SCIENCE HISTORY
Robert Boyle:
The Man Who Changed the History of Science &
The History of Science that Changed the Man
JACOB GOLDBERG ‘07
Robert Boyle’s legacy celebrates his achievements
as an analytical and physical chemist. Certainly, he
was a clever, though mistaken, experimentalist who
characterized air by relating its pressure to its volume
and who, by inventing an air pump to explore evacuated
systems, discovered its necessity for the sustainability
of life, the propagation of sound, and the action of
combustion.1 Perhaps Boyle’s real triumph as a chemist
is best embodied in his publication of The Sceptical
Chymist in 1661 in which he rigorously defends chemistry
as a part of natural philosophy and as a science broader
and more applicable than prevailing theories of alchemy
and iatrochemistry, a theory that explained medicine and
physiology in chemical terms, would suggest.2 However,
these are views of Boyle from his own time, the homage
paid to a man of enormous importance and popularity in
the seventeenth century.
This heroic image of Boyle is one that has persisted
almost unchallenged for more than three centuries; it is
not the product of intense and serious scholarly thought,
but rather a combination of the musings of a seventeenthcentury bishop and a 1744 biography believed to be so
complete as to warrant no further study of the original
source material. Within the past two decades, however,
a major transformation in Boyle studies has taken place;
his personal papers have been published, his manuscripts
have been cataloged, and the legitimacy of his legacy
has been doubted. Under these new circumstances, there
has been a surge of recent scholarship that attempts to
resolve just exactly who Robert Boyle was and asks what
significance he should be accorded. Even so, a nagging
question persists. Has the rediscovery of Robert Boyle
changed his modern legacy to science; that is to say,
should the Robert Boyle of old (hero, chemist, and good
These experiments and many more are described by Boyle
in his monograph, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall,
Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (Made for the
most part, in a New Pneumatical Engine), 1660. See Works
of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 1: 159-400.
2
See Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century
Chemistry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958) 229.
Also see Antonio Clericuzio, “Carneades and the Chemists: A
Study of The Sceptical Chymist and Its Impact on Seventeenthcentury Chemistry,” in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Michael
Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7990.
1
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man) be replaced with a modern version which is none
of these?
The short answer is no, he should not, but the
reasoning is more subtle than this apparent conclusion.
Though recent scholarship may offer new ideas about
Boyle’s motivations and question his actual understanding
of the chemistry he fathered, his legacy must remain
unabated, even if his experiments were dubious at best.
To motivate more fully these conclusions, we must
first consider the history of Boyle scholarship over the
last three centuries, paying particular attention to the
assumptions and conclusions that Boyle’s biographers
have made in recording his life. Second, we must
examine the dramatic change that has characterized the
last two decades of Boyle scholarship and summarize
some of the major new findings. Finally, we may then reapproach the initial supposition that Boyle’s legacy ought
to remain as it has to reevaluate our claims.
The first account of Robert Boyle’s life to be
published was the eulogy delivered at his funeral by
Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, in January of 1692.
Obviously, by the very laudatory nature of a eulogy,
Burnet’s writings can hardly be regarded as being critical
or scholarly in any sense, though they “did more than
any other single work to form Boyle’s posthumous
reputation” (1). The two attempts to construct a
biography of Boyle in the years immediately following
his death were both abandoned and did not appear in print
until 1994, even though they provide some of the most
important insights into contemporary opinion of Boyle.3
The first true biography did not emerge until 1744, some
fifty-two years after Boyle’s death. Thomas Birch, who
both wrote the biography and compiled a collected works
to be published together as a folio set, wrote in a time
when Boyle’s reputation was very high and should not
be construed to be a critical reference (2). Although
Birch included Boyle’s fragment of an autobiography
“An Account of Philaretus,” he used much material from
Bishop Burnet4 (3). One might argue that more important
than Birch’s biography of Boyle were his collected works,
The first of these was an attempt by Bishop Burnet to
further elaborate on his sermon and the second was an attempt
by William Wotton to complete where Burnet had left off. See
Michael Hunter, Boyle by Himself, xxxvi.
4
Boyle may have written An Account of Philaretus between
1645-1655. It was never finished, but provides insight into his
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or rather the combination of the two. Together, this opus was regarded as the creator of modern chemistry and
was thought to have defined the Boyle canon and thus of science as a profession…yet there are no great and
no further investigative work was necessary: “Boyle fundamental achievements attached to his name”5 (8).
was placed on a pedestal and left there - not ignored, but Again, Boyle’s perceived reputation seems to trump his
taken for granted” (4). The result of these efforts was a actual contribution to science.
classical, straightforward image of Boyle as “a great and
The culmination of this type of scholarship may
good man…a paragon of civility and moderation with be seen in the work of Marie Boas. Although she asserts
a clear and unproblematic strategy for the vindication that “there will be no attempt here to justify the epithet
of a mechanistic view
- surely dating from
of nature by profuse
the Victorian period’s
experimentation…with
addiction to scientific
an emphasis on God’s
heroes - of ‘the father
power and design”
of modern chemistry’”
(5). This conception of
and she questions the
Robert Boyle, regardless
originality and clout
of its historical accuracy,
of Boyle’s findings,
has colored both popular
she still defends him
and academic thought
as having a meaningful
for nearly three centuries
place in the growth
and still persists today.
of
chemistry
(9).
