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Scientists
and
A mateurs




Books in
THE LIFE OF SCIENCE LIBRARY
THE LIFE OF SCIENCE
Essays in the History of Civilization
BY GEORGE SARTON
VICTORY OVER PAIN
A History of Anesthesia
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
BENJAMIN SILLIMAN
Pathfinder in American Science
BY JOHN F. FULTON AND ELIZABETH H. THOMSON
SUN, STAND THOU STILL
The Life and Work of Copernicus the Astronomer
BY ANGUS ARMITAGE
THE STORY OF THE SHIP
BY CHARLES E. GIBSON
SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
A History of the Royal Society
BY DOROTHY STIMSON
SONS OF SCIENCE
The Story of the Smithsonian Institution and its Leaders
BY PAUL H. OEHSER




I
I




W 7~~~~~t~~~~~~~~~~~
PLATE 1
(From The Signatures in the First journal Book and the Charter Book of the Royal
Society, London, 912, lby courtesy of the Royal Society)
OF
"Ic.




AHis tog of th  oa  ocie"


DO0RO0


T HY ST


I M S O N




Henu Schuman *New rork




First Printing December 1948
Copyright 1948 by
Henry Schuman, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY H. WOLFF, NEW YORK
Designed by Marshall Lee




To my students
in History 111 (4I)
at Goucher College
1922-1947








PREFACE


T     HE STORY     of a man's life has great interest
especially if that man has been connected with important affairs, whether in philosophy or statesmanship, discovery or invention. Similarly, the story of an
organization or institution which is the product of ideas
and labors of many men for generations can hardly fail
to be of interest as well as of importance. For this reason
the writer presents this account of the origins and development through the centuries of the leading scientific
c society in the English-speaking world today. Those who
fi have the time and the opportunity to look through the
Royal Society's own Record or to refer to its treasurer's
recent careful study of its administration for nearly three
0 centuries may not need this book. But copies of neither
book are readily available to an American public because
of cost or scarcity, nor is either one planned for the general reader who knows little or nothing of the Royal Society at the outset. It is hoped, therefore, that this history
may not only interest the general reader in the life-story
of a great and influential institution, but that it may also
indicate to him many possibilities for further reading and
exploration in the field of the history of science and of
scientific ideas.
The book itself is the outgrowth of various studies in
the history of scientific activity in seventeenth century England pursued by the writer since 1930. These studies were
made possible in the first instance by the beneficence of
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation of
vii




PREFACE
which the writer was a fellow in 1930-31, and in the second instance by the courtesy of the officers of the Royal
Society in allowing reproduction of their treasured possessions, and by the helpfulness of the librarian and his
staff during the weeks the writer was privileged to use that
Library. She has also made much use of the publications
of others who have preceded or followed her there among
the Society's archives.
In recent years increased study and recognition have
been given to various aspects of the Society's interrelationships with general intellectual activities especially during
the first two hundred years of its history. In chapter references the writer has expressed her indebtedness to such
studies and their authors, and hopes that her own rendering of the Society's history may stimulate new accounts of
the subject in more detail than has been possible within
the limited scope of her own work. Especially there is room
for an account of the Society's major activities in the past
hundred years when it participated more and more in the
great scientific advances of the age. Such an account lies
outside the scope of this introduction to the Society's history, by reason of the highly specialized character of the
subject matter and its technical terminology.
The author wishes to express her deep appreciation of
the generous loan made to her by Professor John F. Fulton of Yale University, of rare books from his private
library. She is greatly indebted to the librarians in many
places who have helped her locate needed material, particularly to those in the library of Goucher College, the
Enoch Pratt Public Library, the Peabody Library and the
Welch Library, all of Baltimore; to those in the libraries
of Columbia University and the New York Public Library;
and to those in the Historical Library of the Yale School
of Medicine at New Haven and in the Public Library of
Westerly, Rhode Island.
The writer is under deep obligation to the authorities
of Goucher College who acceded graciously to her request
for temporary relief from her academic duties, giving her
viii




PREFACE
the opportunity to complete this book, and to the friends
and relatives who have borne with her struggles, helped
with suggestions and criticisms and generally smoothed
her path. Especially is she indebted to Miss Edith Bruce
Paterson of Baltimore, who has on occasion used her scanty
leisure to run down an elusive fact or has suggested some
pertinent discovery from her own omnivorous reading.
Finally, she is grateful for the criticism and the encouragement given her by her publisher. At the same time she
takes upon herself full responsibility for whatever may be
found amiss in this book, thankful that her friendly critics
have saved her from many more mistakes.
D.S.
November 28, 1947.


ix




I




CONTENTS
Preface                                         vii
Chapters
1 Contrasts in Centuries                  3
2 The Dreamers                            8
3 The Virtuosi                           26
4 The Founding of the Royal Society      46
5  Early Opposition                      70
6 The Critical Years                     97
7 Stability                              116
8 Targets for Satire                     133
9 Contacts Overseas                      147
10  Conservatism                         161
11 Expansion versus Tradition            179
12 Unhappy Years                          197
13 New Growth                            220
14 The Royal Society in Recent Years     236
Bibliography and Sources                       251
Index                                          263


xi




v
0




ILLUSTRATIONS


Plates
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20


King Charles II                 FRONTISPIECE
John Evelyn                   facing page 16
Sir Thomas Gresham                       17
Gresham College                          17
"How any man may blow up the greatest oak"  48
Doctor John Wilkins                      48
First Page of the Journal Book           49
The Mace                                 80
Henry Oldenburg                          81
Dr. Wilkins' Report on Experiment       112
Frontispiece of Sprat's History         113
The Honorable Robert Boyle              144
The Treasurer's Chest                   145
Sir Isaac Newton                        176
The Crane Court House                   177
The Meeting Room, Somerset House        177
Charles II by Lely                      208
The Library, Burlington House, 1910o    209
The Meeting Room, Burlington House, 1912 240
The Meeting Room, Burlington House, 1939  241
xiii








Scientists
and
A mateurs








1


CONTRASTS IN CENTURIES
IF BY MAGIC a man of the twentieth century were
whisked back three hundred and fifty years to the
London of Queen Elizabeth's day, he would feel
strange and out of place, in spite of the excitement over
the New World, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the
rapid development of trade and the enjoyment of seeing
Shakespeare's plays as they were first presented.
The Times of Queen Elizabeth and of Cromwell
These people, for instance, still believed the earth to be
the center of the universe, around which whirled the sun,
the moon and the seven planets in their circular paths as
Aristotle ages before had laid down and Claudius Ptolemy
confirmed. To be sure there were rumors that some Pole
named Copernicus fifty years before had written that the
earth was but one of the planets and that the sun and not
1




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


the earth was the center of the universe; but hardly anyone paid attention to that notion. There were also rumors
of a perspective glass that brought far objects close to
hand. Two Englishmen, Leonard and Thomas Digges,
were said to have devised it, and to have claimed that the
heavens, far from being fixed and crystalline as everyone
knew they were, were myriad in number and stretched out
into infinite space. Few cared about such talk even though
that wandering Italian monk, Giordano Bruno, had talked
much about infinite space and even the outrageous possibility of other worlds existing, when he had stayed at Oxford and in London for three years shortly before the
sinking of the Spanish Armada. To most men such things
were foolishness, for had not their forefathers and all the
learned men for centuries past upheld the authority of the
great Aristotle, the Master of those who know. And he
had said, as the Bible did also, that the heavens were above
and the earth beneath and all creation revolved around
man, while the earth was man's footstool. Anyone could
see with his own eyes that the sun rose in the east and set
in the west and could feel that the earth was steady under
his feet.
But let magic work again and bring the twentieth-century man fifty years on to the middle of the seventeenth
century, how would he feel? My guess is, very much more
at home. True, the clothes people wore still would be
strange. Even London itself would seem like a small town
with outlying villages and country places. But the very air
would seem to have changed, to have come alive and to
sparkle with discoveries and inventions startling in themselves and prophetic of more marvels to come. The future
looked more promising than the past and why not? For
surely, as Francis Bacon had expressed it, if children stood
on their fathers' shoulders they would see further than
their fathers did, and was that not what scholars then were
doing, learning from the past and standing on that knowledge looking forward? Maybe Aristotle would have said
things differently if he had known what they now knew
2




CONTRASTS IN CENTURIES
about the world about them. For instance, what would
Aristotle have said had he known of the New World, of
gunpowder, or of the printing press? More and more people were listening to daring innovators, though there were
plenty still who held firmly to the ancient learning, distrusting the modern because it was modern.
This change in the climate of ideas affected other matters beside learning. The twentieth-century man would
have felt more at home with the problems of the Stuart
kings and of Cromwell than in the England under Queen
Elizabeth; for even as now, governments were unsteady,
kings were on trial, wars raged, dictatorships threatened,
and people were driven out of their homelands to seek
refuge in far countries. Men's personal liberties were at
stake then as now, though in different ways. Censorship
confronted the daring writer and both the unlucky author
and his printer might find themselves imprisoned in the
Tower of London, or fastened in the pillory, or minus
their ears. Milton was fighting for the freedom of the press
while others were fighting for their own and others' right
to believe about religion as their own consciences thought
best, and to have church services conducted according to
those beliefs. It was a time of deep-felt conviction as well
as of violent change.
It was also an age of experiment and of invention, of
great scientists and of great discoveries, of a growing re.
alization of the importance of cooperation in scientific
activity and of a desire to know what others were doing
and of sharing with them the excitement of one's own investigations. Social distinctions between nobleman and
commoner became of less importance when the proper
method of growing potatoes was being discussed or what
happened when clothes were dyed or meat spoiled. Where
did maggots come from anyway? The men of Cromwell's
time in the 1650's had seen so many wonders,-a king beheaded, the mightiest nobles fallen, the king's armies defeated by God-fearing common folk, the Dutch driven
back even though they had sailed threateningly up the
3




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
English rivers, and in addition friends and relatives finding homes for themselves in a New World of even greater
marvel than any their ancestors had dreamed of. What
strange thing was impossible now? Might not men be able
to travel underwater? Suppose there were people on the
moon; could not someone find a way to go there and see?
How about horseless carriages and machines that might
fly in the air?
Thus in the fifty years between Queen Elizabeth's old
age in 1600 and the beheading of Charles I in 1649, notable changes had come over English thought. Many forces
were at work bringing these about beside the great struggle of Parliament against the divine right of kings. In the
church the authority of the bishops was contested and in
the universities that of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher,
and of Galen, the ancient Roman physician. The trading
companies favored by Queen Elizabeth had grown and expanded, bringing more wealth to more people, and with
that wealth more leisure and time to consider new ideas.
More people were reading, and more books were available
in English, in addition to those in the Latin of the
scholars.
Seamen and traders returned from far voyages bringing
ostrich eggs and humming-birds' nests, as well as powder
from the fabulous unicorn's horn. Men sampled the tobacco that Sir Walter Raleigh had brought back with him
from the New World. They drank hot chocolate, wondering whether it was really true that it would make them
passionate. They welcomed coffee so gladly that before
long the coffee-houses (where it could be bought) became
the social and political centers of the town where men
could meet their friends, exchange views, and learn the
news of the day. There they could ask each other if it
could be true that the blood pumped by the heart circulated through the body, as that great doctor, William
Harvey, had written in 1628. Or was it true that the
Roman Church had thought that strange theory about the
universe held by Copernicus important enough to con4




CONTRASTS IN CENTURIES
demn it as heretical and to punish Galileo for teaching it?
Yet wasn't Galileo that Florentine professor whose telescope had revealed that the planet Jupiter had moons encircling it and that even the sun had spots on it despite
Aristotle's claim of the perfection of the heavens? Their
curiosity aroused by what they had heard and seen, some
of these Londoners wanted to learn more, undisturbed
and uninterrupted by the news of the day and by arguments over public affairs.
Organized Amateurs
Some ten or so of these particularly inquiring young
men by 1645 had formed a kind of luncheon club, agreeing to meet once a week to discuss and experiment together, in further pursuit of their common interest, this
"new philosophy" that we know today as experimental
science. They agreed to pay each a shilling * a meeting to
cover expenses and they agreed to refrain from any discussion of the current news and questions of the day.
Science would be their sole topic.
A similar society was soon founded in Oxford when
some of these Londoners moved there with appointments
from the parliamentary authorities to replace the royalists
ejected after the king's defeat. Then with the Restoration
of the Stuart rulers in 166o, these parliamentary appointees were ejected in their turn and royalists reappointed.
Returning to London the Oxford men rejoined their former associates and both together decided to organize more
formally, if possible under the patronage of Charles II
himself. This was done, and thus the Royal Society was
established in 1662.
A shilling in 1645 may have had a purchasing value of as much as eight
or ten times the twenty cents it represents now.


