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Shapin and Schaffer work out the implications of these debates [between Hobbes and Boyle] for the history of science with great skill of interpretation and exposition. They use their findings and their analysis to give an explanation of the experimental enterprise in general, which, although it is not philosophical in nature, always takes philosophy most seriously. This is simply one of the most original, enjoyable and important books published in the history of science in recent years. -- Owen Hannaway, Technology and Culture
If any proof of the intellectual buoyancy or intrinsic worth of the history and philosophy for science was needed, nothing better could be provided than this study by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. . . . Their findings suggest the futility of wrenching science from its ideological context, and not only with respect to the seventeenth century; they also detect parallels with the crisis of confidence affecting contemporary science. -- Charles Webster, The Times Literary Supplement
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In the aftermath of the English Civil War, as people were groping for new forms of political order, Robert Boyle built an air-pump to do exper?iments. Does the story of Roundheads and Restoration have something to do with the origins of experimental sci?ence? Schaffer and Shapin believed it does.
Focusing on the debates between Boyle and his archcritic Thomas Hobbes over the air-pump, the authors proposed that "solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order." Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.
The new approaches taken in Leviathan and the Air-Pump have been enormously influential on historical studies of science. Shapin and Schaffer found a moment of scientific revolution and showed how key scientific givens--facts, interpretations, experiment, truth--were fundamental to a new political order. Shapin and Schaffer were also innovative in their ethnographic approach. Attempting to understand the work habits, rituals, and social structures of a remote, unfamiliar group, they argued that politics were tied up in what scientists did, rather than what they said.
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Their stated reason for adapting this biased perspective is that the opposite view (that Hobbes was wrong) has been so thoroughly documented that not much new could be added. Only by adopting a "charitable" view of Hobbes, and a critical view of his opponents, could they make a significant new contribution. In other words, they wanted to make a splash, not a ripple.
Their bias is expressed by selective omission of information unfavorable to Hobbes. For example, in Hobbes's "Dialogus Physicus", his fallacious solution of the cube-duplication problem has been deleted, without mentioning that it was fallacious. Also, the reader is not informed that a "Torricelli apparatus" and a "mercury barometer" are functionally identical; the height of the mercury column varies with weather conditions. This variability was a problem for Hobbes, but not for Boyle. But it is not mentioned, except in connection with a suggestion that the experimentalists may have fudged their data.
Also, the authors should have noted that Hobbes's a-priori rationalist philosophy is not a viable alternative to experimentalism, because it is based on an elementary logical fallacy: you cannot make up definitions and postulates arbitrarily AND claim that deductions from them give certainty about the real world.
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