clock does more justice to God than a puppet-like nature which demands God’s continuous
intervention. God does not need a semi-deity to govern the universe. Boyle also points
out the superiority of the mechanical philosophy, both philosophical and theological. In
his mechanical philosophy there is still a place for providence. First, God settled the laws
of nature. Second, God preserves those laws. Boyle says that if God “but continues his
ordinary and general concourse, there will be no necessity of extraordinary interpositions”
[Boyle, 1996, p.12]. This means that the laws of nature exist in themselves, but only have
effects because they are maintained by God, so both factors are needed to cause natural
phenomena.
Still in the first section, Boyle addresses the problem of anomalies as contradicting the
idea of a universe governed by God. Boyle claims that things such as eclipses, floods,
earthquakes or eruptions of Vulcan are a result of a mechanical universe and as thus
foreseen and wanted by God. Moreover, God is not bounded by the laws he set in motion
after the creation of the universe, he still had absolute power and can go against the laws
of nature if he pleases to do so.
In the second section of Notion of Nature Boyle summarizes possible uses of the word
‘nature’. He begins by referring to Aristotle’s Metaphysics in which he found no less than
six possible meanings of ‘nature’. In English the situation is even worse. ‘Nature’ is used for
the author of nature, also called natura naturans. One can speak about the nature of the
thing, or say that someone is noble by nature. Nature can be used for an internal principle
of motion, if one says that fire moves naturally upwards. Nature can be understood as
the established course of things or as an aggregate of powers belonging to a body. Nature
can be used for the universe or the system of the corporeal works of God, and last, but
most common, nature can express a semi-deity. Boyle also mentions several relative uses
of ‘nature’, in which nature’ is contrasted with violent, human made and miracles.
Boyle suggests an alternative concept for every previous mentioned use. Instead of natura
20
naturans one should simply speak of God. One should not speak anymore of the nature of
a thing, but of it’s essence. A man is not noble by nature, but he is born so or qualified as
such by his original temperament. Fire does not move upwards naturally, but that motion
is determined by certain causes. Instead of using ‘nature’ to the established course of
things, one should just speak of the established order. Powers belonging to a body should
be called constitutions or temperament or even mechanism, but not nature. If one wants
to speak of the universe, he should just use the term universe, and not nature. As for
‘nature’ as a kind of semi-deity: “the best way is not to employ it in that sense at all”
[Boyle, 1996, p.23].
In the final two paragraphs Boyle refers to the idea that objects in nature act conformably
to laws. But although he admits to use those expressions himself, Boyle states that it is a
wrong impression to consider that bodies really act according to God’s law, because “I must
freely observe that, to speak properly, a law being but a notional rule of acting according
to the declared will of a superior, it is plain that nothing but an intellectual being can be
properly capable of receiving and acting by a law” [Boyle, 1996, p.24]. For Boyle nature
is thus incapable of obeying laws, and therefore “God should at the beginning impress
determinate motions upon the parts of matter, and guide them as he thought requisite for
the primordial constitution of things; and that ever since, he should by his ordinary and
general concourse maintain those powers which he gave the parts of matter to transmit
their motion thus and thus to one another”[Boyle, 1996, p.25]. From this last paragraph
it is already clear that Boyle ascribes objects in nature at least one power: the power to
transmit motion, but that this power can only exist by the maintenance of God.
In the third section Boyle starts with Aristotle’s definition of nature, in which nature is
the principle and cause of movement and rest in the thing. He finds this definition very
puzzling and dark, since it is not clear whether the principle or cause is a substance or an
accident. More important is that Boyle remarks that there is no reference to ‘nature’ in
the vulgar sense of the word. “And I do not remember that, in the Old Testament, I have
met with any one Hebrew word that properly signifies nature in the sense we take it in”
[Boyle, 1996, p.28]. Nor is the word ‘nature’ to be found in the English translation of the
Old Testament.
