The Looking Glass of Facts: Collecting,Rhetoric and Citing the Self in the Experimental Natural Philosophy of Robert Boyle

On the importance of rhetoric for the developing genre of the experimental report in seventeenth-century England, see Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, in Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 481–520; Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985); Vickers Brian , “The Royal Society and English prose style: A reassessment”, in Rhetoric and the pursuit of truth: Language change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Los Angeles, 1985), 3–76; Markley Robert , “Robert Boyle on language: Some considerations touching the style of the Holy Scriptures”, in Brack O. M. Jr (ed.), Studies in eighteenth-century culture, xiv (1985), 159–71; Golinski Jan , “Robert Boyle: Scepticism and authority in seventeenth century chemical discourse”, in Benjamin A. E. (eds), The figural and the literal problems of language in the history of science and philosophy, 1630–1800 (Manchester, 1987), 58–82; Dear Peter , “Narratives, anecdotes, and experiments: Turning experience into science in the seventeenth century”, in The literary structure of scientific argument (Philadelphia, 1991), 135–63; idem, “Totius in verba: Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 145–61; and Harwood John T. , “Science writing and writing science: Boyle and rhetorical theory”, in Hunter Michael (ed.), Robert Boyle reconsidered (Cambridge, 1994), and his excellent introduction to The early essays and ethics of Robert Boyle (Carbondale, 1991), pp. xv–lxix.

Fontanier Pierre , Les figures du discours (Paris, 1968), 390, in Marin Louis , Portrait of the king (Minneapolis, 1988), 87.

Shapin's Steven A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago and London, 1994) should be consulted in this regard. Also see works cited in ref. 1, especially Shapin's “Pump and circumstance”, and Dear's “Narratives, anecdotes, and experiments”.

As cited in French by Ginzburg Carlo , “Montrer et citer: La vérité de l'histoire”, Le débat, lvi (1989), 43–54, p. 45 (my translation).

For example, Galand Perrine , “L'»Enargia« chez politien”, in Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance, xlix (1987), 25–53.

Quintilian , Institutio oratoria, transl. by Butler H. E. (Cambridge, 1966), Book VIII: Iii, 61–63.

See Momigliano A. , “Ancient history and the antiquarian”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xiii (1950), 285–315.

Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), 53.

Ibid. With regard to the history of the footnote from a different perspective see Anthony Grafton's excellent treatment, “The footnote from De Thou to Ranke”, in History and theory, xxxiii (1994), 53–76.

Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), 52.

See Schaffer Simon , “Making certain”, Social studies of science, xiv (1984), 137–52, p. 140.

Cited in Huppert G. , The idea of perfect history: Historical erudition and historical philosophy in Renaissance France (Urbana, 1970), 34.

Cited in Paradis James , “Montaigne, Boyle, and the essay of experience”, in Levine George (ed.), One culture: Essays in science and literature (Madison, 1987), 59–91, p. 69.

Boyle's comments are to be found in Birch Thomas (ed.), The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (5 vols, London, 1772), i, 313. Also see Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1), 496; with regards to the “bad manners” of overly precise authorial citation, see Shapin's A social history of truth (ref. 3), 117; also see Westfall's Richard “Unpublished Boyle papers relating to scientific method, II”, Annals of science, xii (1956), 103–17, especially pp. 113–16.

On the importance that Boyle placed on rhetoric and eloquence for the “… embellishments of our conceptions and … the congruity of them to our design and method …”, see Some considerations touching the style of the Holy Scriptures, in Works (ref. 15), ii, 301; and also Harwood , “Science writing and writing science” (ref. 1), 44.

Boyle , A proëmial essay, Works (ref. 15), i, 304–5.

See Elias Norbert , The history of manners: The civilizing process , i (New York, 1978), and also Revel Jacques , “The uses of civility”, in Goldhammer Arthur (transl.), Chartier Roger (ed.), A history of private life: Passions of the Renaissance , iii (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 167–205. With regard to England see Whigham Frank , Ambition and privilege: The social tropes of Elizabethan courtesy theory (Berkeley, 1984); Shapin Steven , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1); idem, “The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 373–404; idem, “‘A scholar and a gentleman’: The problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England”, History of science, xxxix (1991), 279–327; idem, A social history of truth (ref. 3); Rossi's Paulo Francis Bacon: From magic to science (London, 1968), 58; Siegal Paul , “English humanism and the new Tudor aristocracy”, Journal of the history of ideas, xiii (1952), 450–68, p. 466; and Woolf D. R. , “Erudition and the idea of history in Renaissance England”, Renaissance quarterly, xl (1987), 11–48, p. 28.

