Hobbes v. Boyle: Who Decides Scientific Facts

Hobbes v. Boyle: Who Decides Scientific Facts

In the 1600s, philoso­pher Thomas Hobbes and exper­i­men­tal sci­en­tist Robert Boyle clashed over a strange new machine, the air pump, and a dan­ger­ous ques­tion: when should soci­ety trust sci­en­tif­ic claims, and who gets to decide? Their dis­agree­ment wasn’t just about experiments …