In the fourth section Boyle recites the functions ascribed to nature according to the vulgar
view:
Nature is a most wise being, that does nothing in vain: does not miss her
ends; does always that, which (of the things she can do) is best to be done; and
21
this she does by the most direct or compendious ways, neither employing any
things superfluous, not wanting in things necessary, she teaches and inclines
every one of her works to preserve itself. And, as in the microcosm (man)
it is she that is curer of diseases, so in the macrocosm (the world) for the
conservation of the universe, she abhors a vacuum, making particular bodies
act contrary to their own inclinations and interests, to prevent it, for the public
good [Boyle, 1996, p.32].
Boyle notes that men ascribe things to nature, that are actually performed by real agents.
It is not the law that punishes murder with death, since the law (dead letter) cannot
perform such a thing in a physical sense; it is really the judge or the executioner that
performs the punishment, according to that rule.
“For it seems manifest enough the that whatsoever is done in the world, at least wherein
the rational soul intervenes not, is really effected by corporeal causes and agents, acting
in a world so framed as ours is according to the laws of motion settled by the omniscient
author of things” [Boyle, 1996, p.36].
Although Boyle’s intention was not to propose a new notion of nature of his own, he
suggests to make a distinguish between the universal and the particular nature of things.
As for the universal nature, that is the aggregate of the bodies that make up the world, “it
is the result of the universal matter of the universe [...] whereby all the bodies that compose
it are enabled to act upon, and fitted to suffer from, one another, according to the settled
laws of motion” [Boyle, 1996, p.36]. From this quote it is clear that God had enabled the
individual bodies with secondary causation, since they can act upon one another according
to the laws of motion. The particular notion of nature is than the general nature applied
to a distinct portion of the universe. Boyle also refers to the holy scriptures to argue that
there is no semi-deity, since in “the whole account that Moses gives of the progress of it
[the creation of the heavens and the earth], there is not a word of the agency of nature.
After all, “God saw everything that he had made” [Genesis 1:31, my italics]. But God
settled laws or rules of local motion among the parts of the universal matter and “by his
ordinary and preserving concourse the several parts of the universe, thus once completed,
should be able to maintain the great construction, or system and economy” [Boyle, 1996,
p.39].
Things that are said to be done by nature among inanimate things are really done by
particular bodies acting on one another by local motion, not by an intermediary semi-deity.
22
Boyle further shows by referring to many historical figures and writings that considering
nature as sort of deity resulted in idolatry in antiquity; such as worship of the sun and the
moon. Now we know that the earth is a round mass of very different substances with a
rude and uneven surface, and that the moon is a body full of mountains and craters that
borrows its light from the sun, so there is no need anymore to ascribe a soul to this celestial
bodies. The regular motions of the stars, the moon and the earth are all consequences from
the settled laws of motion.
The fifth section contains five arguments for the obscurity of the vulgar concept of nature.
First, in philosophy one must not believe anything without proof. Boyle claims that he
did not find a physical proof for a divine conception of nature and that there is not such
reference in the Scripture. Second, using Ockham’s razor, Boyle claims that the by him
questioned notion of nature is unnecessary. Supposing the common matter of all bodies
divided into minute parts and constituted to form the world together with the laws of local
motion and God’s ordinary and general concourse is sufficient to explain the production of
the observed phenomena in the world. Third, the questioned notion of nature is dark and
odd for Boyle, so that it is difficult to really understand what it is. Is it a corporeal or an
immaterial substance, or something in between? Is it a body, and if so what kind? Fourth,
the vulgar notion of nature is dangerous to religion, and thus Christianity. This notion
denies God of worship and gratitude by men, since it could be led away to that imaginary
being called nature. Also the mere existence of God could be questioned, because one of the
most efficacious arguments in favour of God and a divine providence is the consideration
of the visible world. If the managed operations in the world are ascribed to mere nature
instead of to the wisdom and goodness of God, that argument is weakened. Boyle’s final
argument states that the vulgar notion of nature contradicts with certain experiences we
have. If the great care of nature can be derived from the measures she takes to prevent
a vacuum, than how does it happen that their are vacuums found in glass pipes wherein
water and quicksilver subside? Another contradiction is that nature’s watchfulness for
the good of the world by making heavy bodies descending to the center of the earth and
making the light bodies ascend towards heaven, is not consistent with a piece of oak that
falls down when let go in the air, but ascends when let go under water. Neither does it
match the observation that a dropped ball will rebound on the ground and making lesser
rebounds before it comes to rest. For Boyle, nature is playing very odd games.
