Boyle, Robert

Robert Boyle (1627–1691), the most eminent natural philosopher in England in the seventeenth century before Isaac Newton, was born in Lismore Castle the seventh son of the first earl of Cork by his second wife, Catherine Fenton. His academic abilities were recognized early, and he was schooled at Eton, privately, and on a Grand Tour with his brother Francis. Settling in Geneva (1638), he was introduced to the natural philosophy of Galileo. He also went through a profound religious experience that shaped his life and science.

These travels ended when rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1641 and the party returned to London. A younger son, Boyle avoided public life and immersed himself in medicine and chemistry, to which he was introduced by Samuel Hartlib, the eminent acquaintance of his sister Catherine (Lady Ranelagh). Boyle could reconcile medicine and chemistry with his religious conscience because of their imagined social utility. He moved to Oxford in 1654 and joined a politically diverse group in experimentally investigating the new philosophy. Boyle believed that experiment revealed the structure of nature and that theorizing was a separate activity. Even as he compared the numerical results of his experiments on the "spring of air" (pressure) with the predictions of theory, others deduced from them what is now known as Boyle's Law. Although he was dependent on the design and laboratory skills of men such as Robert Hooke, Boyle became a skilled chemist and an important contributor to chemical theory. He refuted Scholastic arguments against the existence of a vacuum and against the particulate nature of matter. Some of his explanations were Cartesian, yet he rejected many others because he could find no experimental evidence for them.

His scrupulosity as a Christian gentleman also marked his science and included painstaking descriptions of his methods, instrumentation, and results. He delineated for the fledgling scientific community (especially for members of the new scientific institution the Royal Society, of which he was a founding member) the proper conduct of natural philosophers and the methods of natural philosophy. The precarious position of the Royal Society in the early Restoration period was alleviated by Boyle's presence in London after 1668.

Boyle's elevated social position made him a symbol and representative of the new science and he spent much time entertaining important visitors to London for scientific activity. Boyle never married and seems to have suffered ill health for most of his life. In his will he established a series of public lectures (named after him) that were used by his contemporaries to refute atheism through use of the new science. Of all Irish-born scientists, he is the most distinguished.

Bibliography

Harwood, John T., ed. The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle. 1991.

Hunter, Michael. Robert Boyle (1627–1691): Scrupulosity in Science. 2000.

Maddison, R. E. W. The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle. 1969.

Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. 1994.