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The cover of Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

How did experiments come to count as proof, and what did Hobbes and Boyle each think was at stake for order in society?

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At a glance

Author
Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer

Why read it

  • You will see that settling what counts as knowledge also settles who is trusted and how a community is run
  • You will learn why a repeated experiment does not end an argument by itself
  • You will understand that scientists form a community with rules of behavior, much like a small society

Who it is for

  • A researcher who wonders why results are hard to replicate
  • A manager who must decide whose evidence to trust
  • A student of science and politics

Contents

  1. · ILLUSTRATIONS ·
  2. · INTRODUCTION TO THE 2011 EDITION ·
  3. Up for Air: Leviathan and the Air-Pump a Generation On
  4. Understanding Experiment
  5. · II ·
  6. Seeing and Believing: The Experimental Production of Pneumatic Facts
  7. · III ·
  8. Seeing Double: Hobbes’s Politics of Plenism before 1660
  9. · IV ·
  10. The Trouble with Experiment: Hobbes Versus Boyle
  11. · V ·
  12. Boyle’s Adversaries: Experiment Defended
  13. · VI ·
  14. Replication and Its Troubles: Air-Pumps in the 1660s
  15. · VII ·
  16. Natural Philosophy and the Restoration: Interests in Dispute
  17. · VIII ·
  18. The Polity of Science: Conclusions

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