In 1932, J.F.
Although many current
Fulton
argued
that
scholars may disagree
“Boyle did as much, and
with her conclusions,
perhaps more, to establish
Boas did exceptional
Science as an integral
work on trying to
part of the intellectual
contextualize Robert
life of ordinary men as
Boyle in the framework
any of his predecessors
of seventeenth-century
or
contemporaries”
chemistry. Her work is
while
acknowledging
vital since it helped to
that
Boyle
used
launch other inquiries
“quack
remedies…
as to how Boyle fit into
and he believed in the
seventeenth-century
transmutation of gold
life and thought in
into baser metals” (6).
general.
Fulton argues, however,
In
1969,
that Boyle’s sincere
R.E.W.
Maddison
beliefs in what was A portrait of The Honorable Robert Boyle by J. Kerfseboom
summarized the state
essentially non-science
of Boyle scholarship
were exactly what helped to propel science to the forefront succinctly: “The Life written by Birch has served as
of seventeenth-century intellectual thought. Whereas the basis of all subsequent accounts of Robert Boyle,
somebody like Isaac Newton, who wrote in Latin and wherever they have been published, right down to the
argued in mathematics, would have been perceived as present day” (10). It is with this understanding that he
being dense and impenetrable, Boyle wrote in such a way offers his biography of Boyle and thus explains that his
that even uneducated commoners could read, understand, purpose “is to describe…the events of Robert Boyle’s life
and relate to him (7). Fulton perpetuates this idealized so as to supplement Birch, and to provide a guide through
vision of Boyle and even though he notes that Boyle’s the manifold aspects of his life and work” (11). Maddison
science was fundamentally flawed, he excuses it as is not interested in exploring Boyle’s publications or his
helping to promulgate real science in popular circles.
contemporary or modern influence; he limits his study to
Louis Trenchard More’s 1944 biography of Boyle chronology only.
is very much in this spirit. Although he asserts that “it is 5 More goes on to except Boyle’s achievements of developing
generally known that Robert Boyle was an alchemist,” a pressure-volume relationship for gases by discrediting it since
he still argues “more truly than any other man, [Boyle] it neglected temperature and to reject Boyle’s contributions
Image Courtesy of Professor William Jensen, PhD, University of Cincinnati
childhood and education. Boyle often identified himself with
the name Philaretus.
FALL 2006
regarding the nature and weight of air since they were
imperfectly developed.
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Thus it is easy to justify the vastly different entries also examining the timing of some of Boyle’s religious
for Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton in the 1970 Dictionary writings as being exactly related to James II’s religious
of Scientific Biography. Boyle’s entry, written by Marie policy6 (16). Yet Michael Hunter dismisses Jacob’s
Boas Hall, contains a one paragraph bibliography of scholarship as forced and non-substantive. He argues that
major primary and secondary works concerning Boyle; though Jacob’s “views have had considerable influence
the most important work is Birch’s 1744 folio set (12). over the past two decades,” they nonetheless “have not
By comparison, Newton’s entry lists almost ten full stood up to scrutiny in the light of subsequent research”
pages of primary and secondary sources of interest (13). and that “Jacob’s image of Boyle is in many ways
rather partial and
By 1970, it seems that
Boyle scholarship had
schematic, based on
stalled. Birch’s 1744
a selective reading
version of Boyle was
of Boyle’s writings,
still considered to be
and often imputing
ill-evidenced
the foremost authority
and the classical image
motives to him in
of Boyle as a heroic
his
controversial
chemist
prevailed.
works” (17).
Newton,
however,
Similarly,
Roy Porter has
was the subject of
cautioned of the
much more scholarly
danger of trying to
interest as evidenced
impose too radically
by the sheer number
modern views on
of sources listed in his
historic
figures.
bibliography.
