On the Boyle, No.10
What's New in Boyle Studies
Spring 2017
Contents of this issue:
- Introduction
- Boyle News
- '"All Mr Boyl's pieces": Robert Boyle and the Bodleian', by William Poole
- 'A Recently Discovered Boyle Letter of 1646', by Maria Boxall and Michael Hunter
- Publications on Boyle since On the Boyle, no. 9 (December 2009)
Introduction to On the Boyle, no. 10
Welcome to the Robert Boyle website, which has received a complete make-over. In addition to a new issue of On the Boyle, no. 10, the website has been reorganised, and this note indicates how and why.
First, On the Boyle, no. 10, replicates previous issues in providing a long-overdue section of 'Boyle News' and a list of recent publications on Boyle, in this case since On the Boyle, no. 9. In addition, it offers two pieces of new research on Boyle, one a lengthy article by Will Poole of New College, Oxford, on Boyle and the Bodleian, the second the publication of a hitherto unknown letter from Boyle dating from 1646 which has come to light at the Somerset Heritage Centre.
The text of each of these is introduced by a homepage which forms part of this issue of On the Boyle, but their long-term repository will be elsewhere on the website -- in the section, 'Research Articles', which also contains various research papers that have previously been published on the website, and which itself forms part of a new 'Resources' section of the website. In addition, this 'Resources' section includes various components of what used to be called the 'Researchers' Area' of the website, namely
- the cumulative 'Boyle Bibliography', which is updated with the recent items separately listed in On the Boyle
- the Occasional Papers of the Robert Boyle Project
- a complete set of back issues of On the Boyle, including an index
- information on the standard editions of The Works of Robert Boyle (1999-2000), The Correspondence of the Robert Boyle (2001) and Robert Boyle by Himself and his Friends (1994). This contains files listing the content of each volume of the editions and supplying corrigenda; perhaps most significant is the 'Supplement of letters that have come to light since the [Correspondence] edition was published', which has been updated to include new material
Beyond that, the section, 'View Boyle Manuscripts Online', has been revised and updated. The introductory section, 'About Boyle', still contains shorter and longer accounts of the great scientist, together with a life in pictures and a timeline on Boyle and the 17th century. To these have been added recommended reading on Boyle and his context, a list of Boyle's writings in chronological order of publication, and a set of useful links to related websites. Lastly, it should be noted that the 'Teachers' Area' has now been placed in the archive section. This part of the website was produced in 2004 as part of the project, 'Robert Boyle for the 21st Century', supported by a generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. However, it has long been overtaken by curricular and other developments in schools and it has now been sadly decided that its position on the website should be a rather subordinate one.
For executing these changes, profuse thanks are due to Adrian Tribe, whose contribution has gone far beyond the call of duty.
Boyle news - spring 2017
Peter Anstey and Alberto Vanzo (peter.anstey@sydney.edu.au; alberto.vanzo@email.it) are currently completing a monograph on early modern experimental philosophy that gives a central place to the writings and work of Robert Boyle.
The Boyle Lectures were revived in 2004 (see On the Boyle, no. 7) and continue to be given annually at St-Mary-le-Bow in the City of London. Mostly they are on broad contemporary themes concerning the relations between science and religion, that for 2015, for instance, being given by Russell Re Manning on 'Natural Theology Revisited (Again)', and that for 2016 by Sarah Coakley on 'Natural Theology in a Changed Key? Evolution, Co-operation and the God Question'. However, for those interested in Boyle the lecture for 2010 was especially apposite, being delivered by John Hedley Brooke on 'The Legacy of Robert Boyle – Then and Now'.
Kleber Cecon (klebercecon@gmail.com), who is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the State University of São Paulo, Brazil, has done extensive research on Boyle, particularly his chemistry. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University doing research on the scientific societies of the 17th century, and he hopes to do further work on Boyle at a later date.
Alan Chalmers (alan.chalmers@sydney.edu.au) has recently published a paper on Boyle's mechanical account of hydrostatics and pneumatics; another, in a symposium on historiography, on philosophy versus experiment in the work of Boyle; and a third, 'Robert Boyle's corpuscular chemistry: Atomism before its time', in an essay volume on the philosophy of chemistry (see the bibliography for details). Chalmers is currently completing a book on hydrostatics in the seventeenth century in which Boyle figures prominently.