The second half of the fifth section is out of order, as Boyle himself realized after printing
[Hunter and David, 1996]. We will however follow the chronology of the printed version.
23
Boyle wants to make clear that the objects made against the vulgar notion of nature does
not endanger providence. First, providence is no hindrance to the anomalies that Boyle
pointed out, because it is nature that has to keep the universe in order, not providence.
Second, nature is inferior to God, who “is not bound to make or administer corporeal
things after the best that he could, for the good of things themselves. [...] Perhaps it may
be added, that the permitting the course of things to be somewhat violated shows, [...], how
good God has been in settling and preserving the orderly course of things” [Boyle, 1996,
p.70]. Third, God is absolute, free and omniscient and the anomalies may be part of his
plan, and seem only anomalies to us, short-sighted men since we are not blessed with a
divine omniscience. Fourth, although God is free, independent and wise, he is also just
an agent and irregularities could be to serve as punishments for guilty men, because in
Genesis God declares that the ground or earth is cursed.
Next Boyle talks about the question whether or not God could have created a better world.
Boyle considers it unsafe to answer this question negatively, after all God is almighty and
omniscient and it is not because God can do better that our world is not already excellent.
Further, several creatures may be more perfect than they seem to us, if we consider the
ends that God had in mind while making them. Boyle refers here to the shop of the
clockmaker, women’s breasts filled with milk even if it is uncomfortable or even dangerous,
having hair even if physicians in some cases prescribe that it be shaven off, the hens’
instinct to hatch their eggs even if housewives make them brood on duck eggs, etc. Also
our emotions are given in our best interests, even when they are causes of diseases or
mischief. Moreover, God not only comprehends his separate works but the whole system,
and it could be that he did not intend the welfare of certain particular creatures, such as
men, but subordinated their welfare to the care of the greater system. If nature would be
a most wise being that is always keen on preserving the life of animals, than why do people
suffocate by a hair in their throat or why do big-bellied women seem to miscarry by the
smell of an extinguished candle? Nature seems to take improper and hurtful courses. He
finds it strange that nature “should not be able to mould and fashion so small and soft
and tractable a portion of matter as that wherein the first model and efformation of the
embryo is made” [Boyle, 1996, p.78].
In the sixth section Boyle deals with arguments in favour of the vulgar notion of nature
showing that they are better explained by a mechanical theory of nature. A first argument
claims that diverse bodies have each their natural place in the universe and if they are
removed from it, they tend to return to that place. Boyle agrees that bodies should indeed
have a place according to their bigness, but inanimate bodies have no sense or perception,
24
so that they would have no preference to be in one place rather than in another or to
return to a certain location. Also, it does not seem that all bodies have a tendency to join
greater masses of connatural bodies. The filings of a silver bar do not return to the bar
itself. Another argument is that elementa in proprio loco non gravitant, but Boyle refers
to his hydrostatic experiments from which he argues that water does gravitate in water.
Even bubbles do not overthrow Boyle’s reasoning, because coming closer to the surface
and to the air they should be moving more quicker, but instead they move more slow,
something that can be explained by gravity and upward pressure but not by a wise, being
such as the vulgar notion of nature. Another argument is that bodies have a tendency
to return to their natural state, but inanimate bodies are incapable of being concerned
in one state or another, they lack the knowledge to make such a judgment. Moreover it
is difficult to determine what that natural state is. How cold is the natural coldness of
water, frog-cold or man-cold, cold as in the ocean or cold as in a sunny pond, cold as in
winter or cold as in summer? Next, Boyle turns to the often misused distinction between
natural and violent local motion. According to Aristotle’s principle that everything that
moves, is moved by another seems to imply that all motion is violent motion, because it
proceeds from an external agent. After the motion is caused externally, the body keeps
moving according to an internal principle, natural motion. But motion does not essentially
belong to matter, thus motion of bodies is either impressed by an external agent, God, or
by other matter acting on them. Even if one accepts the distinction, it still is ambiguous
since water moving upward by spitting it into the air is considered a violent motion, but
water moving upward by sucking it through a straw is considered a natural motion. If
one drops a football on a hard floor, both the downward fall and the upward rebound
are considered natural motions. Another important argument comes from medical crises,
“the strange shifts that nature sometimes makes use of in them to free herself from the
noxious humours that oppressed her” [Boyle, 1996, p.92], such as strong fevers. Boyle
does not deny the providence and wisdom in this crises of diseases, but where they come
from. He claims that it is not an intelligible principle called nature, but God’s wisdom and
ordinary providence that constitute the crises. “The body of a man is an incomparable
engine, which the most wise author of things has so skillfully framed for lasting many
years” [Boyle, 1996, p.92]. The critical evacuations, such as fever or vomiting, are results
of the mechanism of the body, since one can initiate some mechanisms without nature’s
watchfulness and other mechanisms still occur after death. Not all medical crises are
salutary, and experience taught physicians to divide perfectly salutary crises from crises
that lead to death, by comparing the characteristics of the crisis to the six conditions.
