Leviathan and The Air-Pump - Criticisms of Leviathan and The Air-Pump

Criticisms of Leviathan and The Air-Pump

J.L. Heilbron credits Shapin and Schaffer with picking important aspects of the development of experimental culture that are still relevant today, citing specifically the problems with replication. However, he casts doubt upon the strength of the relationship between politics of the greater society and the politics within the Royal Society. In addition, Heilbron laments the absence of comparisons to the development of empiricism in the rest of Europe because it blinds the reader to what may have been peculiar to England's case.

Anna Marie Roos, on the other hand, writes that Shapin and Schaffer do indeed draw a connection between the history of science and the history of political thought, and that their strict resolution to remain impartial when examining the argument between Hobbes and Boyle forces historians of science and politics alike to recognize the relationship between the two branches of knowledge.

Lawrence M. Principe, in The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest, argues extensively that many of the conclusions reached by Shapin and Schaffer rest on inaccurate and at times presentist conceptions of Boyle's work.