In the summer of 2011 an exhibition was held at Clandon Park, Surrey, devoted to the work of Francis Barlow (c. 1626-1704), various of whose paintings were transferred to Clandon Park when it was built in the early 1720s from the home of Denzil Onslow, who had commissioned them. Although there is no evidence of a direct link between Boyle and Barlow, there are many indirect ones through such mutual contacts as John Evelyn and John Wilkins, and the paintings undoubtedly illuminate Boyle's milieu. This meant that it was appropriate for the Robert Boyle Project to publish the 34-page catalogue of the exhibition, Francis Barlow, Painter of Birds and Beasts (ISBN 978-0-9551608-9-9). This has a text by Nathan Flis which gives a comprehensive view of Barlow's artistic output and it is lavishly illustrated throughout: copies are available from m.hunter@bbk.ac.uk at a price of £12.00 (inc. post and packing). Readers will be saddened to learn that, in the terrible fire that destroyed Clandon Park on 28 April 2015, three of the most important canvasses were burned, though three survive.
Ted Davis (tdavis@messiah.edu) continues to follow Boyle studies with interest, although his main research interests have moved elsewhere. In addition to the published articles that are included in the bibliography, he has also brought out a lengthy series of blogs about Boyle's life, work, and faith. See http://biologos.org/blog/series/the-faith-of-a-great-scientist-robert-boyles-religious-life-attitudes-and-v.
Adela Deanova (adela.deanova@duke.edu) is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Duke University, writing a dissertation on the natural philosophy of Robert Boyle and John Locke, and Cavendish's critique of Boyle and Hooke. Her research focuses on core epistemological problems in early modern experimental philosophy: the relationship between hypotheses, observations and experiment, and the problem of unobservable entities.
Michelle DiMeo (mdimeo@chemheritage.org) is currently working on two essays concerning Boyle's medical recipes; one of these, 'Communicating Medical Recipes: Robert Boyle's Genre and Rhetorical Strategies for Print', is forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbook of Early Modern Literature, Science and Culture. She also continues to work on an intellectual biography of Lady Ranelagh that will expand upon her recent publication on Boyle's relationship with his sister Lady Ranelagh (see the bibliography).
The Edward Worth Library, Dublin, has acquired an important resource for Boyle studies in the form of a set of hard drives containing digitized images of a number of volumes of the Boyle Papers. These were made in connection with the project, 'Robert Boyle for the 21st Century', funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2004 (see On the Boyle, nos. 6-7), when one copy was deposited at the Royal Society while the other was retained by Michael Hunter for use in the project. With the project successfully completed, Professor Hunter kindly donated these hard drives to the Edward Worth Library in 2011. The resource includes the following volumes: Boyle Papers, vols. 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 17, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 38 and 44 and Royal Society MSS 193 and 194. For further details see http://edwardworthlibrary.ie/science-at-the-worth-library/robert-boyle-archive/
Greg Girolami of the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (ggirolam@illinois.edu), is currently compiling a census of all known copies of the first edition of Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661). Prof. Girolami would be glad to hear of copies, particularly in locations that are not well-served by standard bibliographical finding aids, and he would be happy to share information about his listing to anyone interested.
Thanks to the researches of Albert Gootjes (ajgootjes@hotmail.com), an item in the Boyle Papers, 'De natura gratiae efficacis ad amicum dissertatio' (BP 6, fols. 197-220), can at last be scratched from the list of unidentified items. It is a work of the Huguenot theologian Claude Pajon (1626-85), in which he denies that God operates immediately—i.e., apart from the Word—in human conversion. Originally composed in the early 1660s, the treatise survives in five other manuscripts. Boyle's copy represents the latest known stage of redaction (1676 or later), and is significant for demonstrating how Pajon extended his theory on grace to deny also divine concurrence. This turn to wider causal issues may have made the manuscript of interest to Boyle, but its precise route to him remains unknown. For details of the publications involved, see the bibliography.
