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Robert Boyle; experience; natural philosophy; Thomas Hobbes; geometry; air-pump
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Natural Philosophy, Geometry, And Deduction In The Hobbes-Boyle Debate, Marcus P. Adams
Natural Philosophy, Geometry, And Deduction In The Hobbes-Boyle Debate, Marcus P. Adams
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines Hobbes’s criticisms of Robert Boyle’s air-pump experiments in light of Hobbes’s account in De Corpore and De Homine of the relationship of natural philosophy to geometry. I argue that Hobbes’s criticisms rely upon his understanding of what counts as “true physics.” Instead of seeing Hobbes as defending natural philosophy as “a causal enterprise ... [that] as such, secured total and irrevocable assent,”2 I argue that, in his disagreement with Boyle, Hobbes relied upon his understanding of natural philosophy as a mixed mathematical science. In a mixed mathematical science one can mix facts from experience (the ‘that’) with …