He writes of the
Yet as bleak
“philosopher’s itch
as Boyle scholarship
to reconstruct the
may have looked in
rationality of great
1970, Marie Boas Hall
texts” which “has
had already catalyzed
characteristically
a renewed interest in
played
fastthe field. Perhaps one
and-loose
with
of the best examples is
historical contexts
the contextualization
and meanings, and
of Robert Boyle by
has
encouraged
J.R. Jacob in his
anachronistic
Robert Boyle and the
evaluations
of
English
Revolution
rationality
and
(14). Jacob attempts
irrationality in the
to place all of Boyle’s
history of science”
ideas in a rigorously
(18). Yet, in spite
defined
chronology
of the shortcomings
that considers the
that may be found
social, but especially
The title page of The Sceptical Chemist by Boyle
in Jacob’s research,
political and religious
landscape of seventeenth-century England. His thesis there is still an element of change, a reconsideration of
is that to understand Boyle’s thought “we must see it in Boyle beyond his traditional boundaries.
the context of the world in which it evolved, the world
of the English revolution and counterrevolution: civil 6
Here, Jacob is primarily concerned with Boyle’s 1686 Free
wars, interregnum, and Restoration” (15). Jacob relies
Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature and how
on this method of contextualization to decipher Boyle.
Boyle’s “Physico-theology” was an answer to the heretical
In a subsequent article, he “places Boyle’s atomism in its challenge of atheists who denied the possibility of design in
social context, and describes the political motives which nature by argument of nature’s imperfections (like floods and
underlay it” as being a direct response to the upheaval that fires) as well as an answer to Catholicism which misinterpreted
characterized mid-seventeenth-century England while the relation of God and nature, especially so in response to the
Image Courtesy of Professor William Jensen, PhD, University of Cincinnati
ascension of James II.
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DARTMOUTH UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE
In 1981, a pessimistic historian described the
seventy haphazardly bound volumes of some twenty
thousand folios that comprise the Boyle archive
at the Royal Society as being “uncatalogued and
uncataloguable,” essentially impenetrable (19). This
collection of miscellaneous documents, notebooks,
manuscripts, and letters was essentially neglected for two
reasons: 1) the Birch edition was thought to be adequately
complete and 2) the collection was so disorganized, it
was hard to make but casual use of it. In 1986, however,
Michael Hunter set about cataloging and indexing the
Royal Society’s Boyle archive. As a result, phenomenal
amounts of new material have become available that raise
many new questions about Boyle and none has exploited
this increase in data as much as Michael Hunter.
In 1994, Hunter published Robert Boyle
Reconsidered in which he gathers several essays that
reexamine Boyle in light of new material, as well as
a complete eleven page bibliography of writings on
Boyle published since 1940 (20). Also in 1994, Hunter
published Robert Boyle by Himself and by His Friends,
a compendium of biographical notes about Boyle written
in the years immediately following his death and a
detailed study of Boyle’s autobiographical sketch (21).
In 1999 and 2000, Hunter, in collaboration with Edward
B. Davis, published the new standard works of Boyle
which supercedes all previous editions in its scope and
attention to detail7 (22). In 2000, he introduced his own
collection of eleven essays about Boyle, each of which
deals with new concerns raised by the rediscovery of the
Boyle archive (23).
The sum of these efforts is the creation of a Boyle
who was a deeply religious, but troubled Latitudinarian
who defies “simplistic party labels,” and requires careful
analysis (24). Hunter concludes that there is no simple
way to describe Boyle; he must be understood in the
context of his personal and public life simultaneously,
while still remembering his own complicated history, high
social status, and rugged experimentalism. Thus Hunter
would have the mythic Boyle of old be replaced with a
far less certain and more complicated model of hesitance,
reluctance, and reticence. He insists that what “we have
gained is a rather different Boyle from a few years ago,
more nuanced, more detailed and more true to life,” but
that we should “leave it to others to subordinate Boyle to
some great enterprise of historical reconstruction” (25).
In this context, it seems that Hunter’s focus is limited to
Boyle’s personal life, not his science.
Yet many others have argued for a revaluation
of Boyle as a scientist. For example, Lawrence Principe
finds that even in spite of the attention Boyle has received
for excluding alchemy from science, Boyle himself was
This fourteen volume set includes a concordance crosslisted to the Birch edition to help facilitate the change in
scholarship standards.
7
FALL 2006
an alchemist who searched for the Philosophers’ stone
and believed in the transmutation of elements, or the
possibility to turn baser metals into gold. Principe argues
that the portrayal of Boyle as a chemist in the modern
sense has been an attempt to overestimate his actual
contribution to science (26). Elizabeth Potter argues that
Boyle’s corpuscular theory, an elementary atomic theory,
which tried to imagine all matter and light behaving like
particles, was not a purely scientific construction from
empirical data but rather was strongly influenced by
Boyle’s gender and class assumptions (27). John Hedley
Brooke rejects the connection between Latitudinarianism
and science and ascribes Boyle’s voluntarism to have been
“a theological commonplace of the Reformation” and
thus would find Boyle to be just an ordinary seventeenthcentury scientist (28). Edward B. Davis argues that the
anonymously published Reasons Why a Protestant Should
not Turn Papist was erroneously assigned to Boyle by
Birch and that its appearance in 1687 cannot be used as
evidence to judge Boyle’s feeling towards Catholicism
and his political activities (29).