5




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


The Royal Society
Today, three centuries later, the Royal Society flourishes,-no longer a small luncheon club, but now the leading scientific society in the English-speaking world. By the
terms of the charter granted the Society by Charles II, its
members and their successors "whose studies are to be ap
plied to further promoting by the authority of experiments the sciences of natural things and of useful arts, to
the glory of God the Creator, and the advantage of the
human race," were to be known as the Royal Society of
London for promoting Natural Knowledge.
Membership in it has now become the crowning glory
for scientific achievement, welcomed by foreigners as well
as by the British. Its approval means recognition for a
scientist, its verdict on scientific matters is sought by individuals and by the government alike, its gifts of medals
are highly prized, and its support for further research is
eagerly sought.
How did it happen that a society of notable men in the
London of the seventeenth century should so have transformed itself that by the twentieth century the organization had become a guide and leader in scientific progress?
As often happens with living organisms, the changes were
not continuously directed toward one goal, nor was that
goal envisioned by the men directing the Royal Society's
fortunes. The Society proved that it had an enduring vitality within itself. Thus it eventually overcame its handicaps, survived its periods of stress and gradually emerged
into its present position of power and prestige.
Embedded in its history is many an interesting story
concerning its difficulties and struggles. At least three
times there was a good chance that it might not survive,in the critical years before Newton became its president,
in the mid-eighteenth century when it wasted its strength
over trivialities, and in the early nineteenth century when
its critics claimed it had lapsed into its second childhood.
6




CONTRASTS IN CENTURIES
An account of these troubles must be set against the background of the Society's environment for their better understanding.
As time passes, old happenings are seen in different
lights, and new interpretations give fresh meaning to old
events. Helped by the perspective of history, later generations may uncover facts long forgotten or ignored that give
a different meaning to an age-old situation and a clearer
appreciation of what actually happened. Sometimes, too,
an earlier century seems to resemble closely the present
age. Because of that resemblance, men of today may gain
greater understanding and appreciation of a past era than
would its immediate successors.
Thus the twentieth century in some ways has much in
common with the seventeenth; for both are insecure, with
the old order dying and the new order not fully arrived.
New devices in government and war, insistent questioning
of religion, education and philosophy, upheavals among
peoples from disaster and disease as well as from war, both
civil and foreign, startling novelties in science and invention,-all these may be found in both centuries. Perhaps
as the reader living in the twentieth century turns his
imagination and his thought to the origins of one of the
great institutions of our own day and follows its development down through the intervening centuries, he may
better appreciate the age of science in which he is living,
and may realize that not all his present problems are new
ones.


7




2


THE DREAMERS
VENTS, like thunderstorms, do not "just happen."
They have a long preparation behind them, often
not recognized as such until ages later. An important part of this preparation is a mental one. Many people
have to be thinking, writing, discussing an idea and considering its various ramifications and possibilities before
that idea takes shape in some new institution or new device.
Whether that new institution or device is welcomed and
developed or whether it dies immediately depends in part
upon the mental attitude of the general public at the time.
Does it meet a long felt need? Does it have practical value?
Or is it merely startling in its novelty and shocking in its
disregard for long-established customs and practices? Consequently, those who dream dreams which they express
even in fantastic form are often important aids in bringing
to pass a great change.
Some of those who helped to prepare the way for the
Royal Society and the development of modern science
were dreamers who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth
8




THE DREAMERS
and of her successor, James I. Others were among the actual
founders of the Society in the middle of the seventeenth
century. In criticizing the educational procedures of their
day-a favorite subject of all ages-some dreamers, men of
affairs as well as of letters, were led on in their thought to
consider the life about them and the part played in it by
what we now call science and which they called natural
philosophy. They held that neither the two universities,
Oxford and Cambridge, nor the system of apprenticeship
for poor lads, prepared young men adequately for their
later life either in the king's councils or in the world of
trade and business. Much time was being wasted. Therefore they suggested various changes for the schools and the
universities.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert
One of these dreamers was Sir Walter Raleigh's halfbrother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Early in Queen Elizabeth's reign he proposed a plan for an academy for the
youth of London, especially for her majesty's wards and
for the sons of the nobility and the upper classes. He considered the universities of his time a waste of a boy's time
except for "learning"-no other gentlemanlike qualities
were there attained and there were too many evil examples. Accordingly, in his academy the professors should
teach "matters of action meet for present practice both of
peace and warre" and their pupils should at least learn
their own language and should have martial exercises. His
emphasis upon learning in English is notable and unusual;
for in those days the language of schools, as of all scholarship, was Latin. But Sir Humphrey wrote: "In what language soever learning is attained, the appliance to use is
principally in the vulgar speech as in preaching, in parliament, in council, in commissions and other offices of common weal."
Then too, Sir Humphrey's professors were not only to
lecture on the usual university subjects of that period, but
9




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
they were also to put their teaching to the practical test.
They were to study nature itself and search out its secrets,
making annual report to the crown in clear English on
their experiments and their results. The doctor of physick
(medicine) for example, was to lecture on physick and on
chirurgerie (surgery) on alternate days in English, always
giving the reasons for every step in his procedure, and
showing the ingredients in his medicines, and their respective merits. Sir Humphrey added that there were few
if any good surgeons then "by reason that chirurgerie is
not now to be learned in any other place than in a barber's
shop." This doctor of physick should also have a garden
for his herbs and a special fund for his expenses.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's academy never was founded;
but the plan he gave in detail shows how some at least
were criticizing education for not sufficiently emphasizing
possible practical values. By implication it also shows how
far apart was the learning of the schools from everyday
life, and how secret and private was a scholar's knowledge.
Francis Bacon
Much more important and more influential were the
ideas of another of Queen Elizabeth's courtiers, Sir Francis
Bacon, later Lord Chancellor under James I. A scholar,
sometimes considered the last of the encyclopedic schoolmen of the middle ages, he was deeply concerned both for
the advancement of learning for its own sake and for the
practical results that would ensue. Although he scorned or
ignored the new learning of his day, the ideas of Copernicus, of Gilbert and of Galileo, he recognized the need
for a different method of approach from that of ancient
times, if knowledge were to grow and develop as he
thought it should. Conspicuous because of his high place
and stimulating because of his ideas, Bacon was particularly influential in that he wrote in English with an eloquence remarkable even to this day.
10




THE DREAMERS
For centuries before him learned men had been using
the old well-worn form of reasoning known as syllogistic
or deductive reasoning. Thus they worked out their ideas
logically in a pattern moving from major principles or
axioms step by step to conclusions. The simplest and most
familiar syllogism is the ancient one: All men are mortal,
Socrates is a man; therefore he is mortal. If you accept the
first or major statement as true, and the second or minor
one also, then the conclusion is logically inescapable. The
Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, had formulated
the laws of reasoning and the schoolmen of the middle
ages had crystallized the pattern as they understood it.
Therefore it had the weight of authority and of centuries
of use behind it.
This syllogistic reasoning by deduction worked well for
the re-statement and proof of what was already known;
but it was not particularly fruitful, as Bacon pointed out,
for the discovery of new knowledge. Far better, according
to him, was it to assemble facts by observation and experiment, consider their similarities and their dissimilarities,
and then on the basis of the evidence before one's eyes,
to theorize. Such theories, if well reasoned and supported,
should have predictive value and would lead on to further
discoveries, and so truth would grow and knowledge expand. The ancient Greeks and Romans, the great leaders
of the Church, had done well in their times; but knowledge was not limited to what they knew nor was it necessarily correct because they said so in the ancient books that
scholars still were supposed to study. Men should test and
try for themselves to see if an idea would work. And the
story goes that Bacon came to his death from a chill he
caught when on a drive he stopped to stuff a chicken with
snow "to try whether it would preserve flesh from putrefaction, as salt does." He reported that the experiment
"succeeded excellently well"; but his own death followed
in a few days from this illness.
Bacon wrote many books, three of them of especial importance to the "new learning." In one, the Novum Or11




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
ganum, (the New Logic) he explained the importance of
inductive reasoning, of proceeding from facts and details
to generalizations or principles. In this he answered Aristotle's Organon, the great book on logic and syllogistic
reasoning that had dominated men's minds for more than
fifteen centuries. In the Advancement of Learning Bacon
charted the fields of knowledge as he knew them, pointing
out great regions awaiting exploration and also indicating
some of the difficulties men must be prepared to meet in
making those explorations. Finally in 1626, a few months
after his death, his unfinished New Atlantis was published,
a picture of an imaginary country where people lived under the government and the institutions Bacon thought
wisest. The most important one of these he called the
House of Salomon, which today we would recognize as an
institute for research on the grand scale.
In this House and around it he would provide all the
equipment a scientist could dream of-laboratories for the
study of heat and light and cold, and for the testing of
medicines and of minerals, instruments for observing and
recording all the changes of the weather, gardens, pools,
zoos, and vineyards, houses for the study of perfumes as
well as of engines and other crafts, caves and high towers
for subterranean and atmospheric studies, astronomical instruments,-in short every conceivable aid for observation
and experiment in natural phenomena to uncover their
possible utility for mankind.
The staff assembled at Salomon's House were to be
thirty-six in number, together with their assistants. These
"Fellows" were divided in groups, each group with its
special part of the general undertaking. Some were to visit
foreign countries for years at a time, "Merchants of Light"
he called them, to collect observations of all sorts for the
service of the fellows at the House itself. Other groups
were to read the literature of the ages and to abstract from
it useful experiments already known. Still others were to
investigate the mechanical arts and crafts for the same reason. Nearly half the fellows were to spend their days trying
12




THE DREAMERS
new experiments, compiling the materials reported on,
searching for new uses and demonstrations and seeking
ever to penetrate nature more deeply. Finally, three fellows whom Bacon named the Interpreters of Nature were
to draw forth from all this work conclusions useful for
man's life and knowledge, and from them to formulate
greater observations, axioms and principles.
Particularly in his House of Salomon Bacon forecast the
major characteristics of modern scientific development;
the experimental method, specialization, cooperative activity, and reliance upon equipment and books as all-inclusive as possible with ample funds to subsidize fulltime
work. His fellows were to give their entire time to this research, supported by the House. And their work was directed both to present usefulness and to future possibilities.
No such all-embracing institute exists or could exist; but
by it Bacon illustrated the "closer and purer League" between the experimental and the rational faculties which
had not then before been attempted and from which he
hoped much. Facts even from experiment would have little meaning unless they were correlated and properly interpreted, and progress could best come where this was
done cooperatively and systematically by men freed from
all other cares.
The New Atlantis with its dream of Salomon's House
aroused great interest. Ten different editions of the book
were issued by 1670, one of these in September, 1660, just
after the restoration of Charles II to the throne. That
Bacon's schemes were much in the minds of the founders
of the Royal Society in those years is proved not only by
the many references in their writings to the Baconian or
"new" philosophy, experimental science, but by the place
Bacon has as "instauratio artium"-"restorer of the arts"in the frontispiece Evelyn designed and Sprat used for his
History of the Royal Society in 1667. On one side of the
pedestal with the King's bust on it sits the figure of the
Society's president, on the other sits Bacon. (See Plate lo.)
Thus Sprat and the Fellows of the Society who helped him
13