Michael Hunter (m.hunter@bbk.ac.uk) published Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle with Ashgate in April 2015. In addition to material already published as articles and contributions to essay volumes, this includes a major unpublished study which reconstructs Boyle's planned compilation of narratives of strange places and phenomena, intended at once to entertain people and to expand their conception of the variety and potency of nature. There is also an introduction that surveys the state of Boyle studies, to which is appended an annotated edition of Boyle's list of desiderata for science; this has attracted much interest since a version of it was exhibited in the Royal Society's summer science exhibition in 2010 (see also Anna Marie Roos' entry below).
Ashley Inglehart (asjingle@umail.iu.edu) has recently completed a dissertation at Indiana University on Robert Boyle's views and influence on the problem of generation. She also published a paper, 'Boyle, Malpighi, and the Problem of Plastic Powers', in the volume Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy (see the bibliography)
In Our Time, the long-running Radio 4 history of ideas programme hosted by Melvyn Bragg, devoted its entire broadcast on 12 June 2014 to Boyle. The participants were Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos and Simon Schaffer. To listen to the episode, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0460p63.
The special issue of Intellectual History Review devoted to Robert Boyle came out in March 2015 as the first issue of volume 25 of the journal. This stemmed from a conference held at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin, in December 2011, and it comprises essays by Peter Anstey, Iordan Avramov, Kleber Cecon, Sue Hemmens, Michael Hunter, Michel DiMeo and Salvatore Ricciardo (for details, see the bibliography).
Jan-Erik Jones (je.jones@svu.edu) has signed a contract with Bloomsbury Publishing for a Companion to Boyle, which he will edit. This will comprise a dozen essays dealing with various aspects of Boyle's philosophy and natural philosophy; its contributors will include most of the leading experts on Boyle's thought. Essays are due to be delivered late in 2018 and the book will be published a year or so after that. For further information, contact the editor.
Conleth Loonan (conleth.loonan@nuim.ie) successfully completed a PhD in Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland on 'A Commentary on "The Sceptical Chymist" of Robert Boyle'.
John P. McCaskey (mailbox@johnmccaskey.com, www.johnmccaskey.com) has completed some research into Boyle's Baconianism. McCaskey thinks studies of Bacon's influence on Boyle have been marred by misunderstandings of Bacon, and he sees a much deeper and more profound influence than others have. Discovering which excerpts of Novum Organum Boyle read, and when, provided crucial information. Preliminary results of the research appeared in McCaskey's 2006 dissertation. More will appear in a monograph, nearing completion, on the history of conceptions of induction.
Jack MacIntosh (macintos@ucalgary.ca) is planning to build on his longstanding interest in Boyle to write a general book on Boyle's philosophy. For his numerous earlier contributions, see the entry under his name in the Boyle Bibliography in the 'Resources' section of this website.
Tina Malcolmson (cmalcolm@bates.edu) published Studies of Skin Color in the Early Royal Society: Boyle, Cavendish, Swift with Ashgate in 2013. It contains material on Boyle that considers his interest in skin color, as well as his reaction against the belief in polygenesis developing among some members of the Royal Society.
Ross and Gael Ramsay (wrhramsay@hotmail.com) are investigating the links between Boyle and John Dwight (1633-1703), who pioneered the production of porcelain at his factory at Fulham in the late 17th century. For more detail see their website, www.Bowporcelain.net.
Salvatore Ricciardo (salvatore.ricciardo@unibg.it) has recently published Robert Boyle. Il Naturalista Scettico, with Morcelliana of Brescia. This is the most substantial work on Boyle yet to appear in Italian. It places Boyle's scientific and physico-theological pursuits in the context of contemporary natural philosophy, discussing his views on miracles, the laws of nature and the mechanical philosophy as they emerged in his reading of Descartes and his exchanges with Hobbes and More. Salvatore has also published various articles on related topics (see the bibliography for details). He is currently working on the role of experimental evidence in the 17th-century debate on the void from Galileo to Boyle.
