Early Royal Society Research Articles

Między platonikami z Cambridge a empirystami z The Royal Society - zarys filozofii Josepha Glanvilla

The article's purpose is to present the views of the 17th-century English philosopher - Joseph Glanvill. They are placed around two main intellectual tendences present in early modern English philosophy. Neoplatonism from the University of Cambridge and the empiricism of the early Royal Society. Discussing the first pool of inspirations, the author points to the typically Platonic elements in his system and the characteristic features of Glanvill’s philosophy, which may place him in the broad tradition of English Latitudinarianism. He then presents the specifics of Glanvill’s skepticism and empiricism. Glanvill’s spiritualist proposals seem to mediate between Cambridge Neoplatonism and the philosophies of the early Royal Society. They were inspired both by the specific understanding of spirit found in More’s Neoplatonic metaphysics and by certain thoughts present among early modern naturalists. In general presentation, Joseph Glanvill’s philosophical views appear as a synthesis of elements characteristic of these two approaches.

The political alignment of presidents of the early Royal Society of London

PurposeThis study aims to identify the political alignment and political activity of the 11 Presidents of Britain’s most important scientific organisation, the Royal Society of London, in its early years 1662–1703, to determine whether or not the institution was politically aligned.Design/methodology/approachThere is almost no information addressing the political alignment of the Royal Society or its Presidents available in the institution’s archives, or in the writings of historians specialising in its administration. Even reliable biographical sources, such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provide very limited information. However, as 10 Presidents were elected Member of Parliament (MP), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History provides a wealth of accurate, in-depth data, revealing the alignment of both.FindingsAll Presidents held senior government offices, the first was a Royalist aristocrat; of the remaining 10, 8 were Royalist or Tory MPs, 2 of whom were falsely imprisoned by the House of Commons, 2 were Whig MPs, while 4 were elevated to the Lords. The institution was Royalist aligned 1662–1680, Tory aligned 1680–1695 and Whig aligned 1695–1703, which reflects changes in Parliament and State.Originality/valueThis study establishes that the early Royal Society was not an apolitical institution and that the political alignment of Presidents and institution continued in later eras. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the election or appointment of an organisation’s most senior officer can be used to signal its political alignment with government and other organisations to serve various ends.

Discovering Discovery in Restoration London; Or, the Theatre Under the Microscope

Abstract: Focusing on Robert Hooke's spectacular 1665 Micrographia and Thomas Shadwell's 1676 satire of Hooke and other members of the early Royal Society, The Virtuoso , this essay argues that the concept of discovery was central to managing the challenges of technologically assisted perception. In Hooke's accounts of how he discovered new objects in his microscope, Shadwell discovered a language for thinking through how characters could be known inside the new scenic stage of the Restoration theaters.

Wragge-Morley, Alexander. Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720

Wragge-Morley, Alexander. <i>Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720</i>

An appetite for experiment: putting early Royal Society tastes back on the table

In 1665, Thomas Sprat's efforts to defend the hospitality bestowed on Samuel Sorbière, when the French savant visited London, were published in his Letter containing some observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's voyage into England . This book, for which Sprat stopped work on his now more famous History of the Royal-Society , challenged Sorbière's account of how he had been ‘entertained’, insisting he ‘be grateful for a good potage ’ and ‘sound up his meat’. Experiments were, it seems, not to be depicted growing from nothing. This article thus situates Sprat's Letter amid convictions that the table was an apparently indispensable piece of experimental furniture. From the lavish banquets over which experiments were discussed, to feasts that were themselves experiments, it explores a learning seemingly nourished in rich settings of appetite and gratification. The offence caused by Sorbière's failure to acknowledge this commensality is placed in a context where, for better or worse, the character of experiment was on the table.

‘A man of intrigue’: Giles Rawlins, 1631?–1662

No person proposed to the early Royal Society has a less certain biography than Giles Rawlins. A ‘Mr. Rawlins’ was proposed as a candidate for election on 26 December 1660 in a group of seven. The other members of this group were Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, John Denham, Elias Ashmole, John Evelyn and Nathaniel Henshaw. But whereas these six other men are greater or lesser luminaries of the Society, Rawlins is a blank. R. E. W. Maddison in 1960 could only ‘suggest’ his likely identity; and Michael Hunter in The Royal Society and its Fellows (1982 and 1994) went no further than Maddison. 1 Following my discovery in the National Library of Ireland of Rawlins's only autograph letter, it is possible for the first time to confirm his identity. Further, this discovery allows the reconstruction of the rest of Rawlins's life: his upbringing as the son of a minor diplomat; his work in the Interregnum as a cross-Channel royalist messenger; his consequent rise and reward in the Duke of York's household; and his death in one of the most notorious duels of the Restoration.

