Boyle Studies - Hunter, Michael

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Résumé :
Robert Boyle's role as the most influential English scientist in the generation before Newton is now acknowledged, and the complexity of his ideas has become increasingly apparent. This volume forms a sequel to Michael Hunter's two previous books: Robert Boyle: Scrupulosity and Science (2000) and The Boyle Papers: Understanding the Manuscripts of Robert Boyle (2007). Like them, it brings together material otherwise widely scattered in essay volumes and academic journals, while over a third of the book's content is hitherto unpublished....

Biographie:
Michael Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, UK....

Sommaire:
appended to it is an annotated edition of Boyle's telling list of desiderata for science. The next three essays comprise a group of essentially biographical studies, exploring various aspects of Boyle's life and intellectual evolution, after which three others provide further evidence of the 'convoluted' Boyle divulged in Robert Boyle: Scrupulosity and Science. Finally, we have two chapters, one hitherto published only in French and the other not at all, which throw important light on topics that preoccupied Boyle in the last few years of his life - the supernatural and the exotic. Together, these essays add greater depth to our understanding of Boyle, both as an individual and as a natural philosopher....