Conversation and Argumentation in Boyle’s Scientific Dialogue

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the new stylistic approach embodied in the genre of the scientific dialogue as used in 17th-century England, focusing, in particular, on the strategies adopted by Robert Boyle in The Sceptical Chymist (1661). The purpose of our analysis is, on the one hand, to point out those characteristics which make this dialogue resemble the features of normal conversation and, on the other, those that instead have a more argumentative purpose and that therefore make it more similar to the other genre typical of scientific theorisation, i.e. the treatise.