Experimental Natural Philosophy Research Articles

Puritanism and Natural Philosophy revisited: the case of Ralph Austen (c. 1612–1676)

ABSTRACT Twentieth-century historians of science emphasised the apparent connection between puritanism and experimental natural philosophy in mid-seventeenth-century England, but revisionist scholarship exposed the incorrect religious taxonomies undergirding this thesis. As both a staunch puritan and a well-connected figure in scientific networks, Ralph Austen provides an opportunity to re-examine the thesis. A horticulturalist, cider manufacturer and lay theologian based in Oxford from 1646 until his death in 1676, Austen was a friend and collaborator of Samuel Hartlib and Robert Boyle. He was also a pious puritan, steeped in Reformed divinity, and friends with premier Interregnum puritans, including John Owen. Austen’s life and career demonstrate that Baconian aims to reform learning could happily go hand-in-hand with, and be inspired by, puritan ideals, though they hampered his reputation in post-Restoration natural-philosophical circles. At the same time, via Austen we learn that puritan theologians responded positively to Baconian ideas, something hitherto underrepresented in the literature.

Fascination and Action at a Distance in Francis Bacon

Abstract Throughout his writings, Francis Bacon shows a great interest in the power of the imagination, both on other minds and on other bodies, a crucial part of natural magic. Convinced of the overall value of magic, Bacon nevertheless takes issue with the corrupt state into which he saw this discipline as having descended, overrun with false theories and invented stories. Bacon’s reform of experimental natural philosophy includes a naturalisation of magic, and this can be best illustrated when we look at his conception of fascination. In this paper, I show that the characteristics of this naturalisation are: (1) the definition of the object of study and the classification of phenomena; (2) the use of models and analogical thinking when the topic under study is difficult to observe; (3) the introduction of measurements and quantification of natural phenomena; (4) the need for replicability and diversification of experiments; and (5) the rejection of explanations in terms of occult qualities and their replacement with explanations in terms of the motion(s) of the spiritual matter emitted from the active body, which is impressed on the motion of the spiritual matter of the passive body.

"Rusticall chymistry": Alchemy, saltpeter projects, and experimental fertilizers in seventeenth-century English agriculture.

As the primary ingredient in gunpowder, saltpeter was an extraordinarily important commodity in the early modern world. Historians of science and technology have long studied its military applications but have rarely focused on its uses outside of warfare. Due to its potential effectiveness as a fertilizer, saltpeter was also an integral component of experimental agricultural reform movements in the early modern period and particularly in seventeenth-century England. This became possible for several reasons: the creation of a thriving domestic saltpeter production industry in the second half of the sixteenth century; the development of vitalist alchemical theories that sought a unified explanation for the "growth" of minerals, metals, and plants; the rise of experimental natural philosophy; and the mid-seventeenth-century dominance of the English East India Company in the saltpeter trade, which allowed agricultural reformers to repurpose domestically produced saltpeter in agriculturally productive ways. This paper argues that the Hartlib Circle - a loose network of natural philosophers and social reformers - adopted vitalist matter theories and the practical, experimental techniques of alchemists to transform agriculture into a more productive enterprise. Though their grandiose plans never came to fruition, their experimental trials to develop artificial fertilizers played an early role in the origins and development of saline chemistry, agronomy, and the British Agricultural Revolution.

The pharmakon of 'If': working with Steven Shapin's A Social History of Truth.

Whilst the 'local culture' of experimental natural philosophy in seventeenth-century England drew on 'resources' supplied by the gentlemanly identity of men like Robert Boyle, this culture found much of its distinctiveness in a series of exclusions having to do with faith, gender and class. My concern in this essay is less with these exclusions, and the distinctions they enabled, than with their surreptitious returns. Following from this, as a heuristic strategy, I will try to understand how Boyle and Co. used and reacted to, repressed and cathected, that which they sought to exclude. By charting the movements of exile and return across the contested frontiers of class, gender and faith, truth and lies, authenticity and performance, we can, I believe, fruitfully complicate our understandings of both the social history of truth, and the social history of our 'post-truth' predicament.