Rose-Mary Sargent contends that “the past decade
has seen a proliferation of works on the different contexts
that influenced the thought of Robert Boyle” and that
many more publications will surely follow given the recent
publication of Boyle’s works (30). But with this boom
in scholarship, there may be a threat to Boyle’s legacy.
As his science is methodically reduced to constructions
of class, gender, and politics, it is not unreasonable to
imagine that Boyle will somehow be discredited, his
science explained as a happy coincidence with profound
implications rather than as sound methodology supported
by clear logic.
Yet this should not be so. Boyle’s contributions
to science are what they are regardless of the process by
which he arrived at them. It is as unfair to scrutinize Boyle
for not anticipating the discoveries of Dalton as it is unfair
to scrutinize Newton for not anticipating those of Einstein.
While it may be true, as Principe supposes, that Boyle
was more of an alchemist than a chemist, he nevertheless
advanced the corpuscular theory of matter and helped to
abolish the use of alchemical nomenclature. While Boyle
may not be the hero that Birch imagined, “much of the
credit for establishing chemistry as a branch of serious
learning must go to Robert Boyle, whose wealth and
secure social position as a son of the Earl of Cork were a
sound basis for academic respectability” (31). And even if
historians eventually do decide that Boyle’s contributions
to science are too overrated to continue to attribute to
him his idealized status, it is unlikely that scientists will
be so eager to change the name for the special situation
when all of the non-ideal properties of a gas are in perfect
balance and the gas behaves for an instant as if it were
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ideal—affectionately, if not appropriately known as the
Boyle temperature (32).
Acknowledgements:
The author would like to thank Professor Carl Estabrook
for his thoughtful suggestions concerning this article.
References
1. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself and His Friends (Pickering,
London, 1994).
2. L.T. More, The Life and Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle
(Oxford University Press, London, 1944).
3. R. Boyle, in The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle F.R.S.
R.E.W Maddison Ed. (Taylor and Francis, London, 1969).
4. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1994).
5. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle 1627-1691: Scrupulosity and Science
(Boydell, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000).
6, 7. J.F. Fulton, Isis 18, 79 (1932).
8. L.T. More, The Life and Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle
(Oxford University Press, London, 1944).
9. M. Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1958).
10, 11. R.E.W. Maddison, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle
F.R.S. (Taylor and Francis, London, 1969).
12. M. Boas Hall, “Robert Boyle” in Dictionary of Scientific
Biography. Charles Coulston Gillispie Ed. (Scribner, New York,
1970) 2: 382.
13. A.P. Youschkevitch, “Isaac Newton” in Dictionary of Scientific
Biography. Charles Coulston Gillispie Ed. (Scribner, New York,
1970) 10: 93-103.
14, 15. J.R. Jacob, Robert Boyle and the English Revolution: A
Study in Social and Intellectual Change (Burt Franklin, New York,
1977).
16. J.R. Jacob, Social Studies of Science 8, 211 (1978).
17. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1994).
18. R. Porter, in Revolution in History, R. Porter and M. Teich Eds.
(Cambridge University Press, London, 1986).
19. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle 1627-1691: Scrupulosity and Science
(Boydell, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000).
20. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1994).
21. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle by Himself and His Friends (Pickering,
London, 1994).
22. Works of Robert Boyle, M. Hunter and E.B. Davis Eds.
(Pickering and Chatto, London, 1999).
23, 24. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle 1627-1691: Scrupulosity and
Science (Boydell, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000).
25. M. Hunter, Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge University
Press, New York, 1994).
26. L.M. Principe, in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, M. Hunter Ed.
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), 91-105.
27. E. Potter, Gender and Boyle’s Law of Gases (Indiana University
Press, Bloomington, 2001).
28. J. H. Brooke, in Science and Dissent in England, 1688-1945,
Paul Wood Ed. (Ashgate, Aldershot, Hampshire, 2004), 24.
29. E.B. Davis, Journal of the History of Ideas 55, 611 (1994).
30. R. Sargent, Early Science and Medicine 8, 52 (2003).
31. A. Duncan, Laws and Order in Eighteenth Century-Chemistry
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996).
32. J. Winn, Physical Chemistry (Harper Collins, New York, 1995).
Faculty: has an undergraduate been working in your
lab? Has a student of yours produced an especially wellwritten class paper?
Encourage him or her to submit to the DUJS.
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