Wilson Thomas , Arte of rhetorique (Oxford, 1909), 147.

Whigham , Ambition (ref. 18), 30.

Wilson , Arte of rhetorique (ref. 19), 162.

See, for example, Mario Biagioli's discussion in Galileo courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago and London, 1993), 52.

Cited in Whigham , Ambition (ref. 18), 93.

Walker Obadiah , Of education, especially of young gentlemen (Oxford, 1673), 237, cited in Shapin's Social history of truth (ref. 3), 117.

Cowley Abraham , The advancement of experimental philosophy (1661; reprinted in facsimile, Menston, 1969), 41.

Sprat Thomas , History of the Royal Society, facsimile of the 1667 edition, ed. by Cope J. I. Jones H. W. (Saint Louis, 1958), 111.

On the relationship between probabilism and civil conversation see Shapin , A social history of truth (ref. 3), 117–19, 124–5, and “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1), 494–7.

See, for example, McKeon Michael , The origins of the English novel, 1600–1740 (Baltimore, 1987), especially chap. 2, “The evidence of the senses: Secularization and epistemological crisis”.

Cowley , op. cit. (ref. 27), 10.

Recently there have been a number of excellent studies which have explored the relationship between the courtly imperatives of civilité and the development of early modern experimental natural philosophy and natural history. In addition to works previously cited by Shapin Steven , see especially Biagioli Mario , “Etiquette, interdependence, and sociability in seventeenth-century science”, in Critical inquiry , xxii (Winter, 1996), 193–238; idem, “Scientific revolution, social bricolage, and etiquette”, in Porter R. Teich M. (eds), The Scientific Revolution in national context (Cambridge, 1992), 11–54; Daston Lorraine , “Baconian facts, academic civility, and the prehistory of objectivity”, in Megill Allan (ed.), Rethinking objectivity (Durham, N.C., 1994), 37–63; Findlen Paula , “Controlling the experiment: Rhetoric, court patronage and the experimental method of Francesco Redi”, History of science, xxxi (1993), 35–64; idem, Possessing nature: Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994); Tribby Jay , “Body/building: Living the museum life in early modern Europe”, Rhetorica, x (1992), 139–63; and idem, “Cooking (with) Clio: Eloquence and experiment in seventeenth-century Florence”, in Journal of the history of ideas, lii (1991), 417–39.

Braithwaite Richard , The English gentleman (London, 1630), 83.

Peacham , Henry the Younger, The complete gentleman (London, 1634), 42–43 (my emphasis is added on “weight” and “matter”).

Ibid., 123–4.

Kynaston Francis , The constitutions of the Musaeum Minervae (London, 1636), 4–5. Parliament refused to fund this scheme; it was resubmitted several years later by Kynaston's friend and patron, Arundel, but there is no evidence that these plans were ever implemented.

Shapin , “The house of experiment” (ref. 18), 381.

This interest, however, seems to have been present as early as the 1620s; as the instrument maker and mathematician William Oughtred says: “I have been still much frequented [while at Arundel House] by Natives and Strangers, for my resolution and instruction in many difficult poynts of Art”. See his Apologie … to the English gentrie … the just apologie of Wil Oughtred … (1634), B 1 (v°), cited in Turner A. J. , Of time and measurement (London, 1993), 107.

In Birch Thomas (ed.), The history of the Royal Society of London, for improving knowledge from its first rise , ii (London, 1756), for example, 243. Also see in this regard Michael Hunter's “A ‘College’ for the Royal Society: The abortive plan of 1667–8”, in his Establishing the new science (Woodbridge, 1989), 156–84.

See the classic articles by Houghton W. E. , “The English virtuoso in the seventeenth century”, in the Journal of the history of ideas, iii (1942), 51–73, 190–219; also see Shapin's “‘A scholar and a gentleman’” (ref. 18).