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
write his History, in addition to sponsoring it, bore witness that they derived their chief inspiration from the
author of the Novum Organum, the Advancement of
Learning and the New Atlantis.
Comenius and Hartlib
Inspiration came also from other sources, some of these
European. Another great thinker deeply concerned about
the education of children and about learning in general
was the Czech, Comenius, who visited England in 1641.
To him language was "the gateway to knowledge, and his
aim was to simplify and shorten by a kind of royal road
to learning, all studies, arts and sciences." Languages
should be learned in relation to real objects, not through
the disputations of the schoolmen. He evolved an entire
system of education to be crowned by a great university
of all knowledge, which he accordingly called a "pansophic" university.
Scholars in England learning about his ideas urged
Comenius to come to London, which he finally did. His
hope was with the aid of his European-born friends in
London to win support for his university from the great
English nobles and even from Parliament itself. But the
times were out of joint. The struggle between king and
parliament was breaking into civil warfare, and neither
the nobles nor the king were interested at the moment in
his pansophism. Comenius returned to the continent after
a few months' stay, a greatly disappointed man. But his
scheme of a pansophic university was another ingredient
in the idea of a systematic study of nature in all its forms
as part of the advance of learning, for some of the people
he had met in England were among the science-lovers soon
to band themselves together into a club to further the
"new philosophy" that was a part of his plan.
Samuel Hartlib, one of the European-born friends of
Comenius in London, is especially worth noting both as
14




THE DREAMERS
a dreamer himself and as an important link in the chain
of connections between science-lovers in days when there
were no newspapers, no telegraph, no radio to announce
new discoveries, new books and new workers. The dissemination of such intelligence-as news of all sorts was
called in those days-is especially important for scientists
whose work knows no political boundaries. The men who
served as intelligencers in the seventeenth century were as
indispensable then as newspapers and journals are now.
Hartlib was perhaps the best-known of these intelligencers in the reign of Charles I. "Everybody knew him,"
one biographer wrote, and he served as a clearing-house
for all kinds of European as well as English news. Half
English and half Polish-German and born in Elbing near
Danzig, he had been at Cambridge in the 162os and had
remained in England as a merchant after 16r8, keeping
up correspondence and connection with his European
friends while at the same time living in the thick of London affairs. A public-spirited man especially interested in
education, it was he who had succeeded in getting
Comenius to cross the Channel into England, and as his
sponsor had done what he could, writing to friends in his
behalf, introducing him and arranging appointments with
influential people, but all in vain. Another twenty years
had to pass before the advance of the new learning could
proceed under royal patronage.
Samuel Hartlib, however, had his own dream which he
published in 1641. In his Description of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria there would be "a common centre for
assisting and promoting all undertakings in the support
of which mankind was interested." Included was a college
of husbandry, of farming. And for the advancement of
universal learning he planned a college which he called
"Antlantis." For this college he sought advice and financial
help from other science-lovers, especially from Robert
Boyle, soon to become one of the greatest and best-known
among them.
Hartlib himself apparently was not one of the "experi15




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
mentalists," though one of his sons was and he had many
friends in the group. In 1654 Hartlib wrote in a letter to
Boyle: "As for us, poor earth-worms, we are crawling in
my house about our quondam back-kitchen, whereof my
son hath made a goodly laboratory; yea, such a one, as
men (who have had the favour and privilege to see, or
to be admitted into it) affirm, they have never seen the
like, for its several advantages and commodiousnesses."
Later he added that one of the nobles he knew had remarked that nowhere in his travels had he met "so much
of theoretical solidity and practical dexterity, both together, as he finds in my chemical son." But Hartlib's own
name does not appear among those first science-lovers who
came together weekly, and he had died the year the Royal
Society was chartered.'
Where Bacon's purpose was to search out "the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things," Hartlib was
earnest to have his college, his Antlantis, "demonstrate any
experiment for the health or wealth of other men," so that
men may live "in great plenty, prosperity, health, peace
and happiness." Both men saw great need for the histories
of the trades men used, Bacon for the advancement of
learning, Hartlib and some of his friends for the immediate betterment of society. Urged on by Hartlib, one of
these friends, William Petty, wrote The Advice of W. P.
to Mr. S. Hartlib for the Advancement of Some Particular
Parts of Learning (1648).
William Petty
Petty, only twenty-four at this time, the son of a poor
clothier and dyer, had already worked and studied much
abroad (he had shipped as an apprentice before he was
fourteen). He had made influential friends on the continent who helped develop his marked mechanical and lin1 G. H. Turnbull. Hartlib, Dury and Comenius: Gleanings from Hartlib's
Papers. (London, 1947) 11, 13, 297.
16




PLATE 2. John Evelyn, F.R.S., 1620-1706
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




PLATE 3. Sir Thomas Gresham, 1519-1579
(From Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, 1740)


brr~r~*rF~"  "Am~~li
r rk~ r.in~l.rcil~*~nu*   g ~~arf 4 A.a ~
PAWu rku ir sr Ikbil
~ rsc~l~ ~~r N~lliv~r r -.1,~r


tob'
r
IS0.


PLATE 4. Gresham College
(From Ward's Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, 174o)




THE DREAMERS
guistic skills. During those years he had studied Greek and
Latin as well as French and had learned anatomy besides
geometry and navigation. Upon his father's death in 1646,
he had returned to England to take up his father's trade
with a special interest in all the mechanical processes involved in the industry. Three years later he received his
medical degree and in two years more was professor of
anatomy at Oxford. Soon thereafter he was appointed physician-general to the parliamentary army in Ireland where
he displayed great administrative ability. He also undertook with marked success the mapping of the country and
the survey of the forfeited estates of the Irish landowners.
He is best known, however, for his "practical arithmetic,"
becoming one of the founders of political economy by his
studies of taxation and similar subjects. A brilliant and
accomplished man, Charles II knighted him in 1662.
This varied career was still ahead of Petty, however,
when he wrote his book on education (1648). His interest
in the Baconian philosophy was in its usefulness, and around
that practical idea he shaped his educational program. He
saw the need for a center, a rendezvous, where one could
learn what had been done, what was in the doing and
what was being planned,-a center for the general communication of designs and of mutual assistance. Both
workers and equipment would be needed of course, and
in addition there should be yearly reports and rewards. To
train assistants, a school for children should be included
where they could be taught to earn their living as well as
to read and write. Among the mechanical arts to be taught
them he suggested the turning of figures on a lathe, the
making of mathematical instruments, engraving, the grinding of lenses, the making of musical instruments,-genteel
manufactures that would be an ornament in prosperity, a
stay in adversity.
Among the many details Petty gave for his scheme were
suggestions for the kind of books needed. Among these
should be a compilation of the ways of earning a living,
with a history of the arts or manufactures and their tools
17




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
all carefully worked out with illustrations. These histories
of the various trades were not to be overloaded with detail
but should give the various methods in use and their relative merits, and also their "economy,"-what seasons of the
year were best, markets, the disposal or use of wastes, etc.
Petty saw in his plan for the education of children great
advantages, among them the shortening of the age-old
seven years of apprenticeship to three years, which would
leave four years for travel and for perfecting skills before
the youths became of age.
These proposed histories of trade were not forgotten,
even though Petty's scheme for a great center, like that of
Comenius, did not materialize as he had detailed it. He
joined the other science-lovers and became one of the
charter members of the Royal Society. At the request of
the Society he reported on the history of clothing, the history of dyeing and that of shipping. The Society asked
others to write about varnish-making, engraving on copper, the making of bread, and the improvement of forests.
Later, the Society formed a committee on the histories of
trades and from these plans Sprat thought in 1667 that
innumerable benefits would result for all practical arts.
The advancement of learning Bacon advocated had its
practical values as well as its theoretical ones, and Hartlib,
Petty and their friends were many of them too able as
business men not to emphasize these aspects in their own
plans and activities.
But before the Royal Society was founded two other
schemes were proposed by men later to be among its Fellows-John Evelyn and Abraham Cowley.
John Evelyn
John Evelyn (1620-1706) throughout his long life was
a most useful amateur of science. Not a great experimenter nor a theorizer himself, he was full of ideas and
encouragement for others, freely placing his wide knowl18




THE DREAMERS


edge of men and affairs at the service of this new learning
and its enthusiasts.
After having been a student at the Middle Temple and
at Oxford (Balliol), with the outbreak of the Civil War
Evelyn found it wise because of his Royalist sympathies
to travel and live abroad. Both in Italy and in France, especially in Paris, he gained a wide acquaintance among the
intellectuals of Europe and among the Royalist exiles of
the Court. When Cromwell was firmly established in
power, he returned to England to live quietly on his
country estate, Sayes Court, until the Restoration. Thereafter Evelyn was much in London and was warmly welcomed at Court. Charles II appointed him commissioner
for various public services, such as the oversight of the
sick, wounded and prisoners of the Dutch War, and as a
member of the Council of Foreign Plantations, while under James II in 1685 he was commissioner of the Privy
Seal. For many years also until 1703 he was treasurer of
Greenwich Hospital for the Navy's wounded and pensioners.
All these responsibilities Evelyn carried out in a prudent,
sober fashion reflected in the diary he kept from his boyhood days until he died. (First published in 1818, this
diary has provided historians ever since with an invaluable
record of the age in which he lived.) A large-minded man
with wide political, social and horticultural interests,
though he loved solitude and the life of a scholar, Evelyn
led an active life because he believed in public service.
Somehow or other he found time to write or to translate
some twenty-five books, of which his Sylva (1664) on forest-trees is perhaps the best-known. He gave much thought
and care to the development of his gardens, also. One likes
to think how pleased he would be were he to know now
that those same gardens, carefully tended by his descendants through the centuries, had in 1886 been given by the
Evelyn of the day to the public for their enjoyment.
Evelyn's interest in the "new philosophy" was deep and
abiding. With the development of the Royal Society he
19




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
had its welfare at heart, furthering its aims in every way
at the Court as well as in the City, in good times and in
bad; and among its members were his closest friends.
To one of these friends, Robert Boyle, just before the
Restoration and the founding of the new Society, Evelyn
proposed a society of his own. Intermingled in his scheme
for the advancement of natural knowledge were also his
love for solitude, his deep interest in gardening and his
sense of public duty. "Since we are not to hope for a
mathematical college," he wrote to Boyle in 1659, "much
less a Salomon's House,... why might not some gentlemen, whose geniuses are greatly suitable, and who desire
nothing more than to give a good example, preserve science, and cultivate themselves, join together in a society
and resolve upon some orders and economy, to be mutually observed, such as shall best become the end of their
union.. "
Evelyn proposed the purchase of an estate not above
twenty-five miles from London, and the building of a central pavilion for the library, dining-room, drawing-room,
kitchens and other serving rooms, with a court in front,
a garden or recreation place, beautifully kept, behind and
a chapel nearby. There should be six apartments or cells
for the members of the society, each one to consist of a
small bedroom, a living-room, a closet and a private garden. A laboratory with a repository (museum) for rarities
or specimens, an aviary, a dovecote, an herb garden, a
vegetable garden, an orchard, a conservatory or greenhouse and a stable, with lodgings for one or two servants
besides, should also be provided. He then proposed to
Boyle that he (Evelyn) and his wife would each take one
of the apartments, that Boyle should take the third and that
the other three would be reserved for the nominees of the
other founder of the institution, who he suggested, should
be Boyle himself. Evelyn offered to pay a large share of
the expense of building and also to subsidize the main
building, if need be for seven years.
The principal end of this institution he conceived of
20




