Experimental philosophy

Glanvill, Joseph. Philosophia pia or a discourse, of the religious temper, and tenedencies of the experimental philosophy. London , 1671. 

Webster, Charles. Henry Power s experimental philosophy. Ambix 14, no. 3 (Oct 1967) 150-178. 

Henry, J. Occult qualities and the experimental philosophy active principles in pre- Newtonian matter theory. Hist Sci 24 (1986) 335-381. 

Exemplars are Adam Walker, Analysis of a Course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, 1 st ed. (London Printed for the Author, 1766), 20th ed., 1827 Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations relating to Various Branches of Natural Philosophy (London J. Johnson, 1779) William Nicolson, Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 2 vols, 2d ed. (London J. Johnson, 1787) Antoine Libes,... 

Adam Walker, Analysis of a Course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy. For an early-nineteenth-century critique of this tradition, see E.-G. Fischer, Lehrbuch der mechanischen Naturlehre, 3d ed.,... 

To be sure, a "Laboratorium physicum" existed as early as the 1670s in Leiden, where Buchardus De Voider and his successor, Wolferdus Senguerdius, were in the forefront of teaching and demonstrating experimental philosophy based on instruments like the air pump.69 However, the laboratorium... 

See Willem Hackman, "Experimental Philosophy and the Dutch Republic," 171178, in Robert P. Maccubbin and Martha Hamilton-Phillips, eds., The Age of William III and Mary II Power, Politics and Patronage, 16881702 (Williamsburg College of William and Mary, 1989) 175. 

In late 1655 or early 1656, Boyle moved to Oxford, where he could enjoy the company of other natural philosophers. In 1645 a number of people interested in the new experimental philosophy had formed a group, called the Invisible College, which met weekly in London. However, the Civil War had interrupted these meetings. Some of the members had migrated to Oxford, which was a royalist stronghold at the time others had left the capital city for a variety of reasons. By 1655 some of the members of the Invisible College had become... 

The notion of four elements, which, by the variety of their proportions, compose all the known substances in nature, is a mere hypothesis, assumed long before the first principles of experimental philosophy or of chemistry had any existence. In those days, without possessing facts, they framed systems while we, who have collected facts, seem determined to reject them, when they do not agree with our prejudices. 

John Henry, Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter Theory , History ofScience 24 (1986), 335—81 Keith Hutchison, What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution , Isis 73 (1982), 233—53. 

Turner, Gerard L E., Mathematical Instrument-Making in London in the Sixteenth Century , in Turner, Scientific Instruments and Experimental Philosophy i p-i8p (Aldershot, 1990), 93-106. 

J. R. Glauber, Philosophische Oefen, Amsterdam, 1648 H. Bocrhaave, Elementa chemim, Lugduni Batavorum, 1732 R. Boyle, The Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy, Oxford, 1663 S. Hales, Vegetable Staticks, London, 1727 J. Priestley, Observations on Different Kinds of Air, London, 3. 208, 1779 J. B. van Helmont, Ortus medicines, Amsterdam, 68, 1648. 

It was in the seventeenth century that the need for corporate action in pursuit of the experimental philosophy was recognized with the beginnings of institutionalization in science. The practice of experimental chemistry in the Paris Academie des Sciences at the turn of the seventeenth century has been analysed by Ursula Klein.141 With a more theoretical emphasis, seventeenth-century chemical ideas and the ways in which they... 

Boyle devoted his life to developing details of a new way of knowing. He called this way the experimental philosophy. His experimental philosophy was his own, but he built it on foundations established by others. He did not see as far as his young friend Isaac Newton, but he could have said, as Newton did, that if he saw further than other men had, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants. 

Kirwan exhibited no less courtesy toward his opponents. Lavoisier, the main author of the antiphlogistic hypothesis and a philosopher of great eminence, was the first that introduced an almost mathematical precision into experimental philosophy. Kirwan also acknowledged many of his opponents positive contributions, such as proving that the weight gain of metals was due to the air fixed in the process and that the atmosphere consisted of two distinct airs. 

The classic account is Marie Boas, Robert Boyle. See also Boas s introductory essay in Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 1965), 81-93. On the role of chemistry in shaping Boyle s experimental philosophy, see Rose-Mary Sargent, Learning from Experience Boyle s Construction of an Experimental Philosophy, in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. M. Hunter (Cambridge University Press, 1994) idem. The Diffident Naturalist (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 

See chapter three. Boerhaave, H. (1732). B lementa chemtae. Leiden ii, 98. Fairly recently historians of science have devoted more attention to the importance of occult quahties in natural philosophy. See Henry, J. (1986). Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy. Histotj of Science, zp 335-381 Schaffer, S. (i Sy). Godly Men and Mechanical Philosophers. Science in Context,... 

Henry, J. (1986). Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy. History of Science, 24, 335-381. 

I am very sorry, that to the many... difficulties which you meet with, and must therefore surmount, in the serious and effectual prosecution of Experimental Philosophy, I must add one discouragement more, which will perhaps as much surprise you as dishearten you and it is, that besides that you will find... many of the experiments published by Authors, or related to you by the persons you converse with, false or unsuccessful,. .. you will meet with several Observations and Experiments, which though communicated for true by Candid Authors or undistrusted Eye-witnesses, or perhaps recommended to you by your own experience, may upon further tried disappoint your expectation, either not at all succeeding constantly, or at least varying much from what you expected. 

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