Ashley Inglehart

This project focuses on the problem of generation, or coming-to-be, as treated by famed English Aristocrat Robert Boyle. I investigate his writings on its organizing forces—seminal principles, plastic powers, and petrifick spirits—and argue that Boyle presents a distinctly mechanical explanation for these generative principles. To this end, I show that his account was accepted by many of his contemporaries as such, clarifying contemporary perspectives about mechanical explanations. I follow the various communities in Europe with which Robert Boyle interacted, examining early sources and later reception of his ideas across the various institutions across Europe. In doing so, I demonstrate his previously unexamined influence upon medicine, geology, and the life sciences. 
 
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