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dc.contributor.authorYeo, Richard
dc.contributor.editorWolfe, CT
dc.contributor.editorGal, O
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-03T11:13:36Z
dc.date.available2017-05-03T11:13:36Z
dc.date.issued2010
dc.date.modified2011-05-12T07:02:40Z
dc.identifier.isbn978-90-481-3685-8
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_10
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/36651
dc.description.abstractRobert Boyle and John Beale had connections with Samuel Hartlib and his correspondence circle. The position of these three figures can be taken as an 'empirical' one in the sense that they favoured 'particulars' over 'systems'. But differences emerge if we consider their attitudes towards the role of memory in Baconian natural histories. Hartlib's call for empirical particulars coexisted with an expectation that information could be reduced and arranged to aid both memory and thinking. As one model, William Petty promoted John Pell's reductions of mathematical knowledge. Beale's letters to Boyle (in the 1660s) urged systematic ordering of empirical data in the service of memory and hypotheses. Although Boyle did believe that a disciplined individual memory could embody multifarious experiences, he resisted Beale's advice. What we accept as Boyle's 'empirical' attitude was not so much a distinctive commitment to gathering matters of fact - something also professed by Hartlib and Beale - but a refusal to condense and arrange material in the way they demanded. Beale's promotion of memory �chniques that relied on highly structured arrangements of units seems to have aggravated Boyle's existing suspicion of premature systems.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.description.publicationstatusYes
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSpringer
dc.publisher.placeUnited States
dc.publisher.urihttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-90-481-3686-5_10
dc.relation.ispartofbooktitleThe Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge: Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science
dc.relation.ispartofchapter10
dc.relation.ispartofstudentpublicationN
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom185
dc.relation.ispartofpageto210
dc.relation.ispartofeditionfirst
dc.rights.retentionY
dc.subject.fieldofresearchBritish history
dc.subject.fieldofresearchHistorical studies not elsewhere classified
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode430304
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode430399
dc.titleMemory and Empirical Information: Samuel Hartlib, John Beale and Robert Boyle
dc.typeBook chapter
dc.type.descriptionB1 - Chapters
dc.type.codeB - Book Chapters
gro.facultyArts, Education & Law Group, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences
gro.date.issued2010
gro.hasfulltextNo Full Text
gro.griffith.authorYeo, Richard R.


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