The Robert Boyle Summer School, held at Lismore, co. Waterford, Ireland, is now well-established. The 2014 Summer School had as its theme, science and religion, while that for 2015 considered issues relating to scientific publication in connection with the 350th anniversary of Philosophical Transactions; in conjunction with it, a memorial plaque to Boyle's sister, Lady Ranelagh, was unveiled at Lismore Castle. The 2016 Summer School was devoted to the place of science in Irish national identity, while that for 2017 will be devoted to 'What is Science For?'. For all four, see www.robertboyle.ie, and for details of plans for future years contact Eoin Gill, egill@wit.ie.
Dr Anna Marie Roos, FLA, FSA (aroos@lincoln.ac.uk), Reader at the University of Lincoln, has written an article “Perchance to Dream: Science and the Future” for the Appendix Magazine. The piece analyses Robert Boyle's famous wish list of scientific and technological discovery. As part of the article, Roos interviewed five current fellows of the Royal Society, asking them: If you were making a 21st century wish list of scientific discoveries or future innovations, what would you include? Their answers are both interesting and surprising. The article may be read online here: http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/perchance-to-dream-science-and-the-future. She has also recently published two scholarly articles that contain material on Boyle, particularly his theories about colour and magnetism (see the bibliography for details).
The Sceptical Chymist set a new record for the price of a book by Boyle on 25 March 2015, when a copy of the first edition sold at Bonham's in London for a staggering £362,500 – over five times the auctioneers' estimate of £50-70,000. It was lot 236 in the library of the late Dr Hugh Selbourne (1906-73), who had a remarkable collection of antiquarian books, including good copies of almost all of Boyle's works, the rest of which went for much more modest prices. See https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22731/.
Michel Siggen (michel.siggen@creusets.net) is writing a book devoted to Boyle's opposition to the scholastic view of nature provisionally entitled Robert Boyle et les chimères scolastiques. All extracts from Boyle's works will be translated into French.
Richard Yeo (r.yeo@griffith.edu.au) published Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science with University of Chicago Press in 2014. This book includes considerable material on Robert Boyle's practice of note-taking, along with discussion of his contemporaries such as John Locke, John Evelyn, Samuel Hartlib, William Petty and Robert Hooke.
'"All Mr Boyl's pieces": Robert Boyle and the Bodleian', by William Poole
We are delighted to make available an article by William Poole of New College, Oxford, in which he gives a comprehensive view of the books relating to Boyle that survive in the Bodleian Library. These include not only Boyle's presentation copies of his own works, but also lavish editions of learned works embossed with his crest that he donated to the library, items illustrating the interest in Chinese books that he shared with Oxford colleagues, and volumes that reached the Bodleian through such contacts of Boyle as Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. Because of its length, this has been provided as a PDF file which readers may download using the link below:
'"All Mr Boyl's pieces": Robert Boyle and the Bodleian', by William Poole
If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download it using this link: 
A Recently Discovered Boyle Letter of 1646, by Maria Boxall and Michael Hunter
The second research article included in this issue of On the Boyle presents the text of a hitherto unknown Boyle letter that has come to light at the Somerset Heritage Centre. This is not only interesting for the trenchant manner in which Boyle, the budding litterateur, dealt with a neighbourly dispute; it is also of interest because the letter retains the remnants of what is apparently the earliest extant specimen of Boyle' s heraldic seal. Again, because of its length, this has been provided as a PDF file which readers may download using the link below.
