Robert Boyle
born January 25, 1627, Lismore Castle, County
Waterford, Ireland
died December 31, 1691, London, England
British natural philosopher and theological
writer, a preeminent figure of 17th-century
intellectual culture. He was best known as a
natural philosopher, particularly in the field
of chemistry, but his scientific work covered
many areas including hydrostatics, physics,
medicine, earth sciences, natural history, and
alchemy. His prolific output also included
Christian devotional and ethical essays and
theological tracts on biblical language, the
limits of reason, and the role of the natural
philosopher as a Christian. He sponsored many
religious missions as well as the translation of
the Scriptures into several languages. In 1660
he helped found the Royal Society of London.
Early life and education
Boyle was born into one of the wealthiest
families in Britain. He was the 14th child and
7th son of Richard Boyle, the 1st Earl of Cork,
by his second wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir
Geoffrey Fenton, secretary of state for Ireland.
At age eight, Boyle began his formal education
at Eton College, where his studious nature
quickly became apparent. In 1639 he and his
brother Francis embarked on a grand tour of the
continent together with their tutor Isaac
Marcombes. In 1642, owing to the Irish
rebellion, Francis returned home while Robert
remained with his tutor in Geneva and pursued
further studies. Boyle returned to England in
1644, where he took up residence at his
hereditary estate of Stalbridge in Dorset. Here
he began a literary career writing ethical and
devotional tracts, some of which employed
stylistic and rhetorical models drawn from
French popular literature, especially romance
writings. In 1649 he began investigating nature
via scientific experimentation, a process that
enthralled him. From 1647 until the mid-1650s,
Boyle remained in close contact with a group of
natural philosophers and social reformers
gathered around the intelligencer Samuel
Hartlib. This group, the Hartlib Circle,
included several chemists—most notably George
Starkey, a young immigrant from America—who
heightened Boyle’s interest in experimental
chemistry.
Scientific career
Boyle spent much of 1652–54 in Ireland
overseeing his hereditary lands, and he also
performed some anatomic dissections. In 1654 he
was invited to Oxford, and he took up residence
at the university from c. 1656 until 1668. In
Oxford he was exposed to the latest developments
in natural philosophy and became associated with
a group of notable natural philosophers and
physicians, including John Wilkins, Christopher
Wren, and John Locke. These individuals,
together with a few others, formed the
“Experimental Philosophy Club,” which at times
convened in Boyle’s lodgings. Much of Boyle’s
best-known work dates from this period. In 1659
he and Robert Hooke, the clever inventor and
subsequent curator of experiments for the Royal
Society, completed the construction of their
famous air pump and used it to study pneumatics.
Their resultant discoveries regarding air
pressure and the vacuum appeared in Boyle’s
first scientific publication, New Experiments
Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the
Air and its Effects (1660). Boyle and Hooke
discovered several physical characteristics of
air, including its role in combustion,
respiration, and the transmission of sound. One
of their findings, published in 1662, later
became known as “Boyle’s law.” This law
expresses the inverse relationship that exists
between the pressure and volume of a gas, and it
was determined by measuring the volume occupied
by a constant quantity of air when compressed by
differing weights of mercury. Other natural
philosophers, including Henry Power and Richard
Towneley, concurrently reported similar findings
about air.
Boyle’s scientific work is characterized by
its reliance on experiment and observation and
its reluctance to formulate generalized
theories. He advocated a “mechanical philosophy”
that saw the universe as a huge machine or clock
in which all natural phenomena were accountable
purely by mechanical, clockwork motion. His
contributions to chemistry were based on a
mechanical “corpuscularian hypothesis”—a brand
of atomism which claimed that everything was
composed of minute (but not indivisible)
particles of a single universal matter and that
these particles were only differentiable by
their shape and motion. Among his most
influential writings were The Sceptical Chymist
(1661), which assailed the then-current
Aristotelian and especially Paracelsian notions
about the composition of matter and methods of
chemical analysis, and the Origine of Formes and
Qualities (1666), which used chemical phenomena
to support the corpuscularian hypothesis. Boyle
also maintained a lifelong pursuit of
transmutational alchemy, endeavouring to
discover the secret of transmuting base metals
into gold and to contact individuals believed to
possess alchemical secrets. Overall, Boyle
argued so strongly for the need of applying the
principles and methods of chemistry to the study
of the natural world and to medicine that he
later gained the appellation of the “father of
chemistry.”
Theological activities
Boyle was a devout and pious Anglican who
keenly championed his faith. He sponsored
educational and missionary activities and wrote
a number of theological treatises. Whereas the
religious writings of Boyle’s youth were
primarily devotional, his mature works focused
on the more complex philosophical issues of
reason, nature, and revelation and particularly
on the relationship between the emergent new
science and religion. Boyle was deeply concerned
about the widespread perception that irreligion
and atheism were on the rise, and he strove to
demonstrate ways in which science and religion
were mutually supportive. For Boyle, studying
nature as a product of God’s handiwork was an
inherently religious duty. He argued that this
method of study would, in return, illuminate
God’s omnipresence and goodness, thereby
enhancing a scientist’s understanding of the
divine. The Christian Virtuoso (1690) summarized
these views and may be seen as a manifesto of
Boyle’s own life as the model of a Christian
scientist.
Mature years in London
In 1668 Boyle left Oxford and took up
residence with his sister Katherine Jones,
Vicountess Ranelagh, in her house on Pall Mall
in London. There he set up an active laboratory,
employed assistants, received visitors, and
published at least one book nearly every year.
Living in London also provided him the
opportunity to participate actively in the Royal
Society.
Boyle was a genial man who achieved both
national and international renown during his
lifetime. He was offered the presidency of the
Royal Society (in 1680) and the episcopacy but
declined both. Throughout his adult life, Boyle
was sickly, suffering from weak eyes and hands,
recurring illnesses, and one or more strokes. He
died at age 64 after a short illness exacerbated
by his grief over Katherine’s death a week
earlier. He left his papers to the Royal Society
and a bequest for establishing a series of
lectures in defense of Christianity. These
lectures, now known as the Boyle Lectures,
continue to this day.
Lawrence M. Principe