THE DREAMERS
"was the promotion of natural knowledge." To that end
and to free members' time for work, no stranger should
be easily admitted except on special days and after dinner.
Each member for one month in the year might leave to
visit London or a university for travel "in the public benefit." What Boyle thought of this plan is not recorded; apparently he was not interested, or else the Restoration
modified Evelyn's own desires.
Abraham Cowley
Another Royalist like Evelyn but a more active one,
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) had had his education first
as a king's scholar at Westminster School and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. As a Royalist he was ejected from
his fellowship there, and after two years at Oxford, followed the queen in 1646 to France where he served as a
diplomatic messenger and as a cipher-expert in connection
with her correspondence with the king. In England ten
years later he was arrested but released on bail. With the
Restoration he regained his full freedom and in 1665 established himself on a country estate at Chertsey.
Throughout all these years Cowley's pen was busy with
poems, satires and odes; at the request of his close friend,
Sprat, he wrote the Ode to the Royal Society which prefaces Sprat's History. He too was one of the first Fellows,
for as his proposal shows, he was greatly interested in the
new learning of his day. Indeed Sprat credited Cowley's
plan as "greatly hastening the contrivance" of the Royal
Society's "platform."
Cowley's Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661) was for no such hermit-like existence as Evelyn had fancied. Cowley proposed a college
where twenty philosophers or professors with sixteen
young scholars as their aids should be provided with living
quarters, servants, ample funds and all the equipment and
books necessary for four purposes: "i, to weigh, examine
21




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
and prove all things of nature delivered to us by former
ages, to detect, explode and strike a censure through all
false monies with which the world has been paid and
cheated so long; 2, to recover the lost inventions of the
ancients; 3,*to improve present arts; 4, to discover others
we yet have not; and besides to give the best education in
the world gratis." For this last purpose Cowley proposed
that these professors should teach two hundred pupils
living in the college with them. He drew up a course of
study by which he thought they might advance in knowledge and in language not only by reading those authors
who treat of nature, but also at the same time by serving
an apprenticeship in natural philosophy in the laboratories and gardens to see the objects written about and the
processes described.
Like Bacon's "merchants of light," four of Cowley's
professors should always be traveling beyond the seas, one
in Europe, one in Asia, one in Africa, and one in America,
to be gone for at least three years. They were to give a
constant account of all things that belong to learning and
especially to natural or experimental philosophy. Nor
were they ever to report back to the college on anything
which they had not thoroughly examined themselves.
Cowley, in this as well as in other parts of his scheme,
showed that he knew Bacon's plans well. Indeed, after
enumerating the instruments and laboratory equipment
he would provide for the college, Cowley wrote that he
could suggest more but that his college was not designed
after Bacon's Salomon's House ("which is a project for experiments that can never be experimented"). He was content with proposing a scheme within the bounds of financial support by private citizens.
In the preface to his book, Cowley pointed out the
inadequacies of the existing university education, with its
reliance "solely upon memory and wit," thus ignoring, except for some very slight aid to medicine and to mathematics, two other parts of learning: one, "the inquisition
into God's creatures," the other, the application of this
22




THE DREAMERS
knowledge to practical living. The universities had an ample provision of books and tutors for reading and interpretation but none for observation and application, partly
because of their cost, and partly "for that idle and pernicious opinion which had long possessed th. world, that
all things to be searched in nature had been already found
and discovered by the ancients, and that it were a folly to
travel about for that which others had before brought
home to us. And the great importer of all truths they took
to be Aristotle, as if... he could neither deceive nor be
deceived, or as if there had been not only no lies in him,
but all verities... No man can hope to make himself as
rich by stealing out of others' trunks as he might by opening and digging of new mines." Obviously all knowledge
was not known before, for only recently had America been
discovered. Nor could man learn by the solitary and inactive contemplation of nature in his private study. In the
past thousand years, according to Cowley, nothing had
been added to society except guns and printing; but since
men had ventured to go abroad, "out of books and out of
themselves, to work among God's creatures... every age
had abounded with excellent inventions, and every year
might perhaps do so," if proper provision were made.
Influence of the Dreamers
Clearly from the time of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Francis Bacon down to the time of
the first meetings of the Royal Society after the Restoration, when Cowley published his proposal, men were increasingly critical of the education of their day. Whether
that education was of the young apprentices to trades, or
of the sons of the gentry at Oxford or Cambridge, men
claimed that time was being wasted, new ideas were being
disregarded and opportunities for much greater and more
rapid progress were being lost, as well as a possible gain
in wealth and comfort that might be achieved from that
23




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
knowledge. Emphasis on wit and memory might aid men
to "steal from others' trunks" and borrow heavily from
the books written by earlier generations; but it certainly
did not lead to digging deep into the new mines for the
gold of new learning.
Such digging could best be done not by one man or a
few alone, but by a well-organized and well-equipped
group with plenty of capital,-for equipment was costly.
These men were not to limit themselves to the study of
books, though that was essential as part of their work.
They were to travel and to observe, to test the truth of
matters for themselves, and to report their findings for
the common good. The learned men of the schools had
missed much that the workers in the trades and crafts already had found out. The new philosophers must also
study the manual arts and consult with the artisans as
well as with the scholars. Finally, facts alone were not
enough; their significance in relation to other facts and
hypotheses must be sought out. For that, men must work
together to amass the evidence on which the geniuses
among them could theorize.
Bacon's ultimate aim was the advancement of learning
and only secondarily the greater usefulness of what might
be discovered. In the England of expanding trade and
wealth characterizing the early seventeenth century, Hartlib, Petty, Cowley and, to a less degree, Evelyn saw that
practical values to be gained from experimental knowledge were fully as important as the theoretical. Cowley
even wrote that the profits from the discoveries and inventions to be made at his proposed college would soon
more than cover its costs.
The schemes of all these men were destined not to be
carried out as they had devised them; but they served as
ferments, stimulating men's thought and conversation and
helping to make the intellectual atmosphere of the midseventeenth century favorable to the formation and development of some organization for the promotion of natural
knowledge. As the early years of the Royal Society unfold,
24




THE DREAMERS
one finds a definite attempt on the part of the Society to
carry out projects proposed in various of these schemes,
as the writing of the histories of trades and the sending of
questions, if not of philosophers themselves, to foreign
countries for investigation and report. The Society used
the direct study of nature with the reading of earlier records only as a check upon present work. It sought to provide and to improve equipment. It recognized the
importance of cooperative effort in the study of a problem.
Dreams about these and similar activities are embedded
in old books that nowadays are rarely opened, but they
have done their work. They have helped to shape the
thinking of the men who formed the Royal Society and
who shared in its activities.


25




3


THE VIRTUOSI
S   IR FRANCIS BACON'S books and the schemes proposed by various writers were ideas on paper. Other
men, like Sir Thomas Gresham in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's time, were not content with the written word but
put their ideas into action. Thus Gresham College and
later "the invisible college" 1 came into being. Both of these
very different "colleges" played an important part in the
early history of the Royal Society. Accordingly, their origins and development need to be considered.
4Another factor also needing consideration arose out of
(the great interest many of the wealthy in that age took in
collecting objects of varied kinds. At first concerned
mainly with things they considered of historical or artistic
value, many soon became collectors of "rareties" as well,strange or curious objects from foreign lands, and mathematical or mechanical novelties. Out of such collections as
these were to arise eventually the great museums of today.


1 See below, note p. 35.


26




THE VIRTUOSI
In the seventeenth century they were the recreation of
amateurs, science-lovers but not scientists. The virtuosi, as
they and their friends were called in those days, for all
their amateurishness and their naivet6, in their enthusiasm for the "new philosophy" of scientific study provided
the rich soil out of which the Royal Society was to develop
and true science to grow.
The founding of Gresham College takes us back again
to the days of Queen Elizabeth, though its helpful influence upon the development of science was not of importance until later in the next century. Sir Thomas Gresham,
a London merchant and Queen Elizabeth's financial agent,
was seriously concerned about the poor educational opportunities for the Londoners of his day, just as Sir
Humphrey Gilbert had been. Without waiting for government money and support, Sir Thomas provided in his will
that after his death and that of his wife, his London mansion and all his estate should be turned over to the City of
London and to the Mercers Guild, in trust for the citizens,
to provide them with lecturers and a place of assembly.
This was done and in 1598 Gresham College opened as
Sir Thomas had planned it.
What we now know as adult education was unheard of
in those days. There were no public museums and art galleries with people on their staffs to explain the exhibits
and to give public lectures from their special knowledge.
Nor were the grammar schools expected to train young
people after they were thirteen or fourteen if they stayed
that long. Those who could afford it and who were ambitious for their sons' advancement might employ tutors
for them, and either send them on to one of the colleges
in Oxford or Cambridge, or on a grand tour of Europe
for a couple of years or so.
But most boys went to work as soon as they were in
their teens. They would be apprenticed to some master
craftsman for seven years in order to learn a trade while
earning their board and lodging. Those who wanted to
enter the professions and become teachers, clergymen, doc27




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
tors or lawyers had of course somehow to get training in
one or other of the two universities. There were scholarships even then to help the poor but brilliant boy along,
or he might attract the favorable notice of a powerful man
who would give him opportunity for advancement.
The medical student, for example, after getting his
bachelor's degree in arts, then had to study six years more
for his degree in medicine, attending two dissections in
that time, and taking part in a public debate. Before becoming a doctor of medicine he had to study five more
years, attend three dissections and take part in more public discussions of medical matters. This study was not like
that of medical students today. It meant reading the ancient books on medicine, some of them written fifteen
hundred years before, listening to lectures on these books
and their writers and then passing examinations on them.
Medical students then did not take care of patients under
supervision nor work in a laboratory or hospital nor pay
attention, if they were not interested, to any of the advances in medical knowledge of their day. The kind of
topics they discussed in public debates were such, we are
told, as: Is it possible for man to live without breath? Are
all parts of the body nourished by the blood? (They argued "yes" for the first question and "no" for the second.)
Really to learn about patients and their ailments, a young
medical student would do as well if not better to get himself apprenticed to some experienced doctor and to assist
him in his work. Such medical training was common well
into the nineteenth century.
Gresham College
Sir Thomas Gresham knew that most of the citizens of
London would never go abroad or even to Oxford or Cambridge to study. Instead, he brought the professors and
the lectures to them. In his house, hereafter Gresham College, seven unmarried professors were to live in comfort28




