Robert Boyle and the limits of reason

About this book

In Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason, Jan W. Wojcik explores the theological context within which Boyle developed his views on reason's limits. Wojcik shows how Boyle's three categories of "things above reason" - the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, and the unsociable - were reflected in his conception of the goals and methods of natural philosophy. Throughout the book, Wojcik emphasizes Boyle's remarkably unified worldview in which truths in chemistry, physics, and theology were but different aspects of one unified body of knowledge. She concludes with an analysis of the presupposition on which Boyle's views on the limits of reason rested: that when God created intelligent beings, he deliberately chose to limit their understanding, reserving a complete understanding for the afterlife.