Anstey 2023 – Chapter 02

- Experimental philosophy was a new, distinctive form of natural philosophy when it emerged in the late 1650s in England. In this chapter, we
trace its development from its humble beginnings among the Oxford ‘Philosophical club’ and the nascent Royal Society to its pre-eminence in
British natural philosophy by the end of the seventeenth century and its gradual spread to the Continent from the 1660s. We also explore its
relations with medicine and religion, as well as its opponents and polemical targets.

- The term ‘experimental philosophy’ had been in use since the 1630s. Moreover, there were many who were using and recommending the use
of experiments in the decades leading up to the emergence of experimental philosophy. Yet it was in the work and writings of the Oxford-based
‘Experimentall Philosophy club’, a precursor group to the Royal Society of London, that this new, distinctive form of natural philosophy first
began to take shape.

- It is the activities and writings of this group that provide the first really determinate referent for the term ‘experimental philosophy’ and that
the methodological reflections of its members, writings that were contemporaneous with its activities, contain the central tenets of the
movement of experimental philosophy. In short, the Oxford philosophical club, in the latter years of the 1650s, was the site of the gestation of
experimental philosophy.

- Evangelista Torricelli, Vincenzo Viviani, Blaise Pascal, and Robert Boyle had some chronological experiments on air pump. This series of
experiments from Torricelli to Boyle has a number of salient features. First, each experimenter built upon the work and discoveries of their
predecessors. Second, instruments and the creation of phenomena that do not naturally occur in nature played a central role. Third, Boyle’s
experiments allowed him (a) personally to experience (b) singular events, which happened at a specific time and place. The experience of these
events was relied upon as (c) evidence for a general claim concerning the relation between pressure and volume of the air. This differs from
traditional natural philosophers’ references to experience, which were mostly (a′) based on common opinions, textual sources, or thought
experiments about what happens (b′) not in specific circumstances, but always or for the most part, and which (c′) illustrated, rather than
confirmed, general claims.

- Robert Boyle uses the term “experimental philosophy” three times in his Spring of the Air (1660). His other work Some Considerations
touching the Usefulnesse of Experimental Naturall Philosophy (1663), is the first work of natural philosophy in English to use the term
‘experimental philosophy’ in its title. It concludes with an index that is, in effect, a summary of the contents and which begins: ‘The reason why
the Author endeavours to possesse Pyrophilus with the true value of Experimental Philosophy ’ (B 3 286). Little wonder then that in the earlier
Spring of the Air Boyle could call it ‘Experimental and Useful Philosophy’. His other work entitled Certain Physiological Essays (1661). While
Spring of the Air had been an exemplar of experimental philosophy and Usefulness was to be a work on the rationale of experimental
philosophy, Certain Physiological Essays contained a significant amount of material on the methodology of Boyle’s experimental philosophy.
This includes the very important ‘Proëmial Essay’ that contains the central tenets of what was soon to become the experimental philosophy
movement.

- In seventeenth-century natural philosophy there was a deep problem concerning the acquisition of knowledge of the inner natures of natural
things and explanations of their behaviour. Once knowledge of an essence had been acquired, there was a further issue as to how to construct
a science of that substance or quality. The traditional and widely accepted solution derived from Aristotle.

- But Aristotelian account, encountered some problems according to 17 th century thinkers. First, there is the problem of using the senses to
acquire knowledge of essential natures. second problem arose, the problem of certainty. How can we have a posteriori knowledge of necessary
truths about the essences of things? Third, and finally, there is the problem of constructing a science or system of knowledge once we have
knowledge of essences.

- A number of relatively novel solutions were brought to bear on these problems in the seventeenth century. Four are relevant here. The first
was Francis Bacon’s attempt, albeit never completed, to develop a theory of induction that could circumvent the problem of the fallibility of
induction. The second approach was to attempt to develop an account of demonstrative reasoning that could accommodate propositions
derived from experimental evidence. Third approach, which was to defer, perhaps for generations, the project of constructing a demonstrative
science of particular substances and qualities and to examine particulars in a systematic and ordered manner. This involved putting some old
epistemic categories to new uses. The notion of matters of fact became the central epistemic category for unmediated token observations and
experiments,18 and the notion of testimony, that is, testimony to matters of fact, became an important epistemic notion for mediated
observations and experiments.19 A fourth approach, often combined with the third, was to aim, as Bacon had suggested, at intermediate
causal explanations rather than ultimate ones.20 This approach required an important change to the accepted notion of what a causal
explanation is, and the approach was taken up by the first generation of experimental philosophers.

- The answer that Robert Boyle provided for these old problems goes to the heart of the new experimental philosophy. The historical record
does not allow us to claim that these ideas originate with Boyle; rather, he was systematising a set of epistemic and procedural values
associated with experiment that pervaded his milieu. his early methodological writings, especially his ‘Proëmial Essay’ to Certain Physiological
Essays (1661), are the first published writings to spell out this new approach to the science of nature.