Hume, Newton and Malebranche on Causation

Hume, Newton and Malebranche have been made out to be an odd couple, united in the belief that prior Aristotelian and Cartesian analyses of causation are inadequate; yet differing in the correctives they offer to relieve those earlier misconceptions. Malebranche famously appeals to God to validate his occasionalist account of causation. Newton appeals to God to explain forces like gravity which is revealed by necessary laws like the Law of Universal Gravitation. Hume, on the other hand, seeks to explain causation as a natural phenomenon that can be explained by his theory of belief formation. This paper argues that the difference between Malebranche and Hume runs much deeper than their substantive analyses of causation; they also differ about experimental reasoning and natural philosophy in which Newton makes room for God as an integral part of natural philosophy but not experimental science whereas Malebranche thinks of God as an essential part of experimental science. More specifically, this paper hopes to make original contributions by arguing 1) that although Hume does not think of the grand laws of nature (from Galileo and Newton) as necessities but rather as mere universal regularities, like “the sun will rise tomorrow” and “all men must dye”, he carefully makes room for a unique place for the grand laws of physics by distinguishing quotidian regularities from those grand laws by virtue of their specificity and comprehensiveness. This paper also argues 2) that Hume conceived of the grand laws of nature as operating in ideal circumstances, which explains why it is that apparent exceptions to those laws do not undermine them. The paper argues in conclusion that 3) Hume is not “Malebranche minus God”, that 4) Newton is not in a better position than Hume to contemplate nature’s twists and turns and finally that 5) to imagine a time at which the sun does not rise or a man who simply does not ever die is not to imagine a weird and inexplicable anomaly but rather to imagine that the entire course of nature has changed.

“… Che i matti dicano spropositi”

Cometary theory had remained predominantly rooted in Aristotelianism until late in the seventeenth century. Yet concurrent with the expansion of astronomical understanding there persisted a steadfast vein of astrological superstition. While the newly emerging field of experimental natural philosophy successfully discredited many traditional principles, a notable discord still existed within the academic community regards cometary superstition and prognostication. The Neapolitan mathematician, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, sought to rectify past misconceptions regarding the nature of comets. And literary figures Carlo de’ Dottori and Ciro di Pers textually document the cometary debate in two of their poems. This paper seeks to underscore the diverging paths that the interrelated fields of astrology and astronomy took by considering letters sent by Borelli to Dionigi Guerrini and two seventeenth century poetic works.

Experiment, Speculation, and Galileo’s Scientific Reasoning

Peter Anstey has criticized the traditional distinction between empiricism and rationalism. He proposes replacing it with a late seventeenth-century distinction: that between experimental and speculative natural philosophy. But the natural philosophy of Galileo Galilei cuts across this experimental-speculative divide. It resembles speculative natural philosophy insofar as its probative force depends upon a priori, mathematical reasoning. But it also resembles experimental natural philosophy insofar as the principles of such reasoning are tested against experience. To understand Galileo’s scientific reasoning we need to supplement the experimental-speculative distinction with a third category: that of a mathematically-oriented style of early modern natural philosophy.

The Ghastly Kitchen

The metaphor of “the ghastly kitchen” of life science research, the places that, said the nineteenth-century physiologist Claude Bernard, stirred “the fetid and throbbing ground of life,” is well known. In the seventeenth century, the kitchen, and particularly the scullery, was the site of the slaughter, butchery, and dismemberment by carving of a variety of animals. The tools and techniques employed in these activities overlapped considerably with those of animal and human dissection. Dissection often took place in residences and the kitchen was the most likely place for this activity. This challenges historians’ identification of the kitchen as an exclusively female realm. The preparation of food and medicines occurred in tandem with experimental natural philosophy, sharing tools as well as the sensory apparatus of cooking, including tasting and smelling.

Hermetic Atomism: Christian Adolph Balduin (1632–1682), Aurum Aurae, and the 1674 Phosphor

The synthesis of phosphors, or light-bearing matter, figured largely among the activities of early scientific societies and within the first scientific journals. They were prestige objects during the formative institutionalisation of experimental natural philosophy. Nevertheless, early phosphors have often appeared within the historiography of chemistry as a throwback to an earlier era. They have been represented as a fundamental epistemic and theoretical divide between a mystical alchemy (exemplified by Christian Adolph Balduin) and modern chemistry (prefigured by progressives such as Robert Boyle). The parallel phosphoric researches of Boyle and Balduin belie this divide. Recovering the theoretical context of Balduin's phosphor can both resituate it in relation to phosphoric research of the 1670s and 1680s, as well as further illuminate the intellectual sources and development of chymical atomism.

Howard Marchitello The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and GalileoThe Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo. Howard Marchitello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii+236.

<i>Howard Marchitello</i> The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo<i>The Machine in the Text: Science and Literature in the Age of Shakespeare and Galileo</i>. Howard Marchitello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xii+236.

