Jonathan MarkoCorresponding author

Above Reason: Propositions and Contradiction in the Religious Thought of Robert Boyle

Article
19/2 - Fall 2014, pages 227-239
Date of online publication: 05 août 2015
Date of publication: 30 décembre 2014

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Robert Boyle does not hold that true religion yields logical contradictions and that we are required to believe such doctrines in violation of the law of noncontradiction. Rather, due to the epistemological limitations of human reason, we are sometimes called to believe doctrines or propositions that are at first blush contradictory but, upon further inspection, not definitively so. This holds for doctrines considered singly or together and is an important qualifier to the traditional line of scholarship’s flat claim that Boyle’s limits of belief are logical contradictions. My conclusions here are at odds with Jan Wojcik’s claim, in her important, revisionist work on the famous natural philosopher, that he teaches that sometimes we are required to believe religious doctrines that violate the law of noncontradiction.

Cite this article

Marko, Jonathan S. “Above Reason Propositions and Contradiction in the Religious Thought of Robert Boyle.” Forum Philosophicum 19, no. 2 (2014): 227–39. doi:10.35765/forphil.2014.1902.12.