Regarding the purchase of this collection see the letter from Henry Oldenburg to Boyle dated 27 January 1666 in Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas (eds), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison and London, 1965–86), iii, 32, cited in Hunter , op. cit. (ref. 39), 127. For more details on the Royal Society's collection see Hunter's excellent treatment, “Between cabinet of curiosities and research collection: The history of the Royal Society's ‘Repository’”, found in the same collection, pp. 123–55; the citation for Evelyn is on p. 128.

Hooke Robert , “A discourse of earthquakes”, in Waller Richard (ed.), The posthumous works of Robert Hooke (originally published in London, 1705; facsimile with introduction by Brown T. M. , London, 1971), 338.

Ibid., 335, also see p. 397.

Regarding the role that collections played in animating civil conversation in the early modern period see ref. 32 above, and in particular, Findlen's Possessing nature, especially pp. 97–150, and Tribby's “Body/building”.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society (ref. 39), ii, 167.

Sprat , History of the Royal Society (ref. 28), 113. In this regard, Tony Davis comments that John Wilkins's project aimed at the “abolition of the distinction between words and things”. See his “The Ark in flames: Science, language and education in seventeenth-century England”, in Benjamin A. E. Cantor G. N. Christie J. R. R. (eds), The figural and the literal (Manchester, 1987), 83–102, p. 87.

Sprat , History of the Royal Society (ref. 28), 251.

Hooke , The posthumous works (ref. 42), 338.

On Arundel and his collection see Howarth David , Lord Arundel and his circle (New Haven and London, 1985), and also Parry Graham , The Golden Age restor'd: The culture of the Stuart court, 1603–42 (Manchester, 1981), 108–36.

On the relationship between practices of collecting and identity formation see ref. 32, and also Stewart Susan , On longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection (Baltimore, 1984), 157–8; Clifford James , “Objects and selves — An afterward”, in Stocking George Jr (ed.), Objects and others: Essays on museums and material culture (Madison, 1985), 236–46. In this sense, as Pierre Bourdieu suggests, collecting, as a kind of aesthetic consumption of goods, can be compared to other forms of commodity consumption insofar as it serves to distinguish and demarcate an individual's tastes and dispositions as being those of a particular class or group; see, for example, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, transl. by Nice Richard (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).

Peacham , The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 18.

Erasmus Desidarius , Ten colloquies, transl. by Thompson Craig (New York, 1986), 135.

Ibid., 137.

Ibid., 131.

Ibid., 133, 137–40.

Ibid., 173; on the importance of the metaphor of the hunt for early modern science, see Eamon William , Science on the secrets of nature: Books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture (Princeton, 1994), 269–300.

Ibid., 135, 173.

Peacham , The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 106.

See, for example, Shapin's “‘A scholar and a gentleman’” (ref. 18), 283, and Harwood's “Science writing and writing science” (ref. 1), 45. It is perhaps worth noting that the word virtuoso was first introduced into the English language by Henry Peacham; see The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 105.

Letter from Beale John to Boyle Robert , dated 8 August 1666, Boyle , Works (ref. 15), vi, 413.

Excepting, of course, works by Boyle, and those by the late seventeenth-century religious reformer, John Owen, of which there were also ten. See Harwood , The early essays (ref. 1), which lists the contents of what Harwood originally identified as Boyle's library, pp. 252–81. Recent evidence, brought to light by Michael Hunter, has challenged Harwood's identification of this booklist with Boyle's library; rather it seems to have belonged to Boyle's servant and executor John Warr, see Hunter's microfilm edition of the Boyle Papers, Letters and papers of Robert Boyle (1992). Nevertheless, many of the books on this list were kept in rooms at Boyle's home. And indeed, Warr both lived and worked closely with Boyle for some twenty years. Thus, though one cannot directly link this booklist to Boyle's library, it remains a valuable source of evidence for understanding the intellectual milieu within which Boyle lived and worked. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for History of science for calling my attention to Hunter's comments regarding this booklist; I would also like to thank John Harwood for generously sharing his thoughts with me regarding the current status of his original claims about it.

