The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought

Chapter 4: God and Design in the Thought of Robert Boyle

• Chapter 4 • God and Design in the Thought of Robert Boyle  .  In the last half century, historians of early modern science have recognized the importance of the religious, indeed, the theological dimension to the thought of the natural philosophers or scientists of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, reversing the older claims of a “warfare” between science and religion.1 Historians in other fields, namely philosophy and theology, have been slow to integrate these results into their understandings of the era. Historians of theology, certainly , have argued the case for more positive relations between theology and science, but there has been little examination of the theological and philosophical implications of the works of natural philosophers and scientists ,2 nor has there been any convincing analysis of the implications of the gathering revolt against a more or less traditional “substance metaphysics” for theological formulation in the early modern era. Historians of philosophy have studied the impact of religion on the philosophies in the early modern era but have not typically endeavored to close the circle of research by examining the theological works of the era and their relationships to philosophical developments.3 These connections between philosophy, natural science, and theology and the implications of the various natural philosophies old and 87 88 • Richard A. Muller new for theology were, however, seldom ignored by the writers of the early modern era, whose works consistently disoblige the more recent disciplinary boundaries of theology, philosophy, and science. In the case of the members of the Royal Society, the so-called virtuosi of the latter decades of the seventeenth century, scientific advance was often connected with renewed interest in divine providence and concerted attempts to write theology in and for their own era. A significant example of this approach is the thought of Robert Boyle, whose approach to theology and science rejected both the explicit notion of double truth (namely, that something can be true in philosophy but false in theology or true in theology and false in philosophy) proposed by some theologians of the era and the implicit acceptance of double truth embedded in the Baconian approach to learning.4 Although one would be hard put to identify any developed form of a confessional orthodoxy in his thought, he nonetheless evidences a concerted interest in maintaining an alliance between science and religion and in stressing the underlying theological or religious implications of science itself—while at the same time indicating a clear differentiation of methodologies.5 A significant illustration of this assumption is his emphasis on the importance of final causality for understanding both the world order and the divine involvement in it, an emphasis that not only distinguishes his thought from the deductive rationalisms of the era but also represents a conscious effort on his part to show the defect of a science or philosophy not directed toward issues of penultimate and ultimate purpose in the universe. Previous analyses of Boyle’s approach to causality have mainly presented his relationship to early modern science and to the mechanical philosophies of the era, claiming either that his approach to final cau sality was intended primarily as an argument for the legitimacy of tele ological conclusions in experimental science or that it serves primarily as the basis for a form of natural philosophical theology intended spe cifically to argue for the existence of God.6 The present essay will take up the question of Boyle’s intention in pressing the issue of final causality by identifying relationships or parallels between his understanding and lines of argument found in the theologies and philosophies of Reformed and Puritan writers in his time. Whereas the Mechanical phi- losophy, in which Boyle’s role was pivotal, is typically known for its attack on the Aristotelian substance metaphysic (which was engrained in the orthodox theologies of the day), we will see that Boyle himself held significant reservations over the dissolution of final causality in the sciences and in related philosophies and ultimately argued that a strong view of providence, and thus of providentially ordered teleology , is essential not only to religion but to science as well.7 Boyle on Providence and Final Causality The impact of the atomist or mechanistic critique of older Aristotelian models is evident in Boyle’s philosophical and theological argumentation .8 Boyle’s approach to theology and science assumed not only their cooperation but also their conjunction. He declared that rightly...