Robert Boyle 1627 - 1691 (Part 12) In approaching difficulties, Boyle recognized that the Bible’s purpose was not to provide quantitative scientific descriptions of the natural world like a textbook. Using this interpretive framework, he dealt forthrightly with issues of when to evaluate a passage as poetry or narrative, and when it should be treated as descriptive vs. prescriptive. He followed Calvin’s teaching on accommodation, that the Holy Spirit used language appropriate to the common man, not specialists. The Bible contains easily-understood phrases such as the rising and setting of the sun, using the language of appearance instead of quantitative, technical description. Thus, passages that seemed to teach geocentricity could be understood as figures of speech without sacrificing verbal inspiration. As such, Boyle is a good model for today’s Christian virtuosi who desire to advance science without sacrificing Biblical authority. Michael Hunter, a Boyle historian and compiler of his voluminous output, is impressed with the depth and breadth of his thinking on these subjects: Boyle’s major preoccupation was the relationship between God’s power, the created realm, and man’s perception of it, a topic on which he wrote extensively. ... Boyle laid stress on the extent to which God’s omniscience transcended the limited bounds of human reason, taking a position that contrasted with the rather complacent rationalism of contemporary divines .... He also reflected at length on the proper understanding of final causes, and in conjunction with this provided one of the most sophisticated expositions of the design argument in his period. Boyle’s significance for the history of science depends almost as much on the profound views on difficult issues put forward in these philosophical writings as it does on his experimental treatises. Hunter goes on to describe the intense hostility Boyle expressed against any “views of nature that he saw as detracting from a proper appreciation of God’s power in his creation.” These included lengthy published arguments against Aristotelianism and the materialism of Thomas Hobbes, “despite his professed disinclination to involve himself in philosophical disputes.” On the positive side, the titles of some of Boyle’s books hint at their rich contents: Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy; Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature; The Excellency of Theology, Compar’d with Natural Philosophy, Discourse of Things Above Reason, Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things, and especially, The Christian Virtuoso. “In these,” Hunter writes, “Boyle made a profound contribution to an understanding of what he saw as the proper relationship between God and the natural world, and man’s potential for comprehending this.” to be concluded...
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:12:13 +0000