A Recently Discovered Boyle Letter of 1646, by Maria Boxall and Michael Hunter
If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download it using this link:
Publications on Boyle since On the Boyle, no. 9 (December 2009)
Agassi, Joseph, The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Boston Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, no. 298 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013)
Anstey, Peter, 'The theory of material qualities', in Peter R. Anstey (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 240-60, esp. 252-5
Anstey, Peter, 'Philosophy of experiment in early modern England: the case of Bacon, Boyle and Hooke', Early Science and Medicine, 19 (2014), 103-32
Anstey, Peter, 'Experimental pedagogy and the eclipse of Robert Boyle in England', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 115-31
Avramov, Iordan, and Hunter, Michael, 'Reading by proxy: the case of Robert Boyle', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 37-57
Baker, Tawrin, 'Color and Contingency in Robert Boyle's Works', Early Science and Medicine, 20 (2015), 536-61
Baudo, Laura, 'An Air of History: Joseph Wright's and Robert Boyle's Air Pump Narratives', Eighteenth Century Studies, 46 (2012), 1-28
Ben-Zaken, Avner, Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A Cross-cultural History of Autodidacticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2011), chapter 4
Boantza, Victor D., 'Chymical philosophy and Boyle's incongruous philosophical chymistry', in Ofer Gal and Raz Chen-Morris (eds), Science in the Age of Baroque (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), 257–84
Boantza, Victor D., and Tomory, Leslie, 'The “Subtile Aereal Spirit of Fountains”: Mineral Waters and the History of Pneumatic Chemistry', Early Science and Medicine, 21 (2016), 303-31
Bribiesca-Acevedo, Lucio M., 'Final causes, conjectures and probabilistic reasoning: Epistemic foundations of teleological explanations in Robert Boyle's experimental philosophy' (Ph.D. thesis, Institute for Philosophical Research, Autonomous National University of Mexico, 2010)
Bribiesca, Lucio, 'La controversia filosófico-natural entre Robert Boyle y Henry More acerca del vacío', in Benítez Grobet, Laura y Alejandra Velázquez Zaragoza (eds), Tras las huellas de Platón y el Platonismo en la Filosofía Moderna. De su Simiente Griega a la Ilustración (México: UNAM, 2013), pp. 285-307
Bribiesca, Lucio, 'Mecanicismo y Causas Finales en la Naturaleza: Una Tensión Epistémica en la Filosofía Natural de Robert Boyle', in José Luis Cárdenas (ed.), La Filosofía Natural del Siglo XVII: Tensiones y Desafíos (Bogotá: Editorial Universidad El Bosque, 2015)
Brundtland, Terje, 'After Boyle and the Leviathan: the second generation of British air pumps', Annals of Science, 68 (2011), 93-124
Burns, Duncan Thorburn, 'Previously unrecorded Dutch citations and versions of some of the scientific publications of Robert Boyle FRS', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 65 (2011), 295-99
Buyse, Filip, 'Spinoza and Robert Boyle's definition of mechanical philosophy', Historia Philosophica, 8 (2010), 73-89
Buyse, Filip, 'Boyle, Spinoza and The Hartlib Circle: The correspondence which never took place', in Filip Buyse (ed.), special issue on 'Letters by Early Modern Philosophers', Politics and Society, 7 no. 2 (2013), 34-53 [see http://socpol.uvvg.ro/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133&Itemid=139]
Buyse, Filip, 'Spinoza, Boyle, Galileo: Was Spinoza a strict mechanical philosopher?', Intellectual History Review, 23 (2013), 45-64
Carlin, Laurence, 'The importance of teleology to Boyle's natural philosophy', British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19 (2011), 665-82
Carlin, Laurence, 'Boyle's teleological mechanism and the myth of immanent teleology', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012), 54-63
Cecon, Kleber, 'Chemical translation: the case of Robert Boyle's experiments on sensible qualities', Annals of Science, 68 (2011), 179-98
Cecon, Kleber, 'Robert Boyle's experimental programme: Some interesting examples of the use of subordinate causes in chymistry and pneumatics', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 81-96
Chalmers, Alan The Scientist's Atom and the Philosopher's Stone (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), chapter 6
Chalmers, Alan, 'Boyle and the origins of modern chemistry: Newman tried in the fire', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 41 (2010), 1-10
Chalmers, Alan, 'Understanding science through its history', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 42 (2011), 150-3
