Philosophy versus Science in the Context of Robert Boyle’s Laboratory Style of Scientific Research

This is a review of Radosław Kazibut’s book Filozofia przyrody i przyrodoznawstwa Roberta Boyle’a. Filozoficzna geneza nauki laboratoryjnej (Robert Boyle’s Philosophy of Nature and Natural Science: The Philosophical Origins of Laboratory Research), in which I highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach. On the one hand, I appreciate the author’s effort to examine the origin of the laboratory style of research, which is found in Boyle’s studies, as a basis for a novel approach to the problem of the relationship between philosophy and science. On the other hand, I am critical of the fact that the author has overlooked several issues relating to the subject matter which, in the context of the topics addressed in the book, should be recognized as relevant. The characterization of the laboratory sciences presented in the book is too selective as it ignores the problem of the undesirable products of the laboratory sciences as well as their increasingly practical character.