THE VIRTUOSI
able quarters and each was to be paid a salary of fifty
pounds a year. There were to be professors of law, physic,
rhetoric, divinity, music, geometry and astronomy as in the
universities generally in the middle ages. Each was to give
a stated series of lectures three times a year, the science lectures alternately in Latin and in English, the others in Latin,
and the citizens of London were to be welcome to attend.
The Mercers Company and the mayor and aldermen of
the City of London, having asked the two old universities
for nominations for these professorships, appointed such
able men that from the outset a high standard was set.
The lectures attracted to the assembly place the leading
men in London,-courtiers and nobles, business men and
company members, as well as doctors, clergymen, mathematicians and other scholars. The mansion house, well located in the heart of the City, was solidly enough built so
that it lasted for more than two centuries. It was easily
accessible and very large, with beautiful grounds and gardens. Small wonder that after a professor's lecture, his
friends and admirers would linger on in the gardens or in
his rooms, discussing together.
Notable men accepted these professorships. When Oxford wanted its first appointee for the new Savilian professorship in 1619, it took the Gresham professor of
geometry from London, Henry Briggs, one of the ablest
mathematicians of his time. He was the Briggs who computed the Briggsian tables of logarithms and helped to
popularize their use by scientists, teaching "the meaning
and the use of this booke at Gresham house." Another
noted mathematician at Gresham College was William
Oughtred who invented two forms of slide rules, and who
also had among his private pupils Seth Ward and John
Wallis, later themselves to be leaders in the scientific
world.
By virtue of their official position and their location in
the City, these Gresham professors were in close association with the sea captains, the shipbuilders and the administrative officials of the English Navy. Their learning
29




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
was not just for the lecture halls but had practical value
as well. Already we see developing some of the major characteristics that differentiate modern scientific growth from
the greatness of Greek scientific work. These Gresham professors did not scorn association with so-called practical
men; they were willing to work on practical problems
themselves. They not only cooperated with other men of
like mind, but they sought their help and used their experience as a basis for their own theories which they again
put to the test of practical use.
Regardless of the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 and
the struggles and difficulties of the Stuart kings, James I
and Charles I, her successors on the throne, Gresham College continued on its way. Later, as we shall see, its professors were to be among the group of science-lovers
agreeing to organize formally, its apartments were to be
the place where organization was agreed upon, and Gresham College was to house the young Royal Society and its
collections for many years. In fact the two institutions
were often confused even then; the Fellows of the Society
were referred to as Greshamites, and Gresham College and
the Royal Society were names used interchangeably although mistakenly.
England Under Charles I
While Gresham College was proceeding with its scheduled program in the heart of the City, the tension
between the first Stuart kings and their subjects tightened
almost to the breaking point of actual bloodshed. Charles
I needed money. His parliaments would not grant him
funds until he had first redressed their grievances. Therefore Charles ruled without parliament for a number of
years, collecting revenue from whatever sources he could.
He made the people of the inland cities pay the ancient
ship-money tax, till then levied only on the sea-coast towns
for their protection,-and then he spent the money for his
30




THE VIRTUOSI
court instead of for ships. He sold to companies of business
men the privilege of holding a monopoly on the sale of
products the people wanted. His favorite courtiers were
unpopular with the people, and his queen was a French
woman, a Roman Catholic in a country which a hundred
years earlier had severed relations with the Roman Catholic Church and did not wish now to have them resumed.
In foreign affairs also Charles was treating with the hated
Spanish, instead of fighting against them as the English
had done in the time of "good Queen Bess."
Affairs on the continent of Europe were in a turmoil.
The terrible Thirty Years War was ravaging the Germanies as Bohemians and Swedes, Dutch and French fought
the Holy Roman Emperor and his armies, Spanish as well
as Austrian and German. Deeply involved in the struggle
was the whole problem of the relation between the Pope
as head of the Catholic Church and the Protestant leaders,
supporters of separate or of state churches. Many men
wanted to share in the great wealth and in the vast lands
formerly owned by the Church and now seized from the
Church in those countries that would no longer recognize
the authority of the Pope. Small wonder was it that the
Pilgrim Fathers, seeing the end of peace between tolerant
Holland and Catholic Spain, left their refuge in Leyden
and in 1620 founded Plymouth in the New World to establish homes where they could worship God in their own
way, far from warring states.
Nor was it strange that men of various European countries, especially if they happened to have Protestant leanings,
found England a pleasant place to come to even under
the early Stuart rulers. While large sections of the continent were battle-grounds, England was at peace,-for the
time being. Samuel Hartlib, as we have seen, came from
Danzig in the 162os and stayed in England until his death.
Henry Oldenburg, of whom more later, came from Bremen several times on missions of one sort or another, until
he too came to stay. Theodore Haak, a Calvinist from
Worms, came in 1625 for a year at the universities. He
31




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
returned three years later for the rest of his days, his
mastery of languages making him useful as a translator.
From France came the Calvinist physician, Pierre Moulin,
on visits to the London of James I; his sons, Peter and
Louis, came back to England to remain.
These men, and others like them, were helpful in the
development of the new science for they brought with
them word of what was being done on the continent by
science-lovers there. They wrote letters back and forth
conveying news of science as well as of politics, business
and religion. They helped to translate English publications into French and Latin. They told what they had
seen being done by European science-lovers and made
helpful suggestions to their English friends. Haak, for example, was the one who suggested the formation of "the
invisible college," the forerunner of the Royal Society.
Though there were no newspapers as yet, even then a
net-work of communications linked England with the
European countries. Men went abroad on government or
on private business and brought back European books as
well as news. Students wandered from university to university in Italy, France, Holland. Men, exiled to foreign
cities, when restored to favor, brought back with them
new tastes, new ideas, new interests learned abroad. Thus
many a Royalist supporter, in exile with the Stuart prince,
entertained himself as Sir Kenelm Digby did, with trying
out some of the new chemical experiments, studying the
stars with the new spy-glass, and learning more about the
herbs or simples and the drugs of the day. Even Charles
II during his years of exile had a work-shop or laboratory
of his own, and upon his restoration to the English throne,
set up a laboratory in his palace. Like Samuel Hartlib's
"chemical son," king and commoner alike were intensely
interested in the scientific wonders being discovered in
their time.


32




THE VIRTUOSI


Collectors of Curiosities 
/ Some of this enthusiasm expressed itself in collections of
curiosities like the collections of a small boy. Travelers
had seen and admired the great Renaissance collections of
Italy and France, the remains of the ancient Greek and
Roman civilizations, their coins, their statues, their books,
now so carefully preserved. England too had curious old
Roman relics. In the early Stuart days the nobles and men
of wealth became ardent collectors not only of the objects of antiquity-marbles, coins, medals-but also of
"rareties," some of them curiosities that we might call
just trash. When the Royal Society had been under way
only a few years, it named one of the Fellows a benefactor
because from his own collections he had presented to the
"repository" of the Society among other things, "a windgun, a burning-glass in a brass frame," and one in a
wooden frame, "a piece of petrified wood, a cocoa-nut, an
ostrich's egg-shell," "a strange bone with a rib in the middle," "a geometrical arch composed of many small pieces
of wood without nails or pins", a loadstone (magnet), "a
scales for weighing gold without any counterpoise" and
"two papers of petrified grass" (Nov. 4, 1663). From such
beginnings did the great museums of natural history
develop.
One significance that the collections had for these amateurs, the virtuosi, was the value of the specimens in revealing to the beholder the wonders of the world created
by Divine Providence. They were a revelation of God's
power and His glory expressed in the natural world as
His power and His glory were revealed in the books of
the Bible. The "admirable contrivance of natural things"
made a great impression on the virtuosi who first examined through the early compound microscope the eye
of a small fly, "the inimitable gildings and embroideries"
in the smallest plant seeds, and "the accurate order and
symmetry in the frame of the most minute creatures." Dr.
33




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
John Wilkins was a bishop in the Church of England
when he wrote those words in a book on theology. His
first work with the microscope had been done at least ten
years earlier, but he had not forgotten his first impressions.
For men for whom in those times religious beliefs and
church doctrines might at any moment become matters
of life and death, observation and study of such natural
objects, they claimed, had a definite religious value. They
earnestly rejected any suggestion that such scientific study
was harmful to religious beliefs, no matter what their
critics might say about its possible destructiveness to accepted religious doctrines. The deeper the knowledge they
had of the creature, the deeper the reverence and respect
they felt for its Creator. Why should not God's power be
learned from the natural world as well as from the Bible?
It seemed well worth while for sober respectable
churchmen to give much time to such a profitable as well
as fascinating study as that of the natural world in which
they lived. Not only would it profit their souls but also it
might profit their purses because of the everyday uses to
which such increased knowledge could be put. Especially
to the practical minded, moderate Puritan in the troubled
times of Cromwell and in the laxity and dissoluteness of
court life under the Stuarts, this new philosophy, this
natural science, was a profitable, leisure-time activity. It
appealed to the intellect; it strengthened religious beliefs;
it contributed to the common welfare through its practical usefulness; and besides, it was a subject of great delight.
Small wonder, then, that among the amateurs were to
be found many Puritans and that some of them, like Dr.
Wilkins, became leaders in organizing the Royal Society
for promoting Natural Knowledge. The challenge to the authority of the Pope in the Catholic Church and of the
bishops in the Anglican Church and the appeal to the
sources, to the Bible rather than to the Church Fathersthese were now being carried over from the ecclesiastical
and political realms into the intellectual and scientific
ones. Aristotle and Galen were no longer to be the final
34




THE VIRTUOSI


authority, if observation and experiment proved them to
be mistaken. No longer should questions be settled by
authority if the facts proved otherwise. These activeminded, independent Puritans were willing to take risks
if the stakes were high enough. They had done so in
government and church, why not in laboratories and lecture-halls? So they tested and experimented for themselves, already carrying out the spirit of the future Royal
Society's motto, "Nullius in verba." 2
Virtuosi
These collectors of rarities in the earlier part of the
century, whether Puritan or Anglican, nobles or professional men, were satisfying their curiosity rather than attempting to pursue scientific learning. It was a recreation
in which they delighted, not an activity to which they
devoted their whole time and thought. At first they were
antiquarians in their concern with the relics of the past,
glad to possess "the great silver box that Nero kept his
beard in" or "the urn that did contain the ashes of the
emperors." Gradually some of these gentlemen became
more and more interested in mechanical and mathematical notions. Some, to be sure, were problems the Greeks
and the Romans had worked on and that men had puzzled over ever since, like the problem of perpetual motion. Other problems stemmed from the genius of Galileo
in Italy and Descartes in France.
Mathematical Magick was more than the title of a book
written in the sixteen-forties by one of the virtuosi. It
expressed the feeling of many about the "marvels" of
those days. According to its author, Dr. Wilkins, even one
man by the aid of a series of wheels, ropes, and pulleys
properly arranged with his breath alone could uproot the
2 "Not under bond to abide by any master's authority"; translated from
Horace's Epistles I, i, line 14, in I. Masson; Three Centuries of Chemistry.
(New York, [1925]) p. 44, note.
35




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
largest tree. (See Plate 5.) The ancients had known the
principle of the lever; he and men of similar ingenuity
could find many practical uses for it, for the wheel, the
wedge, the screw. "A chariot with sails to catch the wind,"
an "ark for submarine navigation," a "talking image"
were some of his suggested "automata." There is no record
that Dr. Wilkins attempted to make them himself, though
his father, a goldsmith, had a "very mechanical head" and
"was much for trying experiments," according to one of
Wilkins' friends.
Gradually these scientific notions became more engrossing, displacing earlier interest in antiquities. The
word "virtuosi," earlier applied to these gentlemen collectors, after 1640 began rather to mean a man who observed facts and collected specimens as a basis for the
study of the mathematical and mechanical arts and of
natural history. Such study, as Sprat pointed out in his
History some years later, was a proper one for gentlemen
' of leisure, well within their capacities and sweeter than
academic learning because it had objects they could see
and feel, and a method they could understand. Thus art
was giving way to science, under the pressure of Bacon's
influence and the example of some of the leading men,
patrons of the virtuosi as well as virtuosi themselves. Not
least among them all was Charles II himself.
These enthusiasts, however, were not scientists yet but
amateurs or lovers of science. Their object, according to
Sprat, was rather to make collections of "curiosities to
adorn cabinets and gardens than for the solidity of philosophical discoveries." But the help they gave to the true
scientists lay in their eager cooperation, expressed in financial form as well as in friendship and patronage. They
provided a welcoming audience for the new discoveries
and they formed a group where ideas could be exchanged,
experiments tried out, and scientific news from abroad
and at home disseminated. These amateurs were of major
importance in the early development of modern science.