According to these standards, nature rarely provides a perfectly salutary crisis, and thus
25
physicians “employ their best skill and remedies to suppress or moderate the inordinate
motions, or the improper and profuse evacuations, that irritated nature rashly begins to
make” [Boyle, 1996, p.95]. Boyle does not deny that some crises happen in very unusual
ways and seem surprising, he therefore emphasizes that there still is divine providence
that can interpose as a punishment or as an act of mercy. But most cases of medical
crises are due to the “peculiar disposition in the primitive fabric of some parts of the
patient’s body, or some unusual change made in the construction of these parts by the
disease itself” [Boyle, 1996, p.96]. And “the divine maker of the universe being a most
free agent and having an intellect infinitely superior to ours, may in the production of
seemingly irregular phenomena have ends unknown to us, which even the anomalies may
be very fit to compass” [Boyle, 1996, p.101]. The last paragraph of this section indicates
again that the vulgarly received notion of nature can jeopardize God’s position. If nature
is celebrated as it is, then God’s wisdom cannot be proven by his works, because nature
could be the cause of them.
In the seventh section, or the sixth according to the text since the first section was probably
an introduction, Boyle tries to demonstrate how the mechanical philosophy explains natural
phenomena better than the vulgar notion of nature. His overall claim is that nature is no
true physical and distinct efficient cause but rather a notional thing, since everything that
is performed in the material world is the result of particular bodies acting by the laws
of motion, which are settled and maintained by God [Boyle, 1996, p.106]. First, it is
incorrect to say that things are done by nature, rather they are done according to nature,
such that nature is a system of rules not a distinct agent. It is not nature that causes
the water to ascend in a sucking pump, but the pressure of the atmosphere according to
statical rules or laws of the equilibrium of liquors. Second, trees grow and fruit matures
by the course of nature, if that means that this happens by proper and immediate causes.
Here Boyle makes a difference between the laws of nature and the custom of nature, or
between fundamental constitutions and municipal laws. Boyle is setting up a hierarchy
of laws in which the municipal laws are the least important and the catholic or general
laws are the most important. In his example, water falls to the ground “by virtue of the
custom of nature”, but in a suction pump the water is forced upwards by “virtue of a more
catholic law of nature, by which it is provided that a greater pressure should surmount a
lesser” [Boyle, 1996, p.108]. He then goes on to explain phenomena which are contrary to
nature, preternatural, by this distinction. A spring that is forcibly bent is said to be in
a preternatural state because it seeks to return to its former or ‘natural’ state. However,
Boyle claims that it is merely one state of the spring being over-ridden by another state
26
which is equally ‘natural’ because it is “agreeable to the grand laws [...] that such a spring
should remain bent by the degree of force that actually keeps it so...” [Boyle, 1996, p.108].
Boyle then examines six axioms about nature that he already stated in the fourth section.
