Steven Shapin

'Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life' by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer is often referenced as a seminal work in the history and philosophy of science that explores the clash between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle in the 17th century. The book focuses on their dispute over the role and validity of experimentation, particularly Boyle's use of the air-pump in his experiments, against the backdrop of Hobbes's scepticism about the reliability of experimental knowledge. The book explores the foundational debates about the nature of scientific knowledge, the role of experimentation, and the construction of scientific authority.

Positioned at a crucial intersection in the history of science, "Leviathan and the Air-Pump" is not merely a recounting of a scientific disagreement but an analysis of how social, political, and philosophical concerns shape scientific practice and knowledge. It illuminates the 17th century's intellectual landscape, a period when modern science's methodologies and epistemologies were in their nascent stages of development. The book has become a landmark study, influencing not only the history of science but also the fields of sociology, philosophy, and the wider humanities, by showing how scientific knowledge is a product of its social context.

However, "Leviathan and the Air-Pump" is not an easy read. Shapin and Schaffer's work is dense and requires a deep understanding of both the historical context and the philosophical debates it engages with. The authors dissect minutiae of the Hobbes-Boyle debate with a level of detail that necessitates a careful and attentive reading. Their analysis goes beyond the surface of the historical narrative to explore the underlying philosophical, social, and political dimensions that influenced the development of scientific knowledge. As such, this book appeals to a specialized audience interested in the intricate workings of scientific thought and its historical development.

At some stage I put the book down and yet to pick it up again.… (more)

This is a narrowly focused, dense, scholarly book. It's about Robert Boyle and his air pump, how the air pump was a paradigmatic example for Boyle's goal of establishing an experimental community, a community dedicated to coming to understand nature via laboratory experiments. Of course Boyle was successful - we live today in the world he built.

This book focuses mostly on the challenges to Boyle from Thomas Hobbes, but we hear about a few other challenges too. I must say, this book was a slog for me. I studied physics in college, but there is not much recognizable physics here. This is all before Newton published! The ideas here are pretty strange! It's fascinating really to see how folks struggled with ideas that by now we have worked through quite thoroughly... but actually to come at the puzzles freshly through these early modern eyes... it reinvigorates my curiosity!

A key aspect of the time of these debates - these unfolded in the early years of the reign of Charles II, the monarchy restored after the civil war and the republic of Cromwell etc. People were really looking for stability after a time of extreme turmoil. Hobbes advocated a kind of extreme stability, rigidity really, modeled on Euclidean geometry. Physics should be basic on logic and axioms. Boyle advocated a middle way. Folks could agree to disagree on theories about why things happened, but they could agree on what things happened - experimentally observed facts.

How can you tell if your equipment is working? You need to be able to reproduce the results others have observed. But then, how can you independently confirm those observations by others? This is a nice conundrum. This book takes us through the story of hmmm anomalous suspension... darned if I know... it's like water or mercury in a barometer can get stuck at the top of the tube somehow, not pushed up by air pressure but maybe it's the van der Waals force or something. It's really true, experimental equipment tends to be temperamental and real experience tends to be messier than the nice pretty picture that gets presented in the textbooks.

I don't know how politics and science were tangling in 1985 when this book came out. It sure seems a lot more crucial today in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic! Science requires a suitable degree of political support and freedom. Science can in turn support society. This symbiotic relationship grew out of early modern times, especially after the Thirty Years War on the continent and the English Civil War. Can it survive the turbulence of the early 21st Century?… (more)