Picturing Seeds of Poppies

Abstract The middle of the seventeenth century saw the emergence of a new kind of botanical observation: Microscopical observations of seeds. Previously, naturalists had made observations of seeds to complete their description of plants published in herbals, but for the first generation of Royal Society microscopists—Henry Power, Robert Hooke, and Nehemiah Grew—seeds became the centre of attention. This essay details this transition in plant knowledge by zooming in on just one kind of seeds: The poppy seed. Poppy seeds were abundant in early modern England as they were found in fields, gardens, kitchens and pharmacies. They were also excellent specimens to look at through microscopes, but for different reasons. Focusing on pictorial representation, especially, I analyse the diverse ambitions behind Power, Hooke, and Grew’s observations of poppy seeds, and how they used pictures to further these. The comparison of these three observations of the same specimen highlights the diversity of strategies for scientific representation in the early Royal Society while showing that intense, instrument-enhanced observation did not produce a stable epistemic object, but a multiplicity of epistemic images.

Deconstructing Glass and Building up Shards at the Early Royal Society

In 1662, the physician Christopher Merret presented his fellow members of the Royal Society with an English translation of Antonio Neri's “L'arte vetraria” (The art of glass, 1612). Central to the preparation and receipt of this book was a cache of objects relevant to glassmaking, now lost or dispersed. These materia vitraria served as a tangible appendix to Merret's written commentary. They also reified the society's interest in the development of domestic industry by offering a direct means by which fellows could appreciate the raw materials of contemporary glassmaking alongside evidence of the trade's longer history in the British Isles.

Allegiance and Supremacy: Religion and the Royal Society’s 3rd Charter of 1669

ABSTRACT This paper examines a neglected aspect of the history of the early Royal Society. Though it’s first two Royal Charters of 1662 and 1663 did not contain any religious-political restrictions, its 3rd Royal Charter of 1669 did. For the grant of an investment property in Chelsea, and the right to appoint more than one Vice President, the 3rd Charter restricted the sale of the property in Chelsea back to the Crown, and all Presidents and Vice Presidents were required to swear the Anglican religious-political state oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy before admission to the positions. Thus the Royal Society, for the first time, was placed under a similar oaths system as those covering state, corporation, and religious organizations. The paper analyses the chaotic events leading up to the passing of the 3rd Charter: the impact of the Fire of London, the Royal Society’s move to Catholic aristocrat Henry Howard’s Arundel House, its failed plan to build a permanent ‘college’ there, and its forced acceptance of both the oaths and the non-alienation of Chelsea College. The paper concludes with the aftermath, the replacement of the oaths by a statutory declaration in 1835, through an Act of Parliament.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature. Tina Skouen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Pp. x+234.

From Eden to savagery and civilization: British colonialism and humanity in the development of natural history, ca. 1600–1840

This article is concerned with the relationship between British colonization and the intellectual underpinnings of natural history writing between the 17th and the early 19th centuries. During this period, I argue, a significant discursive shift reframed both natural history and the concept of humanity. In the early modern period, compiling natural histories was often conceived as an endeavour to understand God’s creation. Many of the natural historians involved in the early Royal Society of London were driven by a theological conviction that the New World contained the natural knowledge once possessed by Adam, but lost in the Fall from Eden. By the early 19th century, however, this theological framework for natural history had been superseded by an avowedly progressive vision of the relationship between humanity and nature. No longer ontologically distinct from the rest of creation, the human became a subject of natural history writing in a new way. Encounters between colonizers and colonized thus became a touchstone for tensions between divine and natural historical knowledge. The resolution of these tensions lay in the emergence of a concept of savagery that imbibed both a rational account of historical progress towards civilization and a religious conviction that savage humanity needed rescue from its animal nature.

Copying images in the archives of the early Royal Society

This article argues that the copying of text and image was a key process in acquiring, approving, and recording knowledge in the early Royal Society of London. In particular, it focuses on how the administrative archives were set up and sustained in the nascent Society to preserve and establish new knowledge through a copying practice. Images were copied alongside texts to facilitate the collaborative scientific practice among the members of the Royal Society; to communicate essential features of an argument; to serve as proof of rare phenomena; and to establish priority for an invention or an idea. This copying practice was part of a unique system of emphasizing, prioritizing, and preserving for contemporary and future Fellows what was deemed important, ground-breaking, or useful knowledge.

Richard Waller and the Fusion of Visual and Scientific Practice in the Early Royal Society

Richard Waller, Fellow and Secretary of the Royal Society, is probably best remembered for editing Robert Hooke’s posthumously published works. Yet, Waller also created numerous drawings, paintings, and engravings for his own work and the Society’s publications. From precisely observed grasses to allegorical frontispieces, Waller’s images not only contained a diverse range of content, they are some of the most beautiful, colorful, and striking from the Society’s early years. This article argues that Waller played a distinctly important role in shaping the visual program of the Royal Society by virtue of his multiple functions as reliable administrator and translator, competent natural philosopher, and skilled image-maker. It analyzes Waller’s visual works in the context of his graphic training—in part influenced by his mother Mary More—and situates them within the context of English image-making traditions and Waller’s own natural philosophical interests. Examined as a functional whole, Waller’s career as a Fellow of the Royal Society emerges as an important case study in the fusion of visual and scientific practices in early-modern England.