The first axiom is that all natural bodies are their own conservator. If this is to be
interpreted as “no one body does tend to its own destruction” , than it is compatible with
Boyle’s doctrine. If it on the other had has to be regarded as that “in every body there is
a principle called nature to preserve its natural state” it is not [Boyle, 1996, p.112]. Boyle
can see that bodies seem to act in function of their own preservation, but this is because
they are determined to act that way by the original frame of things and the established laws
of motion. A second axiom is that nature always reaches her end, but there are cases in
which things happen otherwise. Not every born child is a perfect human, sometimes nature
fails and produces a monster. Fevers or other medical crises do not always heal the patient,
but sometimes make his condition worse. A third axiom states that “nature always acts
by the shortest or most compendious ways” [Boyle, 1996, p.115]. Since inanimate bodies
do not have any knowledge, there should be situations in which they are determined to act
by other than the shortest way. Boyle shows that although a stone dropped in free air will
fall directly to the center of the earth, but when dropping small bullet of marble or steel,
when reaching the hard surface it will rebound several times and fall down again before
settling. The shortest way to the center of the earth for the bullet is not to rebound at
all. The same thing happens if a pendulum held parallel to the horizon is released or if a
the needle of a compass is turning towards the north. The fourth axiom says that nature
always does what is best to be done. Again Boyle repeats that inanimate bodies do not
possess any knowledge, so their actions do not express what is best to be done according
to their private capacities. If their was indeed such a semi-divine nature, than why does it
not intervene when branches of overburdened fruit trees fall off and accelerate the death
of the tree itself or why does nature not prevent the dangerous disorders in sick bodies?
Also earthquakes, pestilences and famines are mentioned. According to the fifth axiom,
nature abhors a vacuum. First Boyle says that the ascension of water or other forced
motions can be accounted for without ascribing a tendency to inanimate bodies. Second,
if one accepts the Cartesian notion of the essence of a body, than a vacuum is cannot
exist, and thus nature is preventing something impossible. Third, if ons accepts atomism
than a vacuum is not abhorred but it is necessary for local motion. Neither philosophical
movement implies that nature abhors a vacuum. The sixth axiom of nature’s definition
is that she cures diseases, as mentioned by Hippocrates. While men seem to believe that
some provident being resides in a sick body that can only be assisted by physicians, Boyle
27
conceives that “the wise and beneficent maker of the world and of man [...] was pleased to
frame those living automatons, human bodies, that [...] they may in many cases recover a
state of health, if they chance to be put out of it by lesser accidents than those that God,
in compliance with the great ends of his general providence, did not think fit to secure
them from or enable them to surmount [Boyle, 1996, p.125-126]. Boyle compares this to
shaking a compass: after the shaking the needle will return to its former position, facing
the north. “And yet this recovery to its former state is effected in a factitious body by the
bare mechanism of the instrument itself and of the earth and other bodies within whose
sphere of activity it is placed” [Boyle, 1996, p.126]. Towards the end of the section Boyle
argues that there is one great cause of this misconception of nature as a curer of diseases.
The body of men is regarded as a system of gross and consistent parts instead of accepting
it as a “very compounded engine that, besides these consistent parts, does consist of the
blood, chyle, gall and other liquors, [...] incessantly and variously moving, and thereby put
divers of the solid parts [...] into frequent and differing motions” [Boyle, 1996, p.133]. But
a man is not like an empty boat, rather like a manned boat, since there is “an intelligent
being that takes care of it” [Boyle, 1996, p.135].
In the final section, which does not have a numbering in the original transcript and probably
was once Boyle’s conclusion, he argues for the corporeal, and inanimate nature. Boyle
demands to know whether or not the created nature is endowed with understanding. Boyle
makes a comparison between the macrocosmos and the microcosmos to show that although
nature could be endowed with reason, there are a lot of phenomena that can be explained
mechanically. Like in a human body breathing, blood circulation, digestion, etc. are
performed without immediate agency or actual knowledge of the mind. Next, it is difficult
to see how a created immaterial substance can move a body, since we see in human bodies
that the rational soul “can only determine the motion of some of the parts, but not give
motion to any” [Boyle, 1996, p.145]. If nature moves bodies in an unphysical manner,
than how can we use this idea to explain phenomena? The next step in Boyle’s reasoning
is considering a corporeal but knowing nature. This also raises several problems. First,
how can a corporeal substance be the director of all motions in the corporeal world itself?