36




THE VIRTUOSI


"The Invisible College" 3
By 1645 some of the younger men among these newer
virtuosi, science-lovers that they were, had come together
in a kind of luncheon club in London at one of the taverns, where they met weekly to discuss scientific news. One
of its members, Robert Boyle, referred to it in his letters
as "the invisible college,"-a meeting place for serious
study without buildings or professors,-and as "the invisible college" it has been known to this day. Years after
the group had broken up, almost all of its members having become Fellows of the Royal Society that ultimately
succeeded it, Dr. John Wallis wrote down in 1678 his
recollections of those early days in a passage that has often
been quoted and is well worth quoting again:
I take its [the Royal Society's] first Ground and Foundation to
have been in London about the year 1645 (if not sooner) when
the same Dr. Wilkins (then Chaplain to the Prince Elector Palatine, in London), Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Ent (now Sir
George Ent), Dr. Glisson, Dr. Scarbrough (now Sir Charles
Scarbrough), Dr. Merrit, with myself and some others, met
weekly (sometimes at Dr. Goddard's Lodgings, sometimes at
the Mitre in Wood-street hard by) at a certain day and hour,
under a certain Penalty, and a weekly Contribution for the
Charge of Experiments, with certain Rules agreed upon
amongst us. Where (to avoid diversion to other discourses, and
for some other reasons) we barred all Discourses of Divinity,
of State-Affairs, and of News (other than what concern'd our
business of Philosophy) confining our selves to Philosophical
Inquiries, and such as related thereunto; as Physick, Anatomy,
Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Mechanicks, and
Natural Experiments. We there discoursed the Circulation of the
3 Attention should be called to Miss R. H. Syfret's important article on
"The Origins of the Royal Society," Notes and Records of the Royal Society, V, no. 2 (April, 1948), 75-137. Miss Syfret raises the question whether
Boyle's term, "the invisible college," refers to the scientific club or rather
to Hartlib's Comenian schemes. Haak would then be the major link between
pansophism and the club of which he was admittedly the instigator. Unfortunately Miss Syfret's article was received too late to be considered in
this book.
37




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Blood, the Valves in the Veins, the Copernican Hypothesis, the
Nature of Comets and new Stars, the Attendants on Jupiter,
the Oval shape of Saturn, the Inequalities and Selenography
of the Moon, the several Phases of Venus and Mercury, the Improvement of Telescopes, and Grinding of Glasses for that
purpose (wherein Dr. Goddard was particularly ingaged, and
did maintain an Operator in his house for that purpose), the
weight of the Air, the Possibility or Impossibility of Vacuities,
and Nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian Experiment
in Quicksilver, the Descent of Heavy Bodies, and the Degrees
of Acceleration therein, with others of like nature. Some of
which were but new discoveries, and others not so generally
known and embraced as now they are.
These meetings we removed, soon after, to the Bull-head
in Cheapside and (in Term-time) to Gresham Colledge, where
we met weekly at Mr. Foster's Lecture (the Astronomy-Professor
there) and after the Lecture ended, repaired sometimes to Mr.
Foster's Lodgings, sometimes to some other place not far distant,
where we continued such Inquiries; and our Numbers
encreased.
This passage tells us a number of interesting things,
when we translate its terms into modern phraseology and
relate its information to the history of the period,-about
the members of "the invisible college," their meetingplaces, and their subjects for discussion.
Dr. Wallis here names eight members of the group including himself and Mr. Samuel Foster, the Gresham professor of astronomy. In a much later "Account of some
Passages in his own Life" written in 1697, Dr. Wallis in
repeating much of this story adds to it the name of Theodore Haak, "a German of the Palatinate, and then resident
in London, who, I think, gave the first occasion, and first
suggested those meetings." A tenth member, as we know
from his letters regretting his missing certain of the meetings of "the invisible college," was the Honorable Robert
Boyle.
Except for Boyle, these men were all university trained,
professional men,-doctors, clergymen, linguists. Only
Boyle was the son of a nobleman and he alone had first
38




THE VIRTUOSI
studied at Eton and then abroad for some years with a
tutor. Nine of these men were therefore in all probability
already friends from their college days together or from
having had a common college and theological background.
Wilkins and Goddard had been at Magdalen Hall in
Oxford at the same time, and Merrit and Haak had attended Gloucester Hall there, both notable Puritan centers. The five others were Cambridge men, two from Caius,
Harvey's college where the medical tradition was very
strong, two from Emanuel, the Puritan stronghold in Cambridge, and Ent from Sidney Sussex where Cromwell had
gone. They were relatively young men also, ranging in
age in 1645 from Boyle, the youngest at eighteen, to Dr.
Glisson, the oldest at forty-eight. Three were in their late
twenties, two more in their early thirties.
Drawn to London by their various professions and activities, seven of them at least were supporters of the parliamentary party in the struggle with the king, and only
one, Dr. Scarbrough, was a pronounced Royalist. Strongly
Puritan in education and interests, Haak was employed
by the Westminster Assembly to translate for them the
Dutch annotations to the Bible, and Dr. John Wilkins
was the chaplain in England for the Prince Elector Palatine who was next heir to the English throne if the Stuart
line failed to win the battle with the parliamentary party
over the divine right of kings.
Good reason was it, therefore, in those uncertain times
that these congenial spirits should debar from their
friendly gatherings any discussion of politics, religion or
the news of the day. Such subjects were too hotly controversial and too general elsewhere. Far better that they
should stick to their common interest, natural philosophy.
Discussions about the map of the moon or the possibility
of creating a vacuum and similar objective matters were
far safer and certainly more fruitful topics for consideration than Cromwell's activities, for instance, and equally
as precedent-breaking. Church and state could well be
disregarded for one day a week.
39




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


After this luncheon club began meeting regularly, Dr.
Wallis reported that they came together either at a tavern
or at Dr. Goddard's house, and shortly thereafter during
term-time at Gresham College after Mr. Foster's astronomy
lecture. One advantage of Dr. Goddard's house lay in the
fact that he employed a technician, as we would say today,
an assistant who could grind glass into lenses. Also, Dr.
Goddard as a physician would have a store of various herbs
and drugs with which they could experiment in his own
private workshop. Taverns did not have such conveniences. On the other hand, Gresham College had not only
its lecture halls for their use but its gardens, its astronomical equipment, its books and above all its seven professors
at least five of whom a few years later were to become
charter members of the new Royal Society. The older
College was a hospitable host and friend to these amateurs
of "the invisible college."
The Century of Scientific Genius
The friends had much to discuss, as Dr. Wallis enumerated, ranging from Galileo's discoveries in 1609-1611 with
his newly devised telescope to his studies of matter in motion and the laws concerning it. Old Aristotelian and
Ptolemaic conceptions of the perfection of the heavens
and of the position of the universe had been dramatically
proved false by Galileo's discovery that the planet Jupiter,
like the earth with its moon, had satellites swinging
around it, and that the planets Mercury and Venus, far
from resembling billiard balls, and ever the same, went
through phases as the moon did, by virtue of their paths
or orbits lying within that of the earth's around the sun.
Even that most perfect celestial body, the sun, had spots
on it, and the moon as seen through a telescope had all
sorts of irregularities and roughnesses apparent on its surface. Most startling of all was the proof by analogy these
discoveries added to the Copernican theory that the earth
40




THE VIRTUOSI
was merely one of the planets and that the sun, not the
earth, was the center of the universe. If man's home, the
earth, was whirling through space, how did man stick on
it? And how much less important the earth and its inhabitants were than all the learned men had claimed through
ages past! Might there not be men on other planets? And
were they Jews and Christians too? These new astronomical
theories involved much more than physics, mathematics and
astronomy. Grave questions of religion and philosophy
were opened up also.
Then there were the new discoveries in the anatomical
and physiological fields, greatly stimulated by Vesalius'
studies of the human frame (De Fabrica Humani Corporis)
published in 1543, the same year in which Copernicus had
published his masterly De Revolutionibus. These two
great books, each revolutionary in its field, have made 1543
generally recognized as the birth-year of modern science.
Doctors in Italy carrying on Vesalius' work had found the
valves in the veins. William Harvey, after studying with
these Italians, had returned to England to prove to his own
satisfaction that the blood circulated through the arteries
and back through the veins to the heart again. Instead of
being a kind of hearth-fire to warm the blood, the heart in
reality was a pump. Harvey did not have the microscope
with which to observe the tiny capillaries connecting the arteries and the veins, but he argued from his evidence that
some such connection must exist. Fifty years later Malpighi was to observe them for the first time. After Harvey
had published his work in 1628, his practice as a doctor
fell off seriously because people could not believe that
any doctor holding notions so contrary to the age-old
teachings could be a reliable physician. So Harvey told
Aubrey who wrote it down. Fortunately the doctor lived
long enough (till 1657) to see his theory of the circulation
of the blood generally accepted. The young virtuosi, several of them doctors themselves, would surely find much
to discuss.
Then too there was the singular behavior of quick-silver,
41




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


as they called mercury, in experiments Torricelli in Italy
and Pascal in France were making with a new device, a
barometer, to show differences in the weight of air, or
atmospheric pressure. What an astounding idea that air
had weight which could be measured and that its weight
on mountain-tops varied from that in mines and caves.
Could a pump really remove air, if it had weight and
substance, from an enclosed vessel and thus create that
vacuum which Nature abhorred, according to all previous
knowledge?
Also Galileo's book on mechanics and the laws of motion (Dialoghi Delle Nuove Scienze) had only recently
been published (1636). That made the subject of matter
in motion a lively topic for discussion in more ways than
one. Galileo had put to the test of experiment the statements of the ancient authorities and had found them incorrect, like that one about a heavy weight falling faster
than a light one. What about the speed and the path of
objects such as cannon-balls shot out of catapults in the
old days and out of guns nowadays?
Harvey and Galileo are only two of the six or seven
geniuses of the greatest importance that this seventeenth
century was to produce, not to mention a number of other
scientists of hardly less importance. This "century of
genius" 4 with its Newton and Boyle, its Kepler and its
Gilbert, its Harvey and Galileo, had Descartes and Pascal,
Torricelli, Wren, Hooke and Halley as well, and many
more besides. They and their fellow-workers were rapidly
devising the instruments of precision they needed and
were developing the scientific methods that Bacon had
proclaimed. Galileo had constructed his telescope according to the laws of perspective as he knew them, after he
had heard of such an invention by a Dutch lens-maker, and
with his mathematical and mechanical genius made better
and more powerful ones. Then he had systematically used
this new tool. Harvey had demonstrated the circulation of
4 So named by Professor A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
(New York, 1926) Chap. III.
42




