Ex rerum Causis Supremum noscere Causam

Introduction

Robert Boyle's Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things is the most detailed treatment of final causality to appear in the seventeenth century. Remarkably, given the importance of the doctrine of final causes for understanding the dramatic shift in philosophies of nature during this period, this work has received scant attention from historians and philosophers of science. To date there has been only one sustained scholarly examination of this treatise. In an article published a decade ago, James Lennox argues that Boyle's primary aim in this work was to provide a defence of teleological inference in experimental science. In Lennox's view, the Disquisition should be viewed as an early exercise in the analysis of teleological explanation in natural science, a project that has proven popular in recent years.

I believe that Lennox's interpretation presents a distorted picture of Boyle's thinking, and that a much more satisfactory account of his aims in this treatise is possible. To this end, I undertake a fresh examination of this work, paying particular attention to (i) the adversarial context in which it was written, (ii) the kinds of questions Boyle sought to answer, (iii) the technical distinctions deployed in his arguments and (iv) the reasoning undergirding his conclusions.