Second, how can a corporeal being be present in all the small parts of the universe? Third,
since motion does not belong to matter itself, who put nature in motion? If this is ascribed
to God, than he could also have moved the rest of the corporeal matter. Fourth, how does
a corporeal being knows the laws of motion? Fifth, how does accepting such a notion
of nature increase our understanding of phenomena? Boyle finds it much more suitable
to divine wisdom that only a few and the most simple means are used to produce the
28
phenomena in the universe. Boyle does not see any reason to grant that nature herself
“produces any motion de novo, but only that she transfers and regulates that which was
communicated to matter at the beginning of things” [Boyle, 1996, p.148]. So first causation
is only possible by God, but nature can transfer and regulate the already existing motion
and has thus secondary causation. The vulgar notion of nature does also not satisfy a
good explanation, simply stating that a clock works as it does because it is made by a
watchmaker is not enough. To really understand how it works, one needs an account of
the structure and co-operation of the different parts. The closing part of this section deals
with the positive consequences for religion of this mechanical notion of nature. It prevents
people from a too excessive adoration for nature, which could lead them into erroneous
religions. It does more justice to divine providence; instead of bluntly judging floods,
earthquakes or similar events to be physical irregularities, Boyle’s doctrine can incorporate
miracles, since a most free and most wise God already knew all the consequences from the
laws he settled. The wisdom and skill that is displayed in “the fitting of things [...] may
justly persuade us that his skill would not appear inferior in reference to the rest also of his
corporeal works” [Boyle, 1996, p.162]. To finish, Boyle hopes that his doctrine persuades
people to direct their worship and gratitude directly to God himself, who is the true and
only creator.
The conclusion reminds the reader that Boyle wanted to be cautious in proposing a new
doctrine, but that tis was difficult in the heat of the discussion. He further announces a
possible revised version of the treatise and closes the treaty with the following words: “I
have written this discourse rather like a doubting seeker of truth than a man confident
that he has found it” [Boyle, 1996, p.165].
2.4
Refined concurrentism
Shanahan [1988] refers to numerous passages that show the combination of God’s necessary general concourse and matter’s causal contribution to corpuscular interactions and
also in our reading it is clear that Boyle ascribes certain capacities to bodies in nature.
Peter Anstey [2000] doubts the influence of Aquinas or Molina on Boyle and that Boyle’s
concurrentist position was a reaction on occasionalism, but agrees with Shanahan’s interpretation and finetunes his position. Shanahan and our reading shows by quotes from
Notion of Nature that bodies have causal activity since they can transfer motion from on
to another and that God maintains those powers which he gave the parts of matter. This
29
power is not an inherent quality of matter but it is given by God. According to Anstey
this is not the only causal power implanted in matter.
All bodies, once in the state of actual motion, whatever cause first brought
them to it, are moved by an internal principle: as, for instance, an arrow
that actually flies in the air towards a mark, moves by some principle or other
residing within itself. [Boyle, 1996, p.89]
Matter can not only transfer motion from on onto another, but matter can also maintain
the motion by an internal principle. Still, Anstey found another causal efficacy in matter.
In his Advices Boyle talks about matter being able to determine the motion of a body.
Anstey admits that this is a reconstruction of Boyle’s ideas, since there is no systematic
exposition in his work about the causal efficacy of matter, but it is coherent with Boyle’s
claims that matter has been gifted with active powers and the co-operation between God
and matter in the production of natural phenomena.
Although Boyle frequently mentioned ‘laws of nature’ in his Notion of Nature he denies the
connection between the nature of matter and the laws of nature. The laws of motion are
solely dependent on God’s will, they are expressions of this divine will. And since a law is
nothing more than “a notional rule of acting according to the declared will of a superior”
[Boyle, 1996, p.24], the maintenance of those laws needs God’s constant intervention, since
he settled such laws or rules of local motion among the parts of the universal matter that, by his ordinary and preserving concourse, the several parts
of the universe, thus once completed, should be able to maintain the great
construction. [Boyle, 1996, 39]
By quotes of Christian Virtuoso I Anstey shows that if God’s assistance would cease, the
collisions between matter would still occur, since they have the causal efficacy to transmit
motion to one another and to change direction, but the great construction would fall apart
in chaos, because “God established the lines of motion” [Boyle, 1996, p.75]. The inanimate
bodies in nature can transfer their motion, persevere in moving and change direction, but
since they are inanimate they do not have the knowledge to sustain the laws of motion
without God’s interference. It is because God continuously wills the constructed universe,
that it is maintained.