Locke, Providence, and the Limits of Natural Philosophy

John Locke's comments on experimental natural philosophy can plausibly be seen as a part of the physico-theological project of certain Christian virtuosi of the Royal Society to show that the workings of nature reveal the existence of a providential God. As I make clear, Locke thinks that God providentially designs us with limited epistemic capacities in order to check our pride and to motivate us to seek perfection in God. Locke maintains that a true science of nature is possible, but he is pessimistic about the prospects of realizing such a science, given our epistemic limitations. I argue that this seeming tension can be resolved by appreciating that the horizon for obtaining this science is eschatological. In other words, Locke thinks that we will have a true science of nature in a state of perfection, as God transforms the probable knowledge we have of bodies into certain and comprehensive knowledge.

The Fellowship (New York: The Overlook Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-1-59020-026-1 (PB). 22 B&amp;W illustrations, xiv + 336pp.

206 BOOK REVIEWS also explain some of the negative perceptions of midwives that have been carried through the historiography. Despite these criticisms, Evenden’s work is an inspiring reconstruction of the stories of seventeenth-century London midwives. The strength of this work is its extensive use of archival material, the generosity with which Evenden provides her research, and how her work has formed a solid basis for future studies into early modern midwives. Further lines of inquiry might include a broadening of the timeframe and geographical location to include the British Isles during the early modern period, and an analysis of the role of gender and space on midwifery. It is now up to others to build upon this work, and do so with the same enthusiasm for extensive research and women’s roles in medical history. MICHELINE ASTLEY–BODEN UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND John Gribbin, The Fellowship (New York: The Overlook Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-1-59020-026-1 (PB). 22 B&W illustrations, xiv + 336pp. Maybe it is human nature not to want to lose a good story in the details, but sometimes things are too neat, too clean, and too simple to be true. In The Fellowship, John Gribbin attempts a popular history of the Royal Society and its place in the ‘Scientific Revolution.’ Gribbin is a scientist by training and a prolific author, perhaps best known for his seminal In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, which popularised quantum physics. This scientific background gives his impressions of the early history of the Royal Society an interesting slant, and one that is to be cautiously welcomed. Gribbin’s writing is lucid and entertaining, telling stories that bring the age to life with excitement, and successfully reflect his aim to appeal to a wide non-academic audience. However, The Fellowship is not without some serious issues. The complexities and unknowns inherent in the writing of history have been streamlined and the rough edges smoothed off. Gribbin’s interaction with academic scholarship regarding Health & History ● 14/1 ● 2012 207 the history of the Royal Society is frustratingly inconsistent, and some of his arguments are at best ill-informed and at worst, severely mishandled. TheFellowshipenterssomewhatnaivelyintotheincreasingly messy historiography of the Royal Society and the ‘Scientific Revolution.’ Gribbin presents a more or less standard account of the breakdown of the Aristotelian world-view and its gradual replacement by the new experimental natural philosophy, which would eventually become what we now know as science. He places the Royal Society front and centre of this narrative, as the culmination and even ‘heart’ of the ‘Scientific Revolution.’ He touches on all the key players, from Galileo to Newton, while correctly giving prominence to those figures such as Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley whose roles have been revised in recentdecades.Atroublingsenseofinevitabilityisomnipresentin Gribbin’s tale, as well as an inappropriate sense of satisfaction— Gribbin clearly identifies with the modern scientific method and sees the story of its rise as a linear, triumphal affair. Gribbin’s engagement with the—admittedly sometimes bombastic and pedantic—academic debates regarding the Royal Society’s history (that began particularly in the late 1960s) is inconsistent. At times, Gribbin shows little awareness of the scholarship. He bases his arguments regarding the Oxford/London precursors to the Royal Society solely on Margery Purver’s heavily criticised Royal Society: Concept and Creation. Gribbin shows no indication that he is even aware of the controversial nature of Purver’s book, or the more modern scholarship of Michael Hunter and others that has largely superseded it. In other areas, Gribbin’s sensitivity to the historiography is greater, such as in his recognition of the complex role of Francis Bacon in the intellectual origins of the Royal Society. Gribbin structures his book as a series of overlapping historical biographies of key figures in the Royal Society, such as Francis Bacon, Robert Hooke, and Isaac Newton. These are typical of popular biographies, complete with childhood incidents that would inspire the adult selves and narrative arcs that, while entertaining, cannot help but reduce their protagonists to historical caricatures. Indeed, broad generalisations are de rigueur: ‘but Newton wouldn’t have been Newton if he wasn’t rowing with somebody’ (p. 268). This tendency to...