Chalmers, Alan, 'Intermediate causes and explanations: the key to understanding the scientific revolution', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012), 551-62
Chalmers, Alan, 'Robert Boyle (1627–1691)', in Andrea I. Woody, Robin Findlay Hendry and Paul Needham (eds.) Philosophy and Chemistry (Oxford: North Holland, 2012), 47-53
Chalmers, Alan, 'Robert Boyle's mechanical account of hydrostatics and pneumatics: Fluidity, the spring of the air and their relationship to the concept of pressure', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 69 (2015), 429-454
Chalmers, Alan, 'Viewing past science from the point of view of present science, thereby illuminating both: Philosophy versus experiment in the work of Robert Boyle', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 55 (2016), 27-35 (available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shps.2015.05.005)
Chalmers, Alan, 'Boyle's corpuscular chemistry: Atomism before its time', in Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher (eds), Essays in Philosophy of Chemistry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 15-36
Clericuzio, Antonio, 'God and the Physical World in Boyle's Thought', in Hubertus Busche (ed.), Departure for Modern Europe/Aufbruch in das moderne Europa. A Handbook of Early Modern Philosophy (1400-1700) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2011), pp. 1033-47
Clericuzio, Antonio, 'Scienza, utopia e religione nell'Inghilterra del Seicento: Robert Boyle e il Circolo di Hartlib', in A. Clericuzio and F. Pellecchia (eds), Profanazioni filosofiche. Filosofia, Scienza e Religione nel sec. XVII, (Cassino: Editore Idest, 2011), pp. 9-40
Clericuzio, Antonio, 'Robert Boyle and seventeenth-century chemistry: A second look' [review of 2015 reissue of Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry], Metascience, 2015, published online
Clericuzio, Antonio, 'Medicine and Chemical Medicine in Seventeenth-century England: Boyle's Investigations of Ferment s and Fermentation', in Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg and Evan R. Ragland (eds.) Medicine and Early Modern Natural Philosophy (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol. 14) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 271-94
Corneanu, Sorana, Regimens of the Mind: Boyle, Locke and the Early Modern Cultura animi Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Davis, Edward B., 'The Science and Faith of Robert Boyle', in Deborah Haarsma and Scott Hoezee (eds) Delight in Creation: Scientists Share Their Work with the Church (Grand Rapids: Center for Excellence in Preaching, 2012), pp. 242-55 <http://ministrytheorem.calvinseminary.edu/essays/wiwmpk/Science.pdf>.
Davis, Edward B., 'Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)', in Heidi A. Campbell and Heather Looy (eds), A Science and Religion Primer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), pp. 55-7
DiMeo, Michelle, '”Such a sister became such a brother”: Lady Ranelagh's influence on Robert Boyle', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 21-36
Downing, Lisa, 'Sensible qualities and material bodies in Descartes and Boyle', in Lawrence Nolan (ed.), Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 109-35
Ducheyne, Steffen, 'The status of theory and hypotheses', in Peter R. Anstey (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 169-91, esp. 172-5
Elmer, Peter, The Miraculous Conformist: Valentine Greatrakes, the Body Politic, and the Politics of Healing in Restoration England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
Garber, Daniel, 'Remarks on the pre-history of the mechanical philosophy', in Daniel Garber and Sophie Roux (eds), The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 2–26
Gootjes, Albert, Claude Pajon (1626-1685) and the Academy of Saumur: The First Controversy over Grace (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 83-8, 120-6 [on 'De natura gratiae efficacis ad amicum dissertatio' (BP 6, fols. 197-220)]
Gootjes, Albert, 'Polemics, Rhetoric, and Exegesis: Claude Pajon (1626-1685) on Rom. 8:7,' in Martin I. Klauber (ed.), The Theology of the French Reformed Church: From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), pp. 296-320 [pp. 306-13 on 'De natura gratiae efficacis ad amicum dissertatio' (BP 6, fols. 197-220)]
[Hall], Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry, reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Hedesan, Georgiana D., 'Theory choice in the seventeenth century: Robert Boyle against the Paracelsian Tria Prima', in E. Tobin and C. Ambrosio (eds.), Theory Choice in the History of Chemical Practices (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 17–27