- In summary ,Boyle’s position is the following. First, experiment and observation have epistemic priority: one should accept only those
principles and axioms in natural philosophy that are based upon sufficient experimental and observational evidence, and one should avoid
constructing a theory without recourse to experiment and observation. Second, once a theory is constructed, one should be prepared to revise
it in the light of new experimental evidence. We claim that these two claims are core doctrines of experimental philosophy. They account for its
emphasis on experiment and for its decrying of speculation and hypotheses. Yet in the ‘Proëmial Essay’, Boyle makes a number of additional
claims: First, while Boyle believed in ultimate causes underlying natural phenomena, he also acquiesced in Bacon’s conception of a scale of
causes and the need to discover intermediate causes en route to ultimate explanations. Second, Boyle believes that one can reason upon
experiments.

- It is pretty clear from these references in Boyle’s writings that by the late 1650s he was using the term ‘experimental philosophy’ to describe
the sort of natural philosophy theorised and practised by himself and the other members of the Oxford experimental philosophy club.

- During the flurry of publishing activity on Boyle’s part around 1660, the Royal Society of London was formed. Robert Boyle was one of the
early members. Christopher Wren, who, in his c. 1660 preamble to a draft Charter to incorporate the Royal Society, claimed both reason and
experience had confirmed ‘that we prosecute effectually the Advancement of Natural Experimental Philosophy’. Abraham Cowley had
published his A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, which proposed an organizational structure for the Royal Society
modelled on Bacon’s Solomon’s House, a structure specifically tailored to promote experimental philosophy. Sir Robert Moray. While Moray
does not use the term ‘experimental philosophy’, his methodological stance is of a piece with that espoused by Boyle in his ‘Proëmial Essay’.
within a few years members of the Society began to publish works of experimental philosophy. Henry Power, published a work in 1664 entitled
simply Experimental Philosophy. In the same year, Robert Hooke, who had worked as Boyle’s assistant in Oxford, was appointed to the position
of Curator of Experiments at the Society.

- What we are claiming is that the historical record shows that, following its short gestation in Oxford, the movement of experimental
philosophy, that is, the group of natural philosophers who self-identified with the central tenets of experimental philosophy and practised
natural philosophy according to this method, as well as those within its ambit who advocated for it, first emerged in the Royal Society of
London in the early 1660s.

- the Royal Society continued to be regarded as the locus of experimental philosophy, which philosophy was understood by many to be the
distinctive methodology of the Society for the remaining decades of the seventeenth century

- the founders of the Dublin Philosophical Society, which formed in 1683, clearly viewed the Royal Society as the locus of a decisive change in
the practice of natural philosophy.29 For example, Sir George Ashe’s statement of the aims of the Society define it as an offspring of the Royal
Society of London. Another prominent member of the Dublin Society, William Molyneux.

- A very effective way further to scrutinise the content of the new experimental philosophy is to examine the writings of its early critics and the
defences of its early protagonists. And critics there were: Henry Oldenburg, Meric Casaubon, Margaret Cavendish.

- Natural philosophy, however, was not the only domain of knowledge in which experimental philosophy was being applied. The close
connection between many of the early Fellows of the Society and medical practitioners meant that a host of physicians sought to apply the new
method to therapeutic medicine. relations between the Royal Society and the London College of Physicians. Thomas Sydenham, Daniel Coxe,
Christopher Merrett, Jonathan Goddard, and Timothy Clarke, John Locke. Most of them were members of both the Society and the College and
who advocated experimental philosophy. Marchamont Nedham, Everard Maynwaring, John Colbatch, Gorgio Baglivi.

- Who qualifies as an experimental philosopher? First, it does seem necessary, though not sufficient, for someone to qualify as an experimental
philosopher that they give priority to experiment and observation over reasoning from principles and hypotheses in the quest for a science of
nature. A second doctrinal criterion is really the obverse of the first, namely, to qualify as an experimental philosopher one must oppose, at
least implicitly, the method according to which a science of nature is developed by appeal to principles and hypotheses that are accepted
without adequate recourse to experiments and observation. A third, occupational criterion, that is necessary though not sufficient, is that the
person be a natural philosopher. Our fourth, temporal, criterion is best stated negatively: there were no experimental philosophers before the
emergence of the movement of experimental philosophy. We have argued in this chapter that this movement emerged in the late 1650s and
early 1660s in England, and this puts a rough terminus a quo on this criterion.

- It is clear then that, by the end of the seventeenth century, the movement of experimental philosophy was well established in England and
had spread to Italy. The natural philosophical methodology that characterises the movement was first articulated by Robert Boyle in the late
1650s and was widely adopted by Fellows within the early Royal Society in the early 1660s and by many physicians. As that decade unfolded,
critics of experimental philosophy arose, such as Margaret Cavendish, Meric Casaubon, and Henry Stubbe,90 but the movement developed
from strength to strength. And while its polemical targets shifted as the years wore on, its central tenet of prioritising experiment and
observation over speculation and hypotheses came more and more to be endorsed as the most viable way to pursue the study of nature. In
fact, by the early eighteenth century it was so well entrenched that it began to be used in Christian apologetics.