The Early Royal Society and Visual Culture

Recent studies have fruitfully examined the intersection between early modern science and visual culture by elucidating the functions of images in shaping and disseminating scientific knowledge. Given its rich archival sources, it is possible to extend this line of research in the case of the Royal Society to an examination of attitudes towards images as artifacts—manufactured objects worth commissioning, collecting, and studying. Drawing on existing scholarship and material from the Royal Society Archives, I discuss Fellows’ interests in prints, drawings, varnishes, colorants, images made out of unusual materials, and methods of identifying the painter from a painting. Knowledge of production processes of images was important to members of the Royal Society, not only as connoisseurs and collectors, but also as those interested in a Baconian mastery of material processes, including a “history of trades.” Their antiquarian interests led to discussion of painters’ styles, and they gradually developed a visual memorial to an institution through portraits and other visual records.

Introduction to Making Visible: The Visual and Graphic Practices of the Early Royal Society

Introduction to Making Visible: The Visual and Graphic Practices of the Early Royal Society

Robert Hooke and the Visual World of the Early Royal Society

This article argues that despite individual Fellows’ interest in artistic practices, and similarities between a philosophical and a connoisseurial appreciation of art, the Royal Society as an institution may have been wary of image-making as a way of conveying knowledge because of the power of images to stir the passions and sway the intellect. Using Robert Hooke as a case study it explores some of the connections between philosophers and makers in Restoration London. It goes on to suggest that some epistemic images were in fact designed to elicit an emotional response in their viewers in order to force them to re-evaluate the subject-matter by presenting it in a new and surprising way.

Natural Knowledge, Inc.: the Royal Society as a metropolitan corporation.

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising almost none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development.

A gunpowder controversy in the early Royal Society, 1667–70

In 1667, ‘The History of Saltpetre and Gunpowder’ by Thomas Henshaw was published in Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal Society . Three years later, Henshaw's work was subject to a scathing review by the notorious anti-Royal Society pamphleteer, Henry Stubbe. I argue that, for Stubbe, Henshaw was not merely a passive representative of the Royal Society through which he could direct his ire, but gunpowder, the subject of Henshaw's research, was important. Both Henshaw and Stubbe employed gunpowder deliberately and strategically. In this article I explore the reasons behind the Royal Society deciding to publish a ‘Baconian history’ of gunpowder. First I argue that the high status of gunpowder was used as a justification for experimental pursuits, and it provided a direct connection to the Society's forebear Francis Bacon. But Stubbe, who was already a critic of the Royal Society, happened to have knowledge that made him uniquely placed to write animadversions against Henshaw's paper. Secondly, gunpowder can shed light on the Baconian histories and the challenges faced by Baconian scholars in putting this project into practice.

Plant and Soil Chemistry in Seventeenth-Century England: Worsley, Boyle and Coxe

Abstract In seventeenth-century England agriculturalists, projectors and natural philosophers devoted special attention to the chemical investigation of plants, of soil composition and of fertilizers. Hugh Plat’s and Francis Bacon’s works became particularly influential in the mid-seventeenth century, and inspired much of the Hartlib Circle’s schemes and research for improving agriculture. The Hartlibians turned to chemistry in order to provide techniques for improving soil and to investigate plant generation and growth. They drew upon the Paracelsian chemistry of salts, as well as upon the works of van Helmont and Glauber. Benjamin Worsley, Boyle’s scientific companion in the 1640s and 1650s, played a leading role in the Hartlib Circle’s research on saltpetre and on fertilizers. The Hartlib Circle’s research in agricultural chemistry shaped much of the research carried out by the Royal Society in the 1660s and in the 1670s. Daniel Coxe, who adopted Boyle’s chemical theories and pursued original experimental research on the composition of plants, played a central part in the early Royal Society’s agricultural projects and notably in the investigations of plants.

The Image of Restoration Science: The Frontispiece to Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (1667), by Michael Hunter, with a chapter on the instruments by Jim Bennett

The early modern history of science has taken a visual and material turn. There have been several recent studies of the ‘collective wisdom’ of early modern scientific academies and the development of their museums, the evolution of natural history illustration, and the role of instruments and networks of instrument-makers in the development of natural philosophy. Michael Hunter’s latest book is part of this trend, devoted entirely to an analysis of the frontispiece of Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (1667). On the surface, it may appear extravagant or excessively antiquarian to devote a book, albeit a slender tome of 150 pages, to one image. However, this image is not only one of the best known representations of seventeenth-century English science, but one of the most complete representations of the early Royal Society. The Royal Society entirely lacked any equivalent to the lavish publications of the Académie des Sciences, with its elephant folios featuring detailed etchings by Sébastien Leclerc of its instrumental apparatus and activities.