30
One of the keys to Boyle’s concurrentist position is his notion of divine concourse, a running
together in causation. Struan Jacobs wrote that sometimes Boyle uses concourse to refer
to God’s potential to exercise power:
God at any time might interpose to suspend or alter the ordinary course
of nature. So the world as we know it, persists only on condition of God’s
permission, his ‘concourse’. [Jacobs, 1994, p.381]
However Jacobs continues that after giving his permission or consent, God stays outside
the natural world, as a passive spectator. Anstey disagrees for different reasons. First,
Boyle was part of a tradition which used terms like concourse as concurrence in causation. Secondly, Jacobs quotes to support a consent-interpretation are not convincing and
Anstey’s further contextual situation of the quotes shows that they support a causationinterpretation. Finally, Jacobs claims that the tendencies of matter ‘exist immanently in,
and are not divinely imposed on bodies’ [Jacobs, 1994, p.375], which is inconsistent with
Boyle’s position. In Notion of Nature Boyle more than once states that it was God who
imposed the laws of nature on matter. For Jacobs the matter obeys the laws of motion,
but again this is inconsistent with Boyle’s view that inanimate matter does not possess the
capacities to obey laws, since the laws of motion are dependent on the will of God and do
not come from the nature of matter.
2.5
Conclusion
In the first two sections we have described two possible interpretations for Boyle’s ideas
about nature and causation. According to McGuire’s [1972] occasionalist interpretation all
causal efficacy in Boyle’s works has to be ascribed to God, while Shanahan[1988] claimed
a concurrentist reading, in which Boyle proposes a causality in which both God and the
matter are efficacious, since matter has the possibility to transfer motion from one body
onto another, but this power, given by God, has to be maintained by God. In the third
section we took a closer look to one of Boyle’s more philosophical works, A free enquiry
into the vulgarly received notion of nature, where numerous quotes can be found to disagree
with a position where God’s role is minimized without lapsing into occasionalism. In the
fourth section we followed Peter Anstey’s [2000] refinement of Shanahan’s concurrentism,
by showing that not only the transfer of motion is a causal capacity of matter, but also the
31
maintaining of motion and the change in direction. We further showed that the concurrence
is a real causal concurrence, and not a semi-deistic concurrence as Jacobs [1994] proposed.
Thus, not only does Boyle ascribe the capacity to transfer motion from one body to another
to matter, he also writes that matter has the means to maintain that motion and to change
the direction of the motion, and this capacities are not mere matter of divine consent but
they are causal capacities.
32
Conclusion
In the first chapter I have shown that Robert Boyle’s physico-theological program can be
placed in a more genera framework in which early modern science developed as a re-reading
of the two books, nature and scripture, because of changing methodology in reading the
Bible. Because of the allegorical implosion a new meaning for the natural world needed
to be found. For Robert Boyle this nature can teach us about God and his divine will.
However this narrative does not allow one to claim that voluntarism was a direct causal
factor in the rise of empirical science. I hope to have shown that voluntarism does not
entail empirical sciences. Secondly one also should be careful by considering Robert Boyle’s
natural phisophy as the epitome of Protestant influence. As we have shown with Anstey’s
arguments [2000], there is a remarkable lack of references to reformist authors in Boyle’s
works and his theological influences are situated elsewhere.
In the second chapter a more closer investigation was made on Robert Boyle’s ideas on the
relationship between God and nature. Two main interpretations were presented, occasionalism and concurrentism. By referring to Boyle’s A free enquiry into the vulgarly received
notion of nature to test both interpretations with Boyle’s actual claims, I hope to have
clarified that a concurrentist interpretation is best suited to deal with Boyle’s position.
God created the universe, settled the laws of motion and is needed to maintain the order,
although bodies in nature have the capacity to transfer motion from one to another. By
using Anstey’s article [2000], this concurrentist interpretation was be refined and further
argued for.
33
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