Howell W. S. , Logic and rhetoric in England, 1500–1700 (Princeton, 1956), 117.

Cave Terrence , The cornucopian text: Problems of writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford, 1979), 5–6. Cave notes that” … one of the particular senses of copia is ‘treasure-chest’, ‘hoard’, or ‘store’ (thesaurus)”.

On the Kunstprosa in early modern England see, for example, Grafton Anthony , “Barrow as a scholar”, in Feingold Mordechai (ed.), Before Newton: The life and times of Isaac Barrow (Cambridge, 1990), 291–302, especially pp. 296–7.

Erasmus Desiderius , Collected works of Erasmus, ed. by Thompson Craig R. , transl. and annotated by Knott Betty , xxiv (Toronto, 1978), 295.

According to Ann Blair, the commonplace book was” … a crucial tool for storing and retrieving the increasingly unwieldy quantity of textual and personal knowledge that guaranteed copiousness in speech and writing”. Indeed, she concludes that “[t]he commonplace book thus spread as widely in Renaissance Europe as the Erasmian ideal of eloquence through copia rerum or abundance of material”. Blair Ann , “Humanist methods of natural philosophy: The commonplace book”, Journal of the history of ideas, liii (1992), 541–51, p. 542. Though Boyle's early treatises are not, in the strict sense, commonplace books, they were — As Shapin points out with regard to similar ethical texts — “… fundamentally structured through the rearrangement and resituation of the contexts of personal commonplace books”. See Shapin Steven , “Personal development and intellectual biography: The case of Robert Boyle”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 335–45, quotation on p. 340.

Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius), The analytical didactic of Comenius (1649), transl. by Jelinek Vladimir (Chicago, 1953), 148.

Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 1), 260.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), ii, 340.

Boyle , The dayly reflection , fol. 272 (v°), in Harwood , op. cit. (ref. 1), 208, my emphasis.

Bacon Francis , The advancement of learning, ed. by Johnston Arthur (Oxford, 1974), 129–30, cited in Blair , “Humanist methods” (ref. 66), 550.

Boyle , Occasional reflections (ref. 69), 340.

See, for example, Stewart , On longing (ref. 50), 155–6.

The act of showing, of display, as a means of status distinction, implies a parallel transformation in ways of seeing; the theatre of correct manners, dress and speech demands not only that the actor be seen by an audience, but that he too observes — Measures, dissects and evaluates — The manners and motives of those around him. See refs 18 and 32 above.

Snell George , Right teaching of useful knowledge (London, 1643), 58–59.

See, for example, Findlen , Possessing nature (ref. 32), 105.

Daston Lorraine , “Reviews on artifact and experiment”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 452–67, p. 460. Also see Olmi Giuseppe , “Science — Honour — Metaphor: Italian cabinets of curiosities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, in Impey Oliver MacGregor Arthur (eds), The origins of museums: The cabinet of curiosities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1985), 5–16, and Pomian Krzysztof , Collectors and curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, transl. by Wiles-Portier Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1990), especially chap. 1, “Between the invisible and the visible: The collection”.

See for example, Grafton Anthony Jardine Lisa , From humanism to the humanities: Education and the liberal arts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe (London, 1986), 136.

Tribby makes a similar point with regards to the homologies existing between “the display of collected objects in a museum and the display of the civil body in early modern Europe …”, and the ways in which “a courtier could use a museum to raise his profile and distinguish himself from his contemporaries …”. See Tribby , “Body/building” (ref. 32), 152–3.

McKeon , The origins of the English novel (ref. 30), 43.

Erasmus , De copia (ref. 65), 577.

Ibid., 578.

Ibid., 579.

Ibid., 579, my emphasis.

Ibid., 582.

Ibid., 559.

Indeed, for Erasmus, such intellectual virtue was definitive of nobility. As he said: “… everyone who cultivates the mind in liberal studies must be taken to be noble. Let others paint lions, eagles, bulls, or leopards on their escutcheons; those who can display ‘devices’ of the intellect commensurate with their grasp of liberal arts have a truer nobility.” See his De civilitate: De civilitate morum puerilium, in Rummel Erika (ed.), The Erasmus reader (Toronto, 1990), 102.

