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Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
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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 experiments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental science? 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 decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.
The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said.
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 decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.
The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said.
440 pages, Paperback
First published December 12,1985
This edition
- Format
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440 pages, Paperback
- Published
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October 1, 1989 by Princeton University Press
- ISBN
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9780691024325
- ASIN
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0691024324
- Language
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English
About the author
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Shapin was trained as a biologist at Reed College and did graduate work in genetics at the University of Wisconsin before taking a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
From 1972 to 1989, he was Lecturer, then Reader, at the Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh University, and, from 1989 to 2003, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, before taking up an appointment at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard. He has taught for brief periods at Columbia University, Tel-Aviv University, and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. In 2012, he was the S. T. Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
He has written broadly on the history and sociology of science. Among his concerns are scientists, their ethical choices, and the basis of scientific credibility. He revisioned the role of experiment by examining where experiments took place and who performed them. He is credited with restructuring the field's approach to “big issues” in science such as truth, trust, scientific identity, and moral authority.
"The practice of science, both conceptually and instrumentally, is seen to be full of social assumptions. Crucial to their work is the idea that science is based on the public's faith in it. This is why it is important to keep explaining how sound knowledge is generated, how the process works, who takes part in the process and how."
His books on 17th-century science include the "classic book" Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985, with Simon Schaffer); his "path-breaking book" A Social History of Truth (1994), The Scientific Revolution (1996, now translated into 18 languages), and, on modern entrepreneurial science, The Scientific Life (2008). A collection of his essays is Never Pure (2010). His current research interests include the history of dietetics and the history and sociology of taste and subjective judgment, especially in relation to food and wine.
He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and he has written for Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker.
From 1972 to 1989, he was Lecturer, then Reader, at the Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh University, and, from 1989 to 2003, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, before taking up an appointment at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard. He has taught for brief periods at Columbia University, Tel-Aviv University, and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. In 2012, he was the S. T. Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
He has written broadly on the history and sociology of science. Among his concerns are scientists, their ethical choices, and the basis of scientific credibility. He revisioned the role of experiment by examining where experiments took place and who performed them. He is credited with restructuring the field's approach to “big issues” in science such as truth, trust, scientific identity, and moral authority.
"The practice of science, both conceptually and instrumentally, is seen to be full of social assumptions. Crucial to their work is the idea that science is based on the public's faith in it. This is why it is important to keep explaining how sound knowledge is generated, how the process works, who takes part in the process and how."
His books on 17th-century science include the "classic book" Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985, with Simon Schaffer); his "path-breaking book" A Social History of Truth (1994), The Scientific Revolution (1996, now translated into 18 languages), and, on modern entrepreneurial science, The Scientific Life (2008). A collection of his essays is Never Pure (2010). His current research interests include the history of dietetics and the history and sociology of taste and subjective judgment, especially in relation to food and wine.
He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and he has written for Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker.
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