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A28939 Animadversions upon Mr. Hobbes's Problemata de vacuo by the Honourable Robert Boyle ... Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691. 1674 (1674) Wing B3926; ESTC R11777 34,770 106

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ANIMADVERSIONS UPON M R. HOBBES's PROBLEMATA DE VACUO By the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Fellow of the Royal Society LONDON Printed by William Godbid and are to be Sold by Moses Pitt at the Angel over against the little North Door of St. Paul's Church 1674. PREFACE UPON the coming abroad of Mr. Hobbes's Problemata Physica finding them in the hands of an Ingenious Person that intended to write a Censure of them which several Employments private and publick have it seems hinder'd him to do I began as is usual on such occasions to turn over the leaves of the Book to see what particular things it treated of This I had not long done before I found by obvious passages in the third Chapter or Dialogue as well as by the Title which was Problemata de Vacuo that I was particularly concern'd in it upon which I desired the Possessor of the Book who readily consented to leave me to examin that Dialogue on which condition I would leave him to deal with all the rest of the Book Nor did I look upon the Reflections I meant to make as repugnant to the Resolutions I had taken against writing Books of Controversie since the Explications Mr. Hobbes gave of his Problems seem'd to contain but some Variations of or an Appendix to his Tract De Natura Aeris which being one of the two first pieces that were published against what I had written was one of those that I had expresly reserv'd my self the liberty to answer But the Animadversions I first made upon Mr. Hobbes's Problems De Vacuo having been casually mislaid e're they were finished before I had occasion to resume my task there past time enough to let me perceive that his Doctrine which 't will easily be thought that the Vacuists disapproved was not much relished by most of the Plenists themselves the modernest Peripateticks and the Cartesians each of them maintaining the Fullness of the World upon their own grounds which are differing enough from those of our Author the natural Indisposition I have to Polemical Discourses easily perswaded me to let alone a Controversie that did not appear needful And I had still persisted in my silence if Mr. Hobbes had not as 't were summon'd me to break it by publishing again his Explications which in my Examen of his Dialogue De Natura Aeris I had shewn to be erroneous And I did not grow at all more satisfied to find him so constant as well as stiff an Adversary to interspers'd Vacuities by comparing what he maintains in his Dialogue De Vacuo with some things that he teaches especially concerning God the Cause of Motion and the Imperviousness of Glass in some other of his writings that are published in the same Volume with it For since he asserts that there is a God and owns Him to be the Creator of the World and since on the other side the Penetration of Dimensions is confessed to be impossible and he denies that there is any Vacuum in the Universe it seems difficult to conceive how in a World that is already perfectly full of Bodie a Corporeal Deity such as he maintains in his Append. ad Leviath cap. 3 can have that access even to the minute parts of the Mundane Matter that seems requi● site to the Attributes and Operations that belong to the Deity in reference to the World But I leave Divines to consider what Influence the conjunction of Mr. Hobbes's two Opinions the Corporeity of the Deity and the perfect Plenitude of the World may have on Theology And perhaps I should not in a Physical Discourse have taken any notice of the proposed Difficulty but that to prevent an Imputation on the Study of Natures Works as if it taught us rather to degrade than admire their Author it seem'd not amiss to hint in transitu that Mr. Hobbes's gross Conteption of a Corporeal God is not only unwarranted by found Philosophy but ill befriended even by his own My Adversary having propos'd his Problems by way of Dialogue between A. and B 't will not I presume be wonder'd at that I have given the same form to my Animadversions which come forth no earlier because I had divers other Treatises that I was more concern'd for to publish before them But because it will probably be demanded why on a Tract that is but short my Animadversions should take up so much room It will be requisite that I here give an account of the bulk of this Treatise And first having found that there was not any one Problem in whose Explication as propos'd by Mr. Hobbes I saw cause to acquiesce I was induc'd for the Readers ease and that I might be sure to do my Adversary no wrong to transcribe his whole Dialogue bating some few Transitions and other Clauses not needful to be transferr'd hither Next I was not willing to imitate Mr. Hobbes who recites in the Dialogue we are considering the same Experiments that he had already mentioned in his Tract De Natura Aeris without adding as his own that I remember any new one to them But my unwillingness to tire the Reader with bare Repetitions of the Arguments I employ'd in my Examen of that Tract invited me to endeavour to make him some amends for the exercise of his patience by inserting as occasion was offer'd five or six new Experiments that will not perhaps be so easily made by every Reader that will be able now that I have perspicuously propos'd them to understand them And lastly since Mr. Hobbes has not been content to magnifie himself and his way of treating of Physical matters but has been pleas'd to speak very slightingly of Experimentarian Philosophers as he stiles them in general and which is worse to disparage the making of elaborate Experiments I judg'd the thing he seem'd to aim at so prejudicial to true and useful Philosophy that I thought it might do some service to the less knowing and less wary sort of Readers if I tryed to make his own Explications enervate his Authority and by a somewhat particular Examen of the Solutions he has given of the Problems I am concern'd in shew that 't is much more easie to undervalue a frequent recourse to Experiments than truly to explicate the Phaenomena of Nature without them And since our Author speaking of his Problemata Physica which is but a small Book scruples not to tell His Majesty to whom he dedicates them that he has therein comprised to speak in his own terms the greatest and most probable part of his Physical Meditations and since by the alterations he has made in what he formerly writ about the Phaenomena of my Engine he seems to have design'd to give it a more advantageous form I conceive that by these selected Solutions of his one may without doing him the least injustice make an estimate of his way of discoursing about Natural things And though I would not interess the credit of Experimentarian Philosophers in no considerabler