Shapin and Schaffer 1985

From STS Wiki

Shapin, S., & Schaffer Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (1985).

This celebrated study, perhaps more than any other, served to establish the utility of the principle of symmetry in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). The book examines the controversy between Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), author of the famed Leviathan (1651), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who is regarded as the originator of the experimental method in science. Hobbes viewed science as the product of human reason, which is capable of discovering absolute truths (such as the axioms of geometry); distrusting any kind of rule by committee, Hobbes believed that natural philosophers should have a ruler who, when disputes arose, could lay down the law. Boyle, in contrast, believed that science should be founded on facts established by experiment, and these facts should be evaluated by a community willing to be persuaded by them. In the resulting controversy, Boyle emerged as the winner. In standard histories of science, Hobbes' views are explained as a thinly-veiled attempt to justify absolute monarchy, but Boyle's success is explained by his discovery of the experimental method and its ability to produce incontestable facts. Shapin and Schaffer show that Boyle's victory was as much a product of its social context as Hobbes' loss. Boyle's detailed and modest presentation of matters of fact was part of a broader ideological system that took shape in the wake of the Restoration, when a return to absolute monarchy was still a very real possibility. Scientists, following Boyle, portrayed themselves as modest, trustworthy men who collectively agreed to be persuaded by matters of fact. They strongly contrasted themselves with advocates of absolute monarchy, including religious dogmatists, for whom knowledge was a matter of individual revelation from God. It is difficult to come away from the Leviathan and the Air Pump without conceding that Boyle's victory came about, not because he was correct, but rather because his views had widespread political appeal. Bryan Pfaffenberger 08:16, 15 August 2006 (EDT)