The city of knowledge: rethinking the history of science and urban planning

Focusing on the building boom in Restoration England, this paper argues that architecture and planning were closely intertwined with experimental natural philosophy, providing models for understanding and organizing new spatialities. ‘Design’ emerged as a crucial term during this period, designating both the process of conceptual planning and practical realization with which natural philosophers such as Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke and John Evelyn were concerned. The aim is to situate convergent histories of architecture, planning and experimentation within overlapping intellectual, social and political contexts. My contention is that the rise of experimental philosophy and the transformation of the English cityscape were inseparable events and that analysing them in terms of conjunctural processes can shed light on the ways in which the urban environment shaped scientific knowledge and practice, at the same time as science helped to produce the post‐Restoration city.

Radicals, romantics and electrical showmen: placing galvanism at the end of the english enlightenment

This paper examines the shifting cultural place of galvanic experiments at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It surveys the ways in which political readings of galvanism by radicals and Tories during this period had an important role in determining the ways in which these kinds of experiment, and galvanism in general, were understood later in the century. The paper examines the attitudes of Humphry Davy, Thomas Beddoes and Giovanni Aldini to galvanism and suggests that there was a good deal of contemporary interpretative flexibility about the ways in which galvanic experimentation might be understood. It argues in particular that Humphry Davy's rejection of his earlier views on galvanism after his arrival at the Royal Institution can be regarded as emblematic of a broader shift in the culture of experimental natural philosophy at the end of the English Enlightenment.

Ben Jonson’s Alchemist and Early Modern Laboratory Space

�� ��� This essay argues that The Alchemist played an important but largely unrecognized part in the formation of early modern science. It shows how Jonson’s innovative combination of alchemical content and neoclassical form produced a model of space, time, and dexterity useful for the development of laboratory experience. At the same time, the play demonstrates how new ideas about what a stage was and what it could do created a legacy of ambivalence in the development of the (semi-)public laboratory. Reading Jonson’s play as exemplary, this essay will also indicate why we ought to consider early modern drama more generally as an important conceptual source of the protocols of experimental natural philosophy.

The emergence of a scientific culture: science and the shaping of modernity, 1210-1685

Introduction PART I 1. Science and modernity PART II 2. From Augustinian synthesis to Aristotelian amalgam 3. Renaissance natural philosophies 4. The interpretation of nature and the origins of physico-theology PART III 5. Reconstructing natural philosophy 6. Reconstructing the natural philosopher 7. The aims of enquiry PART IV 8. Corpuscularianism and the rise of mechanism 9. The scope of mechanism 10. Experimental natural philosophy 11. The quantitative transformation of natural philosophy PART V 12. The unity of knowledge

:Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany

With their dozens of universities and colleges, the Jesuits held a monopoly over higher education in Catholic Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Using rich, previously untapped sources, Marcus Hellyer traces the development of science instruction at these institutions over a period stretching from the Counter-Reformation to the height of the Enlightenment. He argues that the Scientific Revolution was not an all-or-nothing affair; Jesuit professors enthusiastically adopted particular elements, such as experimental natural philosophy, while doggedly rejecting others, such as mechanical theories of matter. Hellyer's examination of the Jesuit colleges over a span of two centuries, from the late sixteenth century to 1773, demonstrates that digesting the New Science was a lengthy process. Jesuit colleges were still actively confronting, rejecting, or absorbing crucial components of the Scientific Revolution when the Society was suppressed in 1773. Catholic Physics also explores the fascinating interaction between Jesuit natural philosophy and theology, which, though marked by constant tension, was also quite fruitful. For example, the censorship of natural philosophy by the Jesuit hierarchy in Rome was a negotiated process in which Jesuit professors accepted the necessity of censorship, yet constantly sought to circumvent regulations imposed on them by teaching controversial questions such as Copernican cosmology. After the Galileo affair, Jesuit physics professors made sure they declared that heliocentrism was wrong, but they also taught their students the advantages it held over the rival cosmology sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Hellyer's pioneering book will be welcomed not only by historians but by those engaged in the important and ongoing debate between science and religion.