THE VIRTUOSI
the blood by a series of experiments planned precisely to
prove quantitatively that the body contained just so much
blood and that it must be pumped by the heart through
the body in a continuous circuit, for the heart muscle contracted and expanded every second as long as life was in it.
No guess work this, but the first carefully planned experiment to prove a physiological fact mathematically and
quantitatively.
William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's physician, had published his epochal study of terrestrial magnetism (De Magnete) in 1600, a fact that helps to explain the virtuosi's
great interest in loadstones or magnets in the middle
decades of that century. Kepler's formulation of the laws
of planetary motion, together with Galileo's brilliant work
in astronomy and mechanics, was combined by Newton
with the Copernican hypothesis in his fundamental theory
of the universe. The laws of attraction and of motion,
mathematically demonstrated, governed earth, planets
and stars alike in one magnificently ordered system.
Other astronomers like Edmond Halley and Flamsteed
in England by their studies supplied supporting evidence.
Halley in particular gave the death-blow to one popular
superstition about comets heralding disaster when he predicted that the comet of 1682 would return in 1759. It
came when he predicted it would. Men now recognize
"Halley's comet" as having shone in 1066 when the Normans invaded England. We have seen it in 1910 and others
will see it in 1985.
Robert Boyle, the finest virtuoso of them all, for the
first time distinguished between element, compound and
mixture and used his improved air-pump to work out the
law of gases that students know today as Boyle's Law.
Robert Hooke was his right-hand man in this work, and
then as curator for the Royal Society moved on into a
bewildering variety of activities as he helped the eager
members carry out their experiments and at the same time
worked out his own. His inventions were many, from the
universal joint to the main-spring for watches, and his
43




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


published observations with the early compound microscope are the classic in that field.
Great as was the work of Hooke, Halley, Torricelli and
many another scientist in Europe during the seventeenth
century, all are overshadowed by the towering achievements of Kepler and Galileo, Gilbert, Harvey and Boyle,
and most of all, of Newton.
Inventions
The seventeenth century was not yet half over, however, and much of this work was still to come, when the
virtuosi of "the invisible college" held their discussions.
Still, they had plenty of important ideas to discuss and
instruments to improve if they could. The first compound
microscopes, the barometer, the air-pump, the pendulumclock for the accurate measure of time, a machine for
grinding lenses, crude thermometers,-these were only
some of the instruments of precision these amateurs were
seeing developed, in some cases helping in their development. Mathematicians and astronomers rejoiced in the
new-made tables of logarithms which saved them endless
hours of calculation. They began to use Descartes' proposals for a more systematic expression of mathematical
ideas, as for example, that the first letters of the alphabet
could be used to express known quantities and the last
letters to express the unknown. Even calculating machines
seemed a possibility to these mechanical geniuses later on
in this century; both Pascal and Leibnitz actually made
them. The seventeenth century, as well as the twentieth,
had its mechanical and technological triumphs that greatly
aided the advance of science.
But while these science-lovers shut themselves off from
debate about contemporary politics for at least one day a
week, events caught up with them. Civil war had broken
out between king and parliament. The Royalists had been
defeated and the King had fled, later to be captured and
44




THE VIRTUOSI
turned over for trial and execution. Meanwhile the parliamentary commissioners were ruling the country and the
King's supporters had to leave their government positions,
if they did not actually have to flee from the country. Oxford had been loyal to him; the heads of its various colleges either had to make their peace with parliament or
leave. Some left and the commissioners replaced them with
their own adherents. Consequently several members of
"the invisible college" in 1648 and 1649 were chosen to
succeed these Royalists and left London for Oxford. Dr.
John Wilkins went to Wadham College to be its head or
warden, Dr. Jonathan Goddard and Dr. John Wallis went
to other colleges to be followed shortly by several of their
friends.
Those left in London continued with their meetings
while the Oxford members joined with them from time to
time when they were in the City, but "the invisible college" did not thrive. Too many important members were
in other parts of the realm and Cromwell's soldiers were
too conspicuous in Londoh. It was mainly at Oxford during these Cromwellian years that the amateurs-the virtuosi-with their friends kept alive their scientific pursuits.


45




4


THE FOUNDING OF THE
ROYAL SOCIETY
R. JOHN WALLIS after describing the meetings
of "the invisible college" in the passage already
quoted in the last chapter, continued his account
as follows:
About the years 1648, 1649, some of our Company were removed to Oxford; (first, Dr. Wilkins, then I, soon after Dr.
Goddard); whereupon our Company divided. Those at London
(and we, when we had occasion to be there) met as before. Those
of us at Oxford with Dr. Ward (now Bishop of Salisbury), Dr.
Petty (now Sir William Petty), Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Willis and
many others of the most inquisitive Persons in Oxford, met
weekly (for some years) at Dr. Petty's Lodgings on the like
account; (to wit, so long as Dr. Petty continued in Oxford, and
for some while after) because of the conveniences we had there,
(being the House of an Apothecary) to view and make use, of
Drugs, and other like matters, as there was occasion.
Our Meetings there were very numerous, and very considerable. For, beside the diligence of Persons, studiously Inquisitive,
46




THE FOUNDING      OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
the Novelty of the Design made many to resort thither; who
when it ceased to be new, began to grow more remiss, or did
pursue such Inquiries at Home.
We did afterwards (Dr. Petty being gone for Ireland, and our
numbers growing less) remove thence. And (some years before
His Majesty's Return) did meet (as Dr. Holder observes), at
Dr. Wilkins' Lodgings in Wadham-Colledge.
But before the time he mentions [1659] those set Meetings
ceased in Oxford, and were held in London. Where (after the
death of Mr. Foster) we continued to meet at Gresham-Colledge
(as before), at Mr. Rooke's Lecture, (who succeeded Mr. Foster)
and from thence repaired to some convenient place in or near
that Colledge: And so onward; till the Fire of London, caused
our removal to Arundel-house; from thence we are since returned to Gresham-Colledge again.
In the meanwhile; our Company at Gresham-Colledge, being
much again increased, by the accession of divers Eminent and
Noble Persons upon His Majesties Return; we were (about
the beginning of the Year 1662) by His Majesties Grace and
Favour, Incorporated by the name of the Royal Society, etc.
Many years later Dr. Wallis enlarged this account with
the statement that after Dr. Wilkins was transferred to
Trinity College, Cambridge, and before they returned to
London, the Oxford Society met at the lodgings of the
Honorable Mr. Robert Boyle "then resident for divers
years in Oxford."
The Oxford Philosophical Society
Unlike the informality of "the invisible college" of 1645,
the Oxford amateurs formally organized themselves in
1651 into the Philosophical Society of Oxford and kept
regular minutes of their meetings. Despite the return of
some of its leaders to London, the Oxford Society continued to hold meetings, with no great regularity, however, until 1690 when they ceased altogether. Oxford still
treasures that minute book. Probably the formal organization and record-keeping of the Philosophical Society set
the precedent later for the organization of the Royal So47




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
ciety, just as "the invisible college" had first set the pattern for regular meetings for scientific discussion and experiment. The virtuosi were becoming better trained in
organized activity as they moved from "the invisible college" in London in the sixteen-forties to the Philosophical
Society in Oxford of the sixteen-fifties and on to the Royal
Society in London of the sixteen-sixties.
The first years of the Oxford Philosophical Society were
its most notable. Oxford in that decade was a little outside
of the turmoil in London where Oliver Cromwell was
ruling first with and then without the help of even a rump
parliament. By 1658, the science-lovers remaining in London had to cease from meeting, for Gresham College had
been made a temporary barracks for soldiers and they did
not wish, Sprat wrote to his friend, Kit Wren, to run the
risk of suffering the fate of Archimedes. The virtuosi were
too well trained in the classics not to remember that story
of how the greatest mathematical and mechanical genius
of the Greeks and the Romans, Archimedes, came to his
death at the hands of Roman soldiers during the siege of
the city of Syracuse. He was so absorbed in his mathematical problems, so one story ran, that he did not know when
the city fell nor notice the soldiers when they invaded his
room. So they struck him down. Naturally the virtuosi had
no desire to have their scientific interests betray them to
Cromwell's men in the same way!
Thus Oxford and especially Wadham College under the
tolerant wardenship of the genial and greatly loved Dr.
John Wilkins was a haven for the sons of Cavalier and
Roundhead alike, and for the older men too, who wanted
to pursue their philosophical interests in congenial company. Urged on by Warden Wilkins, Robert Boyle moved
to Oxford to live there a number of years till he finally
settled down with his sister in London. Dr. William Petty
had a house there. Seth Ward came in 1649 as the newly
appointed Savilian professor of astronomy. Laurence
Rooke was there before going to London to be astronomy
professor at Gresham College. They all either lived at the
48




PLATE 5. "How any man may blow up the greatest oak with his breath"
(From Dr. John Wilkins' Mathematical Magick,
168o)


PLATE 6. Doctor John Wilkins as Bishop of Chester
(From. The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by
courtesy of the Royal Society)




A
N~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'lo
PLTE7.Th ~wt ~teofth Jura BokDeebe 5 i6
(Fro TheSigaturs oftheFirs JornalBookandthe hartr Bok o th
Roa oitLno,13,b cuts fteRylScey




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
College or came there often to be with its Warden, to see
his curiosities and to talk with the brilliant lads then in
the College.
The historian of Wadham College calls this "its most
glorious period." Here were to be found among others
"that miracle of a youth," Christopher Wren, his good
friend Thomas Sprat, Walter Pope, the much younger
half-brother of the Warden, later Gresham professor of
astronomy, and the mathematician William Neile. Some
of them later were bishops appointed by Charles II as well
as Fellows of the Royal Society. There John Evelyn visited,
recording in his diary his delight over Wren's precocious
achievements as well as in Wilkins' entertainment and his
notable collection of curiosities.
"We all dined," Evelyn wrote on July 13, 1654, "at the
most obliging and universally-curious Dr. Wilkins's, at
Wadham College. He was the first who showed me the
transparent apiaries, which he had built like castles and
palaces, and so ordered them one upon the other, as to
take the honey without destroying the bees. These were
adorned with a variety of dials, little statues, vanes, etc.;
and, he was so abundantly civil, finding me pleased with
them, to present me with one of the hives which he had
empty, and which I afterwards had in my garden at Sayes
Court, where it continued many years, and which his Majesty came on purpose to see and contemplate with much
satisfaction. He had also contrived a hollow statue, which
gave a voice and uttered words by a long concealed pipe
that went into its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at
a good distance. He had, above in his lodgings and gallery,
variety of shadows, dials, perspectives, and many other artificial, mathematical, and magical curiosities, a way-wiser,
a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, conic, and other sections, a balance on a demi-circle; most of them of his own,
and that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren;
who presented me with a piece of white marble which he
had stained with a lively red, very deep, as beautiful as if
it had been natural."
49




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Warden Wilkins' marriage in 1653 to Robina Cromwell, youngest sister of Oliver Cromwell and widow of Dr.
Peter French, soon brought the Warden into even greater
social prominence, making him more influential than he
was already by reason of his several books on scientific
subjects and on theology, and by his official position in
Oxford. When Richard Cromwell succeeded his father
Oliver as ruler of England, Dr. Wilkins was much in London as one of his close advisers during his brief rule. Then
came Wilkins' appointment to the mastership of Trinity
College, Cambridge, the most important university position in those days. But after a short eleven months there
he was ejected in his turn to make way for a Royalist to
be reinstated upon the Restoration of Charles II in 166o.
Wilkins' interests and his positions combined with his
"gentlemanlike behaviour" and his helpfulness to the
younger virtuosi made him easily chief among them as well
as an acknowledged leader in their societies, and he had
powerful friends at court. When he returned to London
that summer of 1660 naturally he rejoined the virtuosi
there. In fact he presided at the November meeting when
they decided to organize formally under the King's patronage, if that were possible.
The Formation of the Royal Society
Young Christopher Wren had been appointed Gresham
professor of astronomy in 1657. After hearing him lecture
on November 28, 166o, the virtuosi "did according to the
usuall manner, withdraw for mutual converse where
among other matters that were discoursed of, something
was offered about a designe of Founding a College for the
Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Learning." After
agreeing on an admission fee of ten shillings to defray
occasional expenses, they drew up a list of forty names of
"such persons as were known to those present, whom they
judged willing and fit to joyne with them in their designe,
50




