This paper documents an important development in Robert Boyle's natural-philosophical method – his use from the 1660s onwards of ‘heads’ and ‘inquiries’ as a means of organizing his data, setting himself an agenda when studying a subject and soliciting information from others. Boyle acknowledged that he derived this approach from Francis Bacon, but he had not previously used it in his work, and the reason why it came to the fore when it did is not apparent from his printed and (...) manuscript corpus. It is necessary to look beyond Boyle to his milieu for the cause, in this case to the influence on him of the Royal Society. Whereas the Royal Society in its early years is often seen as putting into practice a programme pioneered by Boyle, this crucial methodological change on his part seems rather to have been stimulated by the society's early concern for systematic data-collecting. In this connection, it is here shown that a key text, Boyle's influential ‘General Heads for a Natural History of a Country, Great or small’, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1666, represents more of a shared initiative between him and the society than has hitherto been appreciated. (shrink)

A collection of autobiographical writings and other documents that throw light on the life and career of Robert Boyle (1627- 91) the doyen of experimental science in 17th-century Britain. Among the nine documents are Boyle's account of his childhood, biographical notes dictated to Robin Bacon, Gilbert Burnet's interview and funeral address, and letters between his colleagues. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

At some point during the last two years of his life, Robert Boyle dictated to his friend, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, some notes on major events and themes in his career. Some of the information he divulged in these memoranda has become quite widely known because Burnet used it in the funeral sermon for Boyle that he delivered a month after his death, at St Martin's in the Fields on 7 January 1692. In addition, these notes were cited several (...) times by Thomas Birch in the ‘Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle’ that he prefixed to his edition of Boyle's collected works of 1744: he there describes his source as ‘Mr.Boyle'smemorandums of his own life, dictated by himself to BishopBurnet’.2 What has hitherto been virtually overlooked is that the manuscript of these notes, which is in Burnet's hand, survives among the Birch Papers in the British Library: it is this document—and particularly a substantial component of it which was publicized by neither Burnet nor Birch—that forms the starting point for this paper. (shrink)

Although the volume of the surviving papers of Robert Boyle is substantial (over 20,000 leaves), a considerable amount of the written material left by Boyle at his death in 1691 has not survived in the Boyle archive. This paper gauges the scale and identity of these losses using the surviving inventories made by the Rev. Henry Miles in the 1740s when he was collecting and sorting Boyle's literary remains in conjunction with Thomas Birch's preparation of his 1744 Life and Works (...) of Boyle. These detailed lists (edited as appendices to this paper), together with other sources, indicate losses due to a variety of reasons, some deliberate, others accidental. The losses involved the disposal of both items judged (in the eighteenth century) to be peripheral to Boyle's archive and, ironically, those in the most finished state from Boyle's hand, which were perhaps abortively destined for the Birch edition. These losses have significantly altered the character of the Boyle Papers, and thus the view of Boyle that is derived from them. (shrink)

In _Confucius Beyond the_ Analects, Michael Hunter challenges the standard view of the _Analects_ as the earliest and most authoritative source of the teachings.

It is hard to think of a better subject for the exercise of retrospective analysis with which we are here concerned than Robert Boyle, the leading British scientist of his day, and arguably the most significant before Newton. A prolific and influential author, Boyle was lionized in his time both for his scientific achievement and for his piety and philanthropy. Of late, he has been the subject of attention from a variety of viewpoints which, as we shall see, raises the (...) issue of how he is best understood. In particular, I want to argue that, for all his eminence, there are complications about Boyle's personality that cry out for scrutiny, and it is on the implications of these that I will dwell in the latter stages of my paper.Boyle was born into one of the most privileged aristocratic families in England. His father, Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, was Lord High Treasurer of Ireland before the Civil War, and Robert, the youngest – and, as he himself claimed, favourite – son, was brought up in an opulent, privileged setting, surrounded by servants and with an entrée at the royal court. His elder brothers were suave and active figures, only too ready to be involved in the fighting of the Civil War – in which one, Viscount Kinalmeaky, was killed, though two others, Lords Dungarvan and Broghill, survived to go on to high state office under both Cromwell and Charles II. This background undoubtedly had a significant influence on Boyle, giving him an aristocratic demeanour to which his contemporaries almost automatically deferred. It also made him familiar with the mindless social milieu of landed society, in which it was all too easy to ‘squander away a whole afternoone in tatling of this Ladys Face & tother Lady's Clothes; of this Lords being Drunke & that Lord's Clap; in telling how this Gentleman's horse outrun that other's Mare’. (shrink)

Eric G. Forbes, Lesley Murdin, & Frances Willmoth, volume 2, 1682–1703, volume 3, 1703–1719; Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol & Philadephia, 1997, 2002, pp. xlvii+1095, lxvi+1038, Price £199 each hardback, ISBN 0-7503-0391-3, 0-7503-0763-3The correspondence of John Wallis, volume 1 Philip Beeley, & Christoph J. Scriba, with the assistance of Uwe Mayer and Siegmund Probst; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. xlvii+651, Price £120 hardback, ISBN 0-19-851066-7 The Hartlib Papers. Second edition. A complete text and image database of the papers of (...) Samuel Hartlib HROnline, Sheffield, 2 CDs, Price £1,500, ISBN 0-9542608-0-5The Letters of Jan Jonston to Samuel HartlibW. J. Hitchens, Adam Matruszewski, & John Young ; Retro-Art, Warsaw, 2000, pp. 269, Price £25 paperback, ISBN 83-87992-12-7. (shrink)

