Leviathan and the Air Pump: Highlights

Historians of Science David Wootton and Michael Hunter review the
controversial book 50 years on Robert Boyle's air-pump experiments
in 1659 provoked a lively debate over the possibility of a vacuum.
The air-pump, a complicated and expensive device, became an emblem
of the new experimental science that was promoted by the Royal
Society. However, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes challenged both the
validity of Boyle’s experiment and the philosophical foundations of
this new approach to science. In their controversial book Leviathan
and the Air-Pump (1985) Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer took up
Hobbes’s case, arguing that experimental findings depend for their
validity on the scientific culture in which they are made. David
Wootton (Anniversary Professor of History, University of York)
reviews this controversy and present a new view of the dispute
between Boyle and Hobbes, with responses by Robert Boyle's
biographer Michael Hunter (Emeritus Professor of History,
Birkbeck). The discussion is introduced by Ritchie Robertson
(Taylor Professor of the German, University of Oxford).