Contextualizing Scientific Discovery from Alchemy to Electrochemistry

Mordechai Feingold. The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture. (New York: The New York Public Library, 2004). Pp. 218. $22.50. June Z. Fullmer. Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist. (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2000). Pp. 385. $30.00. [End Page 258] William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Pp. 344. $29.00. Giuliano Pancaldi. Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Pp. 381. $24.95. In recent years, the role of context has become a focal point in the historiography of science. Recognizing that scientific theory and practice cannot be unproblematically isolated from the time and place of their creation, historians of science are increasingly challenging the traditional narratives that reduce the production of scientific knowledge to a linear succession of key experiments and theories. The four books reviewed here reflect this trend; while the authors do not all share the same contextual focus, they all seek to present a narrative of scientific discovery that goes beyond the confines of the laboratory. Without minimizing the individual accomplishments of the scientists they are studying, they make skillful use of both primary and secondary sources to situate the works of Robert Boyle, George Starkey (Newman and Principe), Isaac Newton (Feingold), Alessandro Volta (Pancaldi), and Humphry Davy (Fullmer) in the socio-cultural, political, and intellectual climates in which they were produced. In Alchemy Tried in the Fire, Newman and Principe focus primarily on intellectual context, seeking to correct the commonly held belief that seventeenth-century chemistry represented a radical break from the traditions of medieval alchemy. Building upon their earlier studies of the English chemist Boyle, whose Sceptical Chymist is traditionally viewed as one of the first works of modern chemistry, and the American-born Starkey, who penned several alchemical tracts under the pseudonym of Eirenaeus Pilalethes, they argue convincingly that a close examination of "the content and practice of laboratory chymistry in the early modern period" (2) reveals more continuity than rupture with alchemy. The return to the archaic spelling "chymistry" further underscores this continuity; as explained in Newman and Principe's 1998 article, "Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake" (Early Science and Medicine 3 [1998] 32–65), the use of "chymistry" to represent the undifferentiated domain of seventeenth-century alchemy/chemistry enables one to avoid the anachronism and potential arbitrariness resulting from the use of the modern terms. The first chapter introduces Boyle and Starkey, focusing on the differences in their educations and early intellectual interests. Prior to their meeting in early 1651, the two men "were, in more than one way, an ocean apart" (7); Starkey, who was to become Boyle's principal tutor in chemistry, was by then already a highly experienced laboratory chemist while Boyle's experimental efforts were still limited and secondary to his ethical preoccupations. His efforts to improve the moral character of humanity had already resulted in several examples of devotional literature, including a set of fictional letters entitled Amorous Controversies, intended to instill in readers a profound devotion to God. But as the authors note, due to Starkey's influence, "within a very few years his devotion to devotion would be transmuted into a devotion to experimental natural philosophy" (7). The chapter concludes with a discussion of Boyle's presentation of his relationship to the chemistry of his day, which strengthens the book's continuity thesis by demonstrating that Boyle's desire to distinguish himself from his predecessors led him to misrepresent the revolutionary nature of his own work. Chapter Two traces the development of chemistry from the late medieval period to the [End Page 259] work of Starkey's own preceptor, Joan Baptista Van Helmont. The use of quantitative techniques commonly thought to have originated with Antoine Lavoisier's "balance-sheet" method in the late eighteenth...

Alchemy and the Renaissance Commentary Tradition on Meteorologica IV

It has been well noted that Aristotle's Meteorologica IV has played an important role in the development of alchemy because of its quasi-corpuscularian doctrines and its treatments of art and nature. This paper uncovers to what extent Renaissance commentaries on this book took into account alchemy. Many Renaissance commentators such as Agostino Nifo, Lodovico Boccadiferro and Cesare Cremonini were sceptical of the possibility of the transmutation of metals and limited their discussions to what they found in medieval commentaries. Several scholars, however, noted the utility of this book towards alchemy. By the middle of the seventeenth century, two commentators intertwined their interpretations with alchemy. Girolamo Trimarchi, following the Jesuit commentary tradition, considered this work primarily with respect to alchemy; and Niccolò Cabeo utilised alchemical experiments to guide his reading of the text and make Aristotle's work relevant to the emerging experimental natural philosophy.

The second greatest benefit to mankind?

In 1739 Samuel Johnson wrote an essay on the life of Dr Hermann Boerhaave, Professor of Physic at the University of Leiden, who died in 1738. Boerhaave, born 11 years after Harvey's death, could be said to have been influenced by Harvey in that he favoured experimental natural philosophy as the gateway to scientific medicine. He was denied entry into the church because he was accused wrongly of being a follower of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, regarded as a heretic because he criticised established religious practices; this in spite of strongly supporting the love of God and humanity. Boerhaave decided to become a physician as he was, in Johnson's words, 'equally qualified for a profession, not indeed of equal dignity or importance, but which must undoubtedly claim the second place amongst those which are the greatest benefit to mankind'. It is this claim that I wish to examine. Can we still claim this regard for our profession? Is the medicine we practise, and the way we practise, of the greatest benefit to mankind, and how do we ensure that it is?