While the tradition of Locke scholarship holds that both Locke and Boyle are species anti-realists, there is evidence that this interpretation is false. Specifically, there has been some recent work on Boyle showing that he is, unlike Locke, a species realist. In this paper I argue that once we see Boyle as a realist about natural species, it is plausible to read some of Locke’s most formidable anti-realist arguments as directed specifically at Boyle’s account of natural species. This is a (...) break from the tradition because no one in the literature has yet suggested that some of Locke’s arguments in Book III of the Essay include a criticism of Boyle’s doctrine of species. Moreover, identifying Boyle as Locke’s intended target illuminates some of the more vexing passages in the Essay concerning real essences. (shrink)

The current consensus in Locke scholarship is that Robert Boyle anticipated Locke's thesis that classification into species is the arbitrary work of the understanding. In fact, according to Michael Ayers, inter alia, not only did Boyle and Locke both think that classification is the workmanship of the understanding but that this thesis follows directly from the mechanical hypothesis itself. In this paper I argue that this reading of Boyle is mistaken: Locke's thesis on classification was not anticipated by Boyle. I (...) will do this by showing that Boyle's account of classification is not Locke's, but is a more realist view of natural species employing a mechanically respectable account of natural forms. (shrink)

In this encyclopedia entry I canvass the current interpretations of John Locke's concept of Real Essence and the role it plays in his philosophy.

In this paper I criticize the interpretations of John Locke on natural kinds offered by Matthew Stuart and Pauline Phemister who argue that Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding allows for natural kinds based on similar real essences. By contrast, I argue for a conventionalist reading of Locke by reinterpreting his account of the status of real essences within the Essay and arguing that Locke denies that the new science of mechanism can justify the claim that similarities in corpuscular structure imply (...) similarities in sensible qualities. I argue further that Locke rejects as meaningless any talk of kinds that appeals to similarities among real essences. On my reading of Locke, similarities in real essences are not only irrelevant to species, but natural kind theories based on themare unintelligible. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize arguments by Pauline Phemister and Matthew Stuart that John Locke's position in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding allows for natural kinds based on similarities among real essences. On my reading of Locke, not only are similarities among real essences irrelevant to species, but natural kind theories based on them are unintelligible.

Boyle argues that because matter naturally possesses size, shape and mobility, it can be organized into structures that have qualities that exceed what the particles themselves have. These structures can become an essence or ‘corpuscular form’ that accounts both for the properties of the body and its membership in a natural kind. Similarly, increasingly more complex structures can result in the production of organisms that are also members of natural kinds. In this way, Robert Boyle is arguing for a version (...) of natural kind realism that is based on the structure of the underlying matter and discovered empirically via the resulting properties. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that John Locke is not ontologically committed to corpuscularian real essences. I do this by laying out his antirealist argument against corpuscular real essences within the Essay and then defend it. I then identify a version of real essences to which he is ontologically committed. Recognition of the antirealist argument in the Essay should significantly alter our interpretation of the Essay.

Susanna Goodin, in her article “Locke and Leibniz and the Debate over Species” , argues that Leibniz’s criticisms of Locke’s species conventionalism are inadequate as a refutation of Locke’s arguments, and if Leibniz were to buttress his criticisms by appeal to his own metaphysical commitments, he could do so only at the expense of so radically altering the nature of the debate that Locke’s original concerns would not even arise. I argue, however, that Leibniz has an argument within the Nouveaux (...) Essais which provides him with a mechanistically respectable counterproposal to Locke’s conventionalism and which demonstrates the explanatory superiority of natural kind realism. (shrink)

Robert Boyle (1627-91) was at the centre of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth cventury. While most of us were first introduced to Boyle as an historical figure in chemistry, he was first and foremost a philosopher committed to experimentalism in natural philosophy. He was a forward thinker, anticipating the direction of human philosophical and scientific endeavours. He was thinking about issues that are currently hot topics in philosophy and social policy, e.g. the importance of science in benefitting humanity, the (...) need to make the recipes for medicines publicly available, the connections between science and ethics, the tensions between science and religion, just to name a few. Moreover, Boyle was providing important philosophical guidance on each of these topics. He is not merely a relic of the past whose only claims to fame are his ideal gas law and an improved vacuum pump; he is a leader in experimental philosophy whose interests span nearly the whole range of philosophical topics, including morality, philosophy of religion, natural kinds, causation, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Boyle was not only the most prolific English author in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, he was arguably the most influential natural philosopher of the period. His impact on chemistry and experimental science is important and well documented, but other aspects of Boyle’s philosophical thought are less widely known, and yet clearly influenced the natural philosophy, natural theology and philosophy (broadly speaking) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To conclude, as many scholars do, that he was an important influence in the formation of the experimentalist and empiricist traditions and a vital source for understanding subsequent philosophical developments, would be true but it would also be selling him short. -/- There are two main aims of this volume. First, to give students and researchers of Boyle ready access to the wide array of philosophical topics that Boyle addressed and thereby present a more complete and systematic picture of both Robert Boyle and his philosophical contributions. Second, to present in one place the best current research on the philosophy of Robert Boyle that takes into account the last thirty years of scholarship and points us toward the next thirty years. These two aims also inform the choices of chapter topics. (shrink)

The focus of this dissertation is the debate over classification and species realism/anti-realism in the new science of mechanism. I argue that Michael Ayers's Interpretation of Robert Boyle as a Lockean on species is incorrect. Boyle is more realist than Locke, indeed, Boyle's theory of classification was more similar to Leibniz's than to Locke's. This realist account of Boyle helps to diagnose an important connection between Leibniz and Boyle, and show Locke as a much more novel philosopher of science. ;I (...) then argue that this account of Boyle's realism reveals a new argument strain in Leibniz that allows him a better reply against Locke's species anti-realism. I thus argue against Susana Goodin's view that Leibniz's reply to Locke's anti-realist arguments in the New Essays are stronger than they appear to be. According to Goodin, Leibniz cannot refute Locke without either changing the subject or appealing to his own deep metaphysics. I argue that Leibniz can reply in a dialectically adequate, non-question begging way to Locke's argument without appealing to anything deeper than the science of mechanism. ;Finally, I show that, contra Ayers, one of Locke's motivations for his anti-realism stems from his theological heterodoxy, not from the corpuscularian hypothesis. This theological strain appears most strikingly within the context of the debate over the status of persons and the human species. In the Essay, Locke denies each of Leibniz's orthodox theses regarding the human species. Locke's denials of the orthodox theses appear to be motivated by his heterodox theological commitments. (shrink)

This is a review of Peter Anstey's John Locke and Natural Philosophy, which is a masterful and well-argued study of Locke's philosophy of science that shall become both the standard and starting place, for scholars and students alike, for decades to come. Anstey's meticulous and thorough research, combined with his comprehensive knowledge of the history of natural philosophy, make this work a must-read for all who are interested in Locke, early modern philosophy, the history of the philosophy of science, or (...) early modern philosophy of science. His characteristically rigorous analysis and argumentation coupled with his easy and clear prose make this a highly readable and accessible work of scholarship. (shrink)