CHED Public Seminar: ' 'Physica Peregrinans, or the Travelling Naturalist': Robert Boyle, his Informants and the Role of the Exotic in late 17th-century Natural Philosophy
Event Details
- Date:
- Thursday, 16 April 2015
- Time:
- 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
- Room:
- CCCS Seminar Room, Level 4
- Location:
- Forgan Smith Tower
- UQ Location:
- Forgan Smith Building (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://www.ched.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=220095&pid=170139
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Ms Narelle Jones
- Phone:
- 69492
- Email:
- narelle.jones@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- History of European Discourses
Event Description
- Full Description:
- This paper will be devoted to the assiduous records that the eminent natural philosopher, Robert Boyle (1627-91), kept of his interviews with travellers returning from exotic locations throughout the world. Boyle’s intention was to deploy these in a work that he planned but never brought to fruition entitled ‘Physica Peregrinans, or the Travelling Naturalist, containing Answers given to Severall Questions propounded by the Author to Navigators & other Travellers in remote Countreys’. The implications of this neglected body of evidence will be assessed both for Boyle’s relations with his milieu and for his intellectual ambitions, and it will be argued that Boyle’s invocation of the exotic formed an important strand of his anti-Aristotelianism: his aim was to illustrate how, in contrast to Aristotle’s rationalisation of common experience, nature was in fact often surprising and exciting in its fecundity and variety, and people’s conception of what was possible needed to be expanded accordingly.
Professor Michael Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, is the world’s foremost expert on Robert Boyle, the seventeenth-century scientist who was one of the founding members of the Royal Society. A historian of international stature, Professor Hunter has made an incomparable contribution to the understanding of early modern science. During the past 20 years he has been the principal editor of Boyle’s Works (14 volumes, 1999-2000), Correspondence (6 volumes, 2001) and Workdiaries. These editions built on his work in the late 1980s in cataloguing Boyle’s vast archive.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
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- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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