Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Published by Princeton University Press in 1985, Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer revolutionized the history and philosophy of science by demonstrating that Robert Boyle's celebrated vacuum experiments of the 1660s succeeded not through transparent demonstration of natural facts but through the careful construction of a witnessing community whose social standing guaranteed credibility. The book's title juxtaposes Thomas Hobbes's political theory with Boyle's experimental apparatus, revealing that the dispute between them was not merely about natural philosophy but about the proper relationship between knowledge and power. Where Hobbes argued that knowledge required philosophical demonstration accessible to reason, Boyle argued that experimental demonstration before credible witnesses produced a superior form of knowledge. The resolution of this dispute established the experimental method as legitimate—a social achievement, not a logical necessity.
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The book's central case study is Boyle's air pump—a complex, expensive, temperamental machine that produced a vacuum by mechanical action. Boyle invited gentlemen of the Royal Society to witness experiments: a bird dying in the evacuated chamber, a candle extinguishing, the Torricellian column dropping. The witnesses certified what they had seen, and their collective testimony constituted the vacuum as a scientific fact. Schaffer and Shapin showed that this process involved three forms of technology working in concert: the material technology of the pump itself, the social technology of gentlemanly witnessing (whose credibility derived from class position guaranteeing disinterestedness), and the literary technology of the published experimental report.
The controversy with Hobbes revealed the stakes. Hobbes did not deny Boyle's observations; he denied their interpretation. The effects Boyle attributed to a vacuum could be explained, Hobbes argued, by subtle matter in motion. The dispute could not be resolved by evidence because the evidence was compatible with both frameworks. What resolved it was the institutional triumph of Boyle's experimental community over Hobbes's philosophical method—a victory secured through the Royal Society's social prestige and political connections rather than through logical superiority.
The book's influence extended far beyond history of science, providing foundational concepts for science and technology studies: co-production (facts and instruments validate each other circularly), the social construction of scientific knowledge (communities certify what counts as knowledge), and the politics of demonstration (who gets believed depends on social position). Critics accused the authors of relativism—if all facts are socially constructed, how can any claim to truth be sustained? Shapin and Schaffer's response was that showing how facts are made does not unmake them; it reveals the social labor that makes reliable knowledge possible.
Origin
Leviathan and the Air-Pump emerged from Shapin and Schaffer's engagement with the Edinburgh 'strong programme' in sociology of scientific knowledge, which insisted that successful and failed knowledge claims should be explained symmetrically—through social interests rather than through correspondence to reality. The book applied this framework to a canonical episode in the Scientific Revolution, demonstrating that even foundational experimental results required social machinery to achieve the status of knowledge. The juxtaposition of Boyle's experimental reports with Hobbes's philosophical critiques revealed two incompatible epistemologies competing for dominance in seventeenth-century England, with the experimentalist victory establishing patterns that govern scientific practice to this day.
Key Ideas
The vacuum was not discovered but constituted. Boyle's experiments did not reveal a pre-existing fact; they produced the vacuum as a scientific fact through coordinated deployment of material, social, and literary technologies.
Witnessing communities certify knowledge. The credibility of experimental demonstration depended on who witnessed it, with gentlemanly status functioning as an epistemic credential independent of technical expertise.
Instruments and facts validate each other circularly. The air pump's reliability was proven by the vacuum it demonstrated; the vacuum's reality was proven by the reliable air pump—a circularity that is the normal mechanism of knowledge production.
Knowledge disputes are resolved socially. The Boyle-Hobbes controversy was settled not by evidence triumphing over error but by institutional processes favoring experimentalism over philosophical demonstration.
Invisible labor sustains experimental systems. Robert Hooke and other operators built and maintained Boyle's apparatus, but their contributions were epistemically erased by conventions attributing knowledge to gentlemen.
Debates & Critiques
The book sparked fierce debates about realism and relativism. If scientific facts are socially constructed, critics asked, what prevents slide into the position that all claims are equally valid? The authors' response—that construction does not mean fabrication, and that showing how facts are made reveals rather than undermines their reliability—has remained controversial. The book's influence on science studies has been immense, though its reception in philosophy of science and among working scientists has been more mixed, with many resisting the implication that social analysis can illuminate scientific practice.
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Further reading
- Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton University Press, 1985.
- Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
- Dear, Peter. 'Totius in Verba: Rhetoric and Authority in the Early Royal Society.' Isis 76.2 (1985): 145–161.
- Golinski, Jan. 'The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory: Sociological Approaches in the History of Science.' Isis 81.3 (1990): 492–505.