---
title: "Leviathan and the Air-Pump"
chunk: 6/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_and_the_Air-Pump"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:36:51.494994+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Chapter VI: Replication and Its Troubles: Air-Pumps in the 1660s ==
Chapter 6 is an evaluation of the technologies stated in chapter 2 and their role in replication - namely replication of the material technology and the utility of virtual witnessing.  The chapter focuses on the propagation of the pump via the experimental community.
The air-pump was first developed in Oxford and London with the help of the Royal Society (and in response to Hobbes criticism) beginning in 1659.  It was during its development that Robert Moray wrote to Christiaan Huygens (Holland) detailing the changes Boyle would be making to the original design of his pump.  Huygens rejected Boyle's changes and set about making his own alterations.  "Christiaan Huygens was the only natural philosopher in the 1660s who built an air-pump that was outside the direct management of Boyle and Hooke."  At the end of Huygens development, Huygens claimed that "my pneumatic pump was begun to work since yesterday, and all that night a bladder stayed inflated within it [which was a test for the goodness of a pump]...which Mr. Boyle was not able to effect."
Indeed, he discovered a phenomenon called anomalous suspension (the suspension of water in a Toricellian apparatus when the water was purged of air, but when a bubble was introduced the water fell) "whose outcome measured the excellence of any air-pump...[and] to interpret this calibration phenomenon, Huygens had summoned into existence a new fluid and challenged the sufficiency of the weight and spring of common air.  The effect of this fluid was only visible in good pumps."  However, "for more than eighteen months neither of Huygens' claims were granted the status of matters of fact" and it is in this time period that we see how the troubles of replication were dealt with by contemporaries.  The dispute resulted in a flurry of letters between Boyle and Huygens, each attacking the integrity of the other's machine (and by extension the theories of their makers).  "So in March and April 1663 it became clear that unless the phenomenon could be produced in England with one of the two pumps available, then no one in England would accept the claims Huygens had made, or his competence in working the pump" - full and complete breakdown of the technology of virtual witnessing.  Thus, Huygens travelled to London and became part of the Royal Society and replicated his matter of fact.
Another problem with replication was that the pumps were constantly being rebuilt, and so results would vary with each reconstruction.
According to Shapin and Schaffer there were two main problems with replication in the 1660s.  (1) "The accomplishment of replication was dependent on contingent acts of judgment.  One cannot write down a formula saying when replication was or was not achieved" and (2) "if replication is the technology which turn belief into knowledge, then knowledge-production depends not just on the abstract exchange of paper and ideas but on the practical social regulation of men and machines."  Thus, "the effective solution to the problem of knowledge was predicated upon a solution to the problem of social order."

== Chapter VII: Natural Philosophy and the Restoration: Interests in Dispute ==
"Hobbes and Boyle used the work of the 1640s and 1650s to give rival accounts of the right way to conduct natural philosophy" and, in chapter 7, Shapin and Schaffer show how those models were interpreted and supported by Restoration society.  "The experience of the War and the Republic showed that disputed knowledge produced civil strife...Boyle's technologies could only gain assent within a secure social space for experimental practice...[while] Hobbes assaulted the security of that space because it was yet one more case of divided power."
In essence, Boyle's theory and Hobbes's theory are inspired by the same problem: what to do when people can't agree on the truth.  Boyle's supporters  "Wilkins and Ward were ejected from the universities...they argued against each other about the virtues of toleration or suppression of Dissent.  Wilkins attacked the Uniformity Act as too coercive: he would have preferred that the Church 'stand without whipping.'"  "These exchanges give considerable point to the proposals that Boyle and his allies produced for the establishment of a social space in which dissent would be safe and tolerable."  In addition, "Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667) labeled Hobbesian dogmatism as tyranny, and uncontrolled private judgement as enthusiasm.  Such dangers were to be excluded from the community - otherwise debate would not be safe."  "The works of Barlow, Pett, and Dury argued that the balance of disputing sects was better than a state that included a cowed and disaffected party coerced into silence."  "With Hobbes in view...Glanvill insisted that 'dogmatizing is the great disturber both of our selves, and the world with-out us: for while we wed an opinion, we resolvedly ingage against every one that opposeth it...hence grow Schisms, heresies, and anomalies beyond Arithmetick."
Adversaries of the experimental method took offense in two ways.  The first was to "satirize the low status of experimental labour" and label their discipline as little more than children playing with toys.  And the second, more social ingrained argument, was that the division between Church and the discovery of "matters of fact" "would weaken, rather than strengthen, the fortunes of the Church." "Boyle portrayed the work of experiment as distinct from that of the Church.  Yet its work was also valuable for the churchmen.  If the rules of the experimental game were obeyed, then the game would work well for the godly.  These were the aspects of experimental philosophy that More and his allies found useful at the Restoration."  As we have seen previously, this allied relationship between natural philosophy and the clergy was unacceptable to Hobbes because it undermined the political authority of the King and caused social instability by splitting the allegiances of his subjects between his own temporal authority over their bodies and the spiritual authority harnessed by the clergy.