Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life [Hardcover]

Steven Shapin (Author), Simon Schaffer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691083932 | ISBN-13: 978-0691083933 | Publication Date: February 1986

". . . Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have ventured beyond ordinary history of science or history of ideas to produce a novel "exercise in the sociology of scientific knowledge.' . . . a historical study rich in new interpretations and notable for the use of sources of a kind not hitherto fully exploited by scholars".--Clive Holmes, American Historical Review "Shapin and Schaffer work out the implications of these debates [between Hobbes and Boyle] for the history of science with great skill of interpretation and exposition. They use their findings and their analysis to give an explanation of the experimental enterprise in general, which, although it is not philosophical in nature, always takes philosophy most seriously. This is simply one of the most original, enjoyable and important books published in the history of science in recent years".--Owen Hannaway, Technology and Culture "If any proof of the intellectual buoyancy or intrinsic worth of the history and philosophy for science was needed, nothing better could be provided than this study by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. . . . Their findings suggest the futility of wrenching science from its ideological context, and not only with respect to the seventeenth century; they also detect parallels with the crisis of confidence affecting contemporary science".--Charles Webster, The Times Literary Supplement

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Princeton's previous editions: "Shapin and Schaffer have written one of the very first lives of an instrument. . . . They [also] had the wit . . . to take virtually the first piece of apparatus of the new laboratory science, and so have given us an unparalleled vignette of the birth pangs of a new style of reasoning. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Steven Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Simon Schaffer is professor of history of science at the University of Cambridge.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 456 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr (February 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691083932
• ISBN-13: 978-0691083933
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,142,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting analysis,but has an acknowledged pro-Hobbes bias, January 4, 1999

By 

Howard Robbins (Thousand Oaks, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Paperback)

The authors begin their review of the 17th-century Hobbes-Boyle controversy by declaring their intent to take a strongly pro-Hobbes stance, so it is not surprising that they end by concluding that "Hobbes was right". (About what, is not clear.)

Their stated reason for adapting this biased perspective is that the opposite view (that Hobbes was wrong) has been so thoroughly documented that not much new could be added. Only by adopting a "charitable" view of Hobbes, and a critical view of his opponents, could they make a significant new contribution. In other words, they wanted to make a splash, not a ripple.

Their bias is expressed by selective omission of information unfavorable to Hobbes. For example, in Hobbes's "Dialogus Physicus", his fallacious solution of the cube-duplication problem has been deleted, without mentioning that it was fallacious. Also, the reader is not informed that a "Torricelli apparatus" and a "mercury barometer" are functionally identical; the height of the mercury column varies with weather conditions. This variability was a problem for Hobbes, but not for Boyle. But it is not mentioned, except in connection with a suggestion that the experimentalists may have fudged their data.

Also, the authors should have noted that Hobbes's a-priori rationalist philosophy is not a viable alternative to experimentalism, because it is based on an elementary logical fallacy: you cannot make up definitions and postulates arbitrarily AND claim that deductions from them give certainty about the real world.

3 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars just what I needed, February 7, 2010

By 

Miles S. Hatfield - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Paperback)

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