Hemmens, Susan, 'Crow's nest and beyond: Chymistry in the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683-1709', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 59-80
Hill, James, 'Robert Boyle (1627–1691)', in S.-J. Savonius-Wroth, Paul Schuurman and Jonathan Walmsley (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Locke (London: Continuum, 2010), pp. 47-51
Horstmann, Frank, Leviathan und die Erpumper: Erinnerungen an Thomas Hobbes in der Luftpumpe (Berlin: Verlag Joachim Mackensen, 2012) [ISBN 978 3 926535 52 8]
Hunter, Michael, 'Genius eclipsed: the fate of Robert Boyle', History Today, November 2009, pp. 20-5
Hunter, Michael, 'Robert Boyle and the Uses of Print', in Danielle Westerhof (ed.), The Alchemy of Medicine and Print: The Edward Worth Library, Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp. 110-24
Hunter, Michael, 'Robert Boyle and Secrecy', in Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin (eds.), Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science 1500-1800 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 87-104
Hunter, Michael, '”Physica Peregrinans, or the Travelling Naturalist': Robert Boyle, his workdiaries and his interviews with travellers to exotic regions', in Stoyan Denchev and Erika Lazarova (eds), The Role of Ego-Documents in the History of Science (Sofia: 'Za Bukvite', 2014), pp. 16-30
Hunter, Michael, 'Robert Boyle's Early Intellectual Evolution: A Reappraisal', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 5-19
Hunter, Michael, Boyle Studies: Aspects of the Life and Thought of Robert Boyle (1627-91) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)
Hunter, Michael, and Boran, Elizabethanne, 'Introduction', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 1-4
Inglehart, Ashley J., 'Boyle, Malpighi, and the Problem of Plastic Powers', in Peter Distelzweig, Benjamin Goldberg and Evan R. Ragland (eds), Medicine and Early Modern Natural Philosophy (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol. 14) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 295-321
Joy, Lynn S., 'Dispositional explanations: Boyle's problem, Newton's solution, Hume's response', in Andrew Janiak and Eric Schliesser (eds), Interpreting Newton: Critical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 320-41
Knight, Harriet, Organizing Natural Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century: The Work of Robert Boyle (Saarbrüken: Lap Lampert, 2011)
Levitin, Dmitri, 'The experimentalist as humanist: Robert Boyle on the history of philosophy', Annals of Science, 71 (2014), 149-82
Levitin, Dmitri, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of the New Science: Histories of Philosophy in England, c. 1640–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), especially pp. 376-97
MacIntosh, J.J., 'Robert Boyle' in Peter R. Anstey (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 73-95
MacIntosh, J.J., 'Hooke's Mechanical Mind', in C.U.M. Smith and Harry Whitaker (eds), Brain, Mind and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), pp. 59-73
Malcolmson, Cristina, 'Race and the experimental method in the early Royal Society', International Journal of Science in Society, 1 (2010), 227-41
Malcolmson, Cristina, Studies of Skin Color in the Early Royal Society: Boyle, Cavendish, Swift (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)
Manzini, Frédéric, 'Pour une juste appréciation de l'oeuvre de Robert Boyle', Études Irlandaises, 36 (2011), 9–19
Muller, Richard A., 'God and Design in the Thought of Robert Boyle', in Chris L. Firestone and Nathan A. Jacobs (eds), The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 87-111
Mulsow, Martin, 'Henry Stubbe, Robert Boyle and the idolatry of nature', in Sarah Mortimer and John Robertson (eds) The Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy 1600–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 121-34
Nauenberg, Michael, 'Solution to the long-standing puzzle of Huygens' “anomalous suspension”', Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 69 (2015), 327-41
Newman, William R., 'How not to integrate the history and philosophy of science: a reply to Chalmers', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 41 (2010), 203-213
Newman, William R., 'The reduction to the pristine state in Robert Boyle's corpuscular philosophy', in Mary Domski and Michael Dickson (eds), Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 2010), pp. 43–63
Newman, William R., 'Robert Boyle, Transmutation and the History of Chemistry before Lavoisier: A Response to Kuhn', Osiris, 29 (2014), 63-77