This study throws new light on the composition of Boyle's Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature ; it also draws more general conclusions about Boyle's methods as an author and his links with his context. Its basis is a careful study of the extant manuscript drafts for the work, and their relationship with the published editions. Section 2 describes Boyle's characteristic method of composition from the late 1650s onwards, involving the dictation of discrete sections of text to (...) amanuenses; it also assesses the effect this had on the structure and presentation of Boyle's writings. Section 3 considers the published text section by section and indicates which parts were written when; it also surveys unpublished draft material relating to the work. Section 4 places the work in context, considering the intellectual threats that Boyle sought to confront in it, both when he initially composed it in the 1660s and when he rewrote it c. 1680. It thus anchors him more precisely than hitherto in the intellectual debates of his day. (shrink)

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, arguing that (...) it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

One of the challenges for historical biographers is to decide how far it is appropriate or legitimate to try to psychoanalyse their subject. On the face of it, such analysis might seem an obvious part of the biographical enterprise in a twentieth-century context. We are all heirs to the revolution in thought brought about by Freud's discovery of the unconscious in the nineteenth century, since when it has become commonplace that beneath people's conscious thoughts and statements lie deeper, more fundamental (...) drives and motives, of which they are not aware and which are not under their conscious control. Indeed, speculation about such subconscious desires and impulses is normal in day-to-day conversation: this reflects and is reflected by the fact that words that originated as technical, psychoanalytical terms have become part of the general language, such as ‘neurotic’, ‘paranoid’, or even ‘death wish’ and ‘Oedipus complex’. (shrink)

Abstract:This article contextualizes the thought of the Zhuangzi 莊子 via the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經), the most canonical textual tradition from the Warring States (fifth century to 221 b.c.e.) into the early imperial period. First, it reads the fantastical vignettes from the opening of chapter 1 "Free-and-Easy Wandering" (Xiaoyao you 逍遙遊), as parodies of Shi poetics. Second, it argues that the themes of "wandering" (you 遊) and "lodging" (yu 寓) stand as critical alternatives to the Shi preoccupation with homeward, (...) ruler-centric movements. Such connections open up new ways of understanding the development of Zhuangzian thought. (shrink)

Featuring contributions by preeminent scholars of early China, _Confucius and the_ Analects _Revisited: New Perspectives on Composition, Dating, and Authorship_ advances and examines debates surrounding the history of the Confucian _Analects_.

No discussion of Kongzi's 孔子 life, thought, or importance in the ancient Chinese context can proceed without first confronting two basic problems: (1) what are the earliest sources for Kongzi, and (2) which, if any, of these sources can be relied on for accurate information about him? This essay explores each question in turn, ultimately arguing that early sources for “Kongzi” do not sustain the search for the historical Kongzi.

This book forms part of the series ‘New Approaches to the History of Science and Medicine’ and its ambitious remit is apparent from its title. In the first half of the book, a succession of chapter...

This volume represents a real labour of love, and the editor deserves credit for bringing it to fruition after many decades. It comprises an annotated edition of a lengthy series of letters between...

On the shortlist of truly indispensable texts within early China studies, a special place is reserved for Ban Gu’s 班固 “Yiwen zhi” 藝文志, the oldest extant bibliography in the East Asian tradition, if not the oldest extant and complete bibliography from the ancient world. After outlining the bibliography in the first section, I argue that the “Yiwen zhi” was never meant to serve as a “library catalogue” in the everyday sense of the term. Instead, it was a highly selective and (...) ideological subject bibliography of texts deemed by Han imperial bibliographers as being useful for governance. The second half of the paper counters the tendency to read the “Yiwen zhi” as a stand-alone text or even, in the words of Mark Edward Lewis, as “the final encyclopedic work of the Western Han.” Set against the other nine “treatises” of Ban Gu’s Hanshu 漢書, the “Yiwen zhi” emerges as one among many products of a centuries-long effort undertaken by numerous parties to “survey” and “synthesize” all domains of knowledge of relevance to the imperium, a project modeled on the “Hong fan” 洪範 chapter of the Shangshu 尚書. The rhetoric, organization, and value of the “Yiwen zhi” were all contingent on that larger vision. (shrink)

The editing of the correspondence of major figures in intellectual history is an essential scholarly activity. Yet in this country in recent years it has neither been the priority it should be, nor has it received the support that it deserves. Of course there have been exceptions to this, perhaps notably – for the early modern period – the epic one-man effort of Esmond de Beer in his later years in producing The Correspondence of John Locke (though this regrettably, and (...) frustratingly, lacks a composite index). A further exception, the edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg by A. R. and M. B. Hall, was unfortunately flawed by the need to change publishers midway in the series, which has led to a marked disparity in the availability of the latter part of the set compared with its early volumes. In any case, like the Locke edition, this was conceived in the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, and few have ventured such enterprises since. Virtually the only exception is Noel Malcolm's edition of the manageable-sized Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (two volumes, 1994). Moreover, it is revealing of the acute need to justify the publication of such material felt by editors and publishers alike that the promotional leaflet for this edition went so far as to claim that it was ‘one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century’ – a claim that is the more ironic in view of the quite significant shortcomings in its method of presenting the material that it contains. (shrink)