Boyle , Occasional reflections (ref. 69), 329, my emphasis.

See, for example, Peacham's The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 28.

Caspari Fritz , Humanism and the social order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954), 33.

Sherry Richard , A treatise of schemes and tropes (Gainesville, 1961), 66.

Quintilian , Institutio (ref. 7), Book IV: ii, 64. Also see Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), 46.

Howell , Logic (ref. 62), 127–8. Also see, for example, Nietzsche Friedrich , The genealogy of morals , transl. by Golffing Francis (New York, 1956), 160, regarding what Nietzsche called “the pathos of nobility and distance”.

Sherry , Treatise (ref. 92), 25.

Peacham Henry , The garden of eloquence (Gainesville, 1954), 40.

Peacham's analysis borrows extensively from Sherry's Treatise, to the extent that he directly copies certain passages; see Howell , Logic (ref. 62), 135.

See Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), 49.

Peacham , The garden (ref. 96), 134.

Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), 45.

Sherry , Treatise (ref. 92), 66.

Cave , Cornucopian (ref. 63), 28.

Peacham , The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 84 (my emphasis).

Ginzburg , “Montrer” (ref. 4), see p. 46, also see Cave , Cornucopian (ref. 63), 28.

Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1), 491. John Harwood associates the idea of virtual witnessing with Hooke's strategies for verbal and visual enargeia, see his “Rhetoric and graphics in Micrographia”, in Hunter M. Schaffer S. (eds), Robert Hooke: New studies (Woodbridge, 1989), 119–47, especially pp. 135–47.

See Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1), 492–3, and Boyle's A proëmial essay (ref. 15), 302.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), i, 2; also see Boyle's A proëmial essay (ref. 15), 305, and Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1), 493.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), i, 246.

See Peacham , The complete gentleman (ref. 34), 24, and Brathwaite , The English gentleman (ref. 33), 83–84.

Cited in Whigham , Ambition (ref. 18), 72.

Boyle , Occasional reflections (ref. 69), 386.

Ibid., 386.

Ibid., 386.

Ibid., 387.

Boyle , Some considerations (ref. 16), 256; also see Markley , “Robert Boyle on language” (ref. 1), 162.

Cave Terrence , “Enargeia: Erasmus and the rhetoric of presence in the sixteenth century”, in L'Esprit créateur, xvi (1976), 5–19, p. 10.

Ibid., 16.

Boyle , A proëmial essay (ref. 15), 317.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), i, 126; also see Markley , “Robert Boyle on language” (ref. 1), 167.

For example, Harwood , The early essays … (ref. 1), 195.

Ibid., p. xlviii, my emphasis.

As Shapin has pointed out, despite the supposedly public character of experimental natural philosophy, in practice, accessibility to experimental trials was extremely limited. Thus, insofar as he sought to affirm the credibility of experimentally produced matters of fact by appeal to a public court of like-minded gentlemanly natural philosophers, Boyle had no choice but to rely upon what he considered a fundamentally flawed medium — That of language. See “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 1).

This strategy, of course, had a long tradition in devotional tracts dedicated to image-assisted meditation. As David Freedberg notes, “[b]y concentrating on physical images, the natural inclination of the mind to wander is kept in check, and we ascend with increasing intensity to the spiritual and emotional essence of that which is represented in material form before our eyes…”. See his The power of images: Studies in the history and theory of response (Chicago and London, 1989), 162. With regard to Boyle's use of similitude and metaphor as aids to seeing, remembering and meditating upon the physical world for spiritual ends, see Harwood's “Science writing and writing science” (ref. 1), 87.

Harwood , The early essays (ref. 1), 196; the parenthetical additions to Boyle's manuscript (included in Harwood's text) have been omitted here.

Idleness and solitude were among the principle causes of the “Waking Dreame[s]” and “Sinfull Thoughts” characteristic of raving. The rigorous pursuit of a civil calling was, Boyle advocated, “a souveraigne Preservative agenst Idleness (that mother of Vices) and an excellent preuention [against] <of> a world of Idle, Melancholick and exorbitant thoughts, and unwarrantable actions”. Ibid., 85.

Boyle , Works (ref. 15), ii, 5.