Newman, William R., 'Spirits in the Laboratory: Some Helmontian Collaborators of Robert Boyle', in Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing (eds), For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton (2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 2016), vol. 2, pp. 621-40
Newman, William R., 'A Preliminary Reassessment of Newton's Alchemy', in Rob Iliffe and George E. Smith (eds), Cambridge Companion to Newton, Second edition (Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 454-84 [on Boyle's influence on Newton]
Ott, Walter, Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), chapters 16–18
Paley, Ruth, Malcolmson, Cristina, and Hunter, Michael, 'Parliament and slavery, 1660–c.1710', Slavery and Abolition, 31 (2010), 257–81
Pasnau, Robert, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011), esp. 'Powers in Boyle', pp. 521-5
Pender, Stephen, 'The Anglican patient: Robert Boyle and the “Medicalised Self” in early modern England', The Seventeenth Century, 30 (2015), 455-83
Peterfreund, Stuart, Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin: The Way of the Argument from Design (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), chapter 2
Preston, Claire, The Poetics of Scientific Investigation in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford: University Press, 2015)
Ricciardo, Salvatore, 'Dalla materia allo spirito: Henry More, Robert Boyle e gli esperimenti pneumatici', in E.Giannetto, G.Giannini, and M. Toscano (eds), Intorno a Galileo. La storia della fisica e il punto di svolta galileiano (Rimini: Guaraldi, 2011), pp. 101-16
Ricciardo, Salvatore, 'Robert Boyle lettore di Descartes', in E.Giannetto, S. Ricciardo, E. Antonello, and M. Mazzoni (eds), Cielo e Terra.Fisica e astronomia, un antico legame, (Rome: Aracne 2014), pp. 85-102
Ricciardo, Salvatore, 'Robert Boyle on God's “experiments”: Resurrection, immortality and mechanical philosophy', in special Boyle issue of Intellectual History Review, 25 (2015), 97-113
Ricciardo, Salvatore, Robert Boyle. Il Naturalista Scettico (Brescia: Morcelliana 2016)
Rivett, Sarah, The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)
Roos, Anna Marie, 'The Saline Chymistry of Colour in Seventeenth-century Natural History', Early Science and Medicine, 20 (2015), 562-88
Roos Anna Marie, and Victor Boantza, 'Mineral waters across the Channel: matter theory and natural history from Samuel Duclos's Minerallogenesis to Martin Lister's Chymical Magnetism, ca. 1666–1686', Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 69 (2015), 373-94
Schmidgen, Wolfram, Exquisite Mixture: The Virtues of Impurity in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
Serra, J. Beltrán, Conesa, L. Miralles, and Hernández, M. Miralles (eds), Robert Boyle, Ensayos para una Historia Natural de la Sangre Humana, Collecció Humanitats No. 37 (Castelló de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 2011) [ISBN 978 84 8021 827 6]
Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (2nd edn., with new preface, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)
Siggen, Michel, 'La Place des causes finales dans la philosophie de la nature selon Robert Boyle', Cahiers de l'IPC (Faculté Libre de Philosophie Paris), 75 (Jan. 2012), 53-100
Siggen, Michel, 'Le Rejet de la notion de nature chez Robert Boyle', Cahiers de l'IPC (Faculté Libre de Philosophie Paris), Première partie : 77 (Jan. 2013), 59-100 ; Deuxième partie : 78 (juin 2013), 51-105
Siggen, Michel, 'L'Expérimentalisme de Robert Boyle', Nova et Vetera, Première partie : 88 (2013), n°4, 442-466 ; Deuxième partie : 89 (2014), n°1, 87-113
Siggen, Michel, 'Robert Boyle et le démon des formes substantielles', Cahiers de l'IPC (Faculté Libre de Philosophie Paris), Première partie : 80 (juin 2014), 81-139 ; Deuxième partie : 81 (janvier 2015), 23-95
Springborg, Patricia, 'Hobbes' challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A corporeal God', British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20 (2012), 903-34
Turner, Steven, and Laroche, Rebecca, 'Robert Boyle, Hannah Woolley, and syrup of violets', Notes and Queries, 58 (2011), 390-1
Yeo, Richard, 'Loose notes and capacious memory: Robert Boyle's note-taking and its rationale', Intellectual History Review, 20 (2010), 335-54
Yeo, Richard, 'Memory and empirical information: Samuel Hartlib, John Beale and Robert Boyle', in Charles Wolfe and Ofer Gal (eds), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge: Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), pp. 185-210
Yeo, Richard, Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)