These selections concern rather different issues. Dear's chapter--like his ch. 6, which it would be good to review--concerns experimental science; but his focus is on the character of the experiments and the issues they raised rather than the institutions that supported them. The selection from Boyle provides an argument for a version of the corpuscularian or mechanical worldview that is somewhat different from both Descartes and people like Gassendi. The connection between the two is Boyle himself, who was an important figure in experimental science of the 17th century.

As you read Dear look especially for the variety of attitudes towards experiments he locates and for the sorts of questions that were raised about them. The letter of Newton's that he discusses on pp. 143f is available on JSTOR--here is the address:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0370-2316%281671%296%3C3075%3AALOMIN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

--and, although I'd encourage you to browse through it, the narrative style Dear mentions can be seen in just the first couple of paragraphs. (Dear's references don't give you pages numbers in the original; his quotations are from pp. 3076 and 3081.) In case you are curious about Harvey's De motu cordis, which Dear also discusses, I've put an English translation of it on the course Blackboard site.

As you read Boyle's argument for corpuscularianism, you should, of course, think about it in its own terms; but think also about how his corpuscularianism compares with Descartes' (notice that he rejects some aspects of Descartes approach along with the views of the Epicureans*) and about how the postulation of unobservable particles can be fit with his experimental orientation.

* The Epicureans were an ancient philosophical school who primarily focused on ethics, but they had adopted the physical theories of the ancient Greek atomists. Among 17th century figures, Boyle probably has in mind Gassendi, who was interested in both the ethical and physical sides of Epicureanism.