Robert Boyle — EEBO-TCP A28958, keyed from the 1681 edition.
A dialogue between four speakers on whether a philosopher may admit that some things are above reason, and on the difference between a doctrine reason cannot reach and one it can refute. The distinction is Boyle’s standing answer to both the sceptics and the dogmatists, and the Advices printed with it are six rules for keeping it.
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Contents (9)
- An Advertisement
- A Discourse of Things Above Reason
- Advices in Judging of Things Said to Transcend Reason
- Advice 1. That about Priviledg’d Subjects themselves, we do not admit any (affirmative) assertion without such proofs, to evince it, as are sufficient in their kind
- Advice 2. That we be not hasty to frame Negatives about Privileg’d Things, or to reject Propositions or Explications concerning them; at least, as if they were absurd or impossible
- Advice 3. That a matter of Fact or other Truth about Privileg’d Things being prov’d by Arguments competent in their kind, we ought not to deny it meerly because we cannot explain, or perhaps so much as conceive the Modus of it
- Advice 4. That when we treat of Privileg’d Subjects, we are not bound always to think every thing false, that seems to thwart some received Dictate of Reason
- Advice 5. That where Privileg’d Things are concern’d, we are not always bound to reject every thing, as false, that we know not how to reconcile with some thing that is true
- Advice 6. That in Privileg’d Things we ought not always to condemn that opinion which is liable to ill Consequences, and incumbred with great inconveniencies, provided the positive proofs of it be sufficient in their kind