Leviathan and the Air-Pump

Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

Ranked #45 in History Of Science

In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do exper-iments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental sci-ence? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does.


Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors proposed that solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not...
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