Experimental essay by Robert Boyle as an emerging genre in Early Modern England

Tatiana B. Alenkina

doi:10.21638/spbu09.2024.306

Authors

Tatiana B. Alenkina Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 1, ul. Kerchenskaya, Moscow, 117303, Russia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu09.2024.306

Abstract

The focus of the article is one of the most influential genres in the perspective of science communication
in Early Modern England and evolution of science writing as a whole — the genre of an “experimental essay” (R. Boyle). Despite the fact that the essay as a genre is widely used in most diverse contexts, the research works on the experimental essay are still not so many. The article is aimed at giving an analysis of the emergence and development of the experimental essay in the historical pragmatics perspective. The essay is put against the context of its precursors (M. de Montaigne and F. Bacon), as well as the sociocultural background of Early Modern England. The personality of Robert Boyle is considered as the portrait of an epoch — the ideal of a “gentleman-scholar” and a “Christian virtuoso”. Boyle was against Scholasticism in support of the inductive method of experimental philosophy, which was later given as a methodological doctrine of the Royal Society. A talented scholar and educated person, Boyle realized the necessity of finding the best text genre as an effective way of persuading the readers and reaching his own goals. These rhetorical experiments were conducted by Boyle throughout his life: from the lengthy treatises to essays, essay-tracts, and essay-articles. Boyle’s searches are between literature and science; his literary technology is provided in the proemial essay, which gives a certain methodological program of the experimental essay: brevity, perspicuity, the “naked way of writing”. The analysis of Boyle’s essays helps see the practical realization of the principles of the experimental essay: dialogicity of writing, detailed account of the experiment, involved, narrative discourse.

Keywords:

Boyle, experimental essay, experimental philosophy, proemial essay, entlemanscholar

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