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
who, if they should desire it, might be admitted before
any other." So the old Journal-book read.
At the next week's meeting on December 5th, after
hearing of the King's approval of their design, they signed
the following statement:
Wee whose names are underwritten, doe consent to agree that
wee will meete together Weekly (if not hindered by necessary
Occasions) to consult and debate concerning the promoting of
Experimentall learning; And that each of us will allowe, one
shilling weekely, towards the defraying of occasional charges.
Provided that if any one, or more of us, shall thinke fitt, at any
time to withdrawe, he or they shall, after notice thereof given
to the Company, at a meeting, be freed from this obligation for
the future. (See Plate 7.)
The signatures of nearly all those listed at the previous
meeting then follow (Wilkins fifth among them) together
with seventy-three others, 115 in all. But at the next meeting they agreed to limit the number of members to fiftyfive (a restriction soon disregarded) and to hold elections
to memberships thereafter, with a quorum of twenty-one
for that purpose. However, those of the nobility from
barons up might be admitted as honorary members, if they
so desired, as also were to be the professors of mathematics, physick and natural philosophy at the two universities. Upon the payment of the admission fee and the
weekly charge for those meetings the professors could attend when they were in London. A suggestion was made
that the new Society meet at the College of Physicians, but
later that was dropped and the meetings were held at
Gresham College.
The officers agreed upon at this meeting on December
12th were a president, to be chosen monthly, a treasurer
and a register, both to serve for a year. In addition two
servants were to be employed, an amanuensis or secretary,
and an operator or technician. The register was to provide
three books, one for the statutes and names of the Society,
one for experiments and the results of debates, the third
for occasional orders. Three members were to sit with the
51




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
register at each meeting, take notes of important matters
and together make up a report for filing. Thus were set
up the charter-book and the journal-book of minutes, two
of the most prized possessions of the Royal Society today.
The charter-book is particularly interesting, for from
that day to this, no one has been deemed a Fellow of the
Society until he has signed his name in that book, no matter when he was elected. On special pages are the names of
the kings and queens who from Charles II (except for
William and Mary and Anne) to George VI have been
its patrons, and the names of the nobility who joined as
honorary members. The long roll of the members or Fellows from the seventeenth century on down to the present
has become a remarkable record of the greatest scientists
in all fields, not alone from Britain but also from Europe
and America.
But to return to the early days. A name for the new society still had not been chosen. Just as Boyle in his letters
had given to the 1645 group the name "the invisible college" by which they have been known ever since, so now
John Evelyn gave the new assembly its name. On December 3, 1661, he wrote in his diary: "By universal suffrage
of our philosophic assembly, an order was made and register'd, that I should receive their public thanks for the
honourable mention I made of them by the name of the
Royal Society in my Epistle Dedicatory to the Lord Chancellor before my traduction of Naudeus.1 Too great an
honour for a trifle."
Charles II, Founder and Patron
King Charles had been taking considerable interest in
the new organization. He had talked it over with two of
its strongest supporters, Evelyn and Sir Robert Moray,
who was both mathematician and courtier, as well as the
1 Instructions concerning Erecting of a Library by Gabriel Naudeus
(Naudd) translated by John Evelyn, 1661.
52




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
most frequently elected monthly president. When the Society petitioned in September 1661, for royal approval of
incorporation, Charles quickly granted it. The charter
finally passed the Great Seal on July 15, 1662, making that
the official date for the founding of the Royal Society.
There is a story told early in the nineteenth century
about the King having dined with the members of the Society on the night of its creation and having expressed his
pleasure in being the first English monarch who had laid
the foundation of such a society for an investigation into
the secrets of nature. But Charles, however much a philosopher, was still more a wit, and with suitable gravity
went on to say that among such learned men he now
hoped for a solution to a question which had long puzzled
him. "Suppose two pails of water were fixed in two different scales that were equally poised, and which weighed
equally alike, and two small live fish were put into either
of these pails, why should not that pail with such addition,
weigh more than the other pail which stood against it?"
Everyone sought to answer, but each gave a different opinion. One was so fantastic that another of the members
burst into a loud laugh. The King insisted that he too
give his opinion whereupon in plain terms he denied the
fact. On which the King, "in high mirth" as the old author 2
expressed it, exclaimed, "Odds fish, brother, you are in the
right!"
Whether true or not, the story is in keeping with
Charles' attitude; for however much he enjoyed the company of these natural philosophers in the early years of his
reign, he poked plenty of fun at their activities. He enjoyed a good laugh; but he was also generously disposed
toward these over-serious enthusiasts.
The King in 1663 presented a mace to be carried before
the president at meetings. (An old story, long since disproved, as Weld reported, by the finding of the royal warrant ordering it made, was that this was the mace of the
House of Commons which Oliver Cromwell had had
2 I. D'Israeli.
53




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


thrown out as a "bauble.") Large and heavy, of silver gilt,
beautifully wrought with roses and thistles, the harp and
the fleur-de-lys, the royal monogram and the royal coat of
arms, it bears also the coat of arms of the Society and a
Latin inscription that it is the gift of Charles II, Founder
and Patron. From that day to this, the mace is placed on
the table in front of the president before the meeting
begins.
Royal favor still was needed. The charter of 1662 proved
within a short while not to be sufficient. Another was
drawn up including the old one with additional privileges
and that in turn passed the Great Seal on April 22, 1663.
This second Charter is the one in which Charles II declared himself Founder and Patron of the Society. It has
formed the basis of the organization ever since. Hereafter
the Society was to be governed by a council of twenty-one
members which included the president, a treasurer and
two secretaries. All persons received into the Society within two months of the signing of this second charter were
to be named Fellows of the Royal Society. Thus 119 men
became the Original or Charter Fellows.
The Original Fellows
Their names make an interesting list. Among them are
several members of the old "invisible college"-Boyle,
Goddard, Seth Ward who by then was Bishop of Exeter,
Ent, Theodore Haak, Sir William Petty, Wilkins and Wallis. The Oxford people are there, especially the Wadham
College group-Christopher Wren and his cousin Matthew, Thomas Sprat, Walter Pope, William Neile, along
with Robert Hooke, Boyle's skilled assistant in the Oxford
days, and Henry Oldenburg, recently returned from years
abroad as a tutor to Boyle's nephew. Five of the Gresham
College professors are on the list, and Isaac Barrow from
Cambridge. Among the eight or ten noblemen are George,
Duke of Buckingham with chemical as well as court in54




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


terests, and Lord Brouncker, first president of the Society
and leading mathematician. Seth Ward was the only
bishop then a Fellow, but a number of others, including
Wilkins himself, were soon to be created bishops also.
Doctors of medicine and doctors of divinity, lawyers, civil
servants, literary men, are all there, also the shopkeeper,
John Graunt, who was the first Englishman to publish a
study of vital statistics based on the bills of mortality.
Many like Evelyn, were true virtuosi, science-lovers. Yet
hardly a third of the number could be called men of science, even if men like Wilkins, Evelyn and Petty are included; but among these men of science are some of the
great names of that or of any era: Boyle, Wren, Hooke,
Glisson, Wallis, Willughby.
An American eye reading the list catches the name of
John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut and son of the
first governor of Massachusetts. In London in the early
sixties on his third visit there for business concerning the
colonies, he had renewed his earlier associations with the
virtuosi and thus became the first American Fellow of
the Society as well as one of the Original Fellows. In spite
of his heavy burden of business and state affairs, Winthrop
was a remarkable man of science, credited with being the
first chemist and metallurgist in the American colonies
and one of the first physicians.
Long a correspondent of many of these men, upon his
return to Connecticut after this visit, Winthrop became
the western correspondent for the Society, writing many
letters and sending back to the Society's "repository" or
museum minerals, plants and various specimens of colonial
curiosities. He was especially noted for having observed
"a fifth satellite of Jupiter," and, uncertain whether it was
a true satellite or a faint star close by, asked the astronomers among the Fellows in England for corroboration or
correction. Not till the early twentieth century with its
powerful telescopes was the faint fifth satellite officially
identified. But in reporting his observation and requesting confirmation, Winthrop was proving himself a cautious
55




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
and keen observer who systematically studied the stars
even with the imperfect telescopes of 1664. He was a true
science-lover and a valuable link between English and
American scientists.
About a good many of these original Fellows little if
anything is known today. Sprat described them as "gentlemen, free and unconfin'd" "who by the freedom of their
education, the plenty of their estates and the usual generosity of noble bloud, may be well suppos'd to be most
averse from sordid considerations." In modern English
that might run, they were men of rank and title, not in
any of the professions but well educated and with plenty
of money, who had joined the Society not for the sake of
making money out of the experiments nor of gaining
special favors, but solely because they were interested in
the advancement of learning for its own sake. These amateurs of science, together with the true scientists, were indeed a representative and notable group from the London society of the day. Within two or three years, after
Charles II had declared himself Patron and Founder, they
were to be joined by some of the highest officers of his
court and of the Anglican Church; for by then the Society had become fashionable.
"The Ballad of Gresham Colledge"
The activities of these Original Fellows in those first
months can be gleaned not only from their carefully kept
minutes but also from a contemporary ballad that happens to have survived to this day. These doggerel verses,
by internal evidence apparently composed before 1663,
were evidently passed around, for at least three manuscript copies have been preserved in the British Museum.3
3 Since this section was written, Mr. F. Sherwood Taylor has published
"An Early Satirical Poem on the Royal Society" (Notes and Records of
the Royal Society in London, October, 1947, pp. 37-46) based on a fourth
manuscript in the British Museum and on two others in the Ashmolean
collection at Oxford. (See below, p. 254.)
56




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


One copy has names written in the margins identifying the
people spoken of, and another gives the author as "Mr.
W. Glanvill." That seems perhaps a mistake for the better
known Joseph Glanvill whose Vanity of Dogmatizing had
already appeared and who was whole-heartedly one of the
virtuosi himself, becoming a Fellow in 1664. But whoever
wrote them, the author of the verses was familiar with the
purposes of the Society and with their experiments, for he
gives a fairly accurate account of some of their early interests and achievements. As this ballad seems to be the
only one of this early period in the Society's history that
has come down to our time, it is given here in full, together with the marginal identifications from one of the
manuscripts.
In Praise of that choice Company of Witts and
Philosophers who meet on Wednesdays weekly att
Gresham Colledg.
If to be rich and to be learn'd
Be every Nation's cheifest glory
How much are English men concern'd,
Gresham, to celebrate thy story
Who built th'Exchange t'enrich the Citty
And a Colledge founded for the witty.
II
Our Merchants on th'Exchange doe plott
T'increase the Kingdom's wealth by trade.
Att Gresham Colledge a learned Knott
Unparallel'd designes have laid
To make themselves a Corporation
And knowe all things by Demonstration.
III
Seaven was the number of the Sages;
The eight wiseman wee call a Foole.
57




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


Our Fame must then exceed all Ages
Who have Seaventie wise men in one Schoole.
Wee adore the, Gresham, for thy Colledge
From whence must issue soe much Knowledg.
IV
This learned Septuagint consists
Of men of Honor and of parts.
There's L[or]ds, K[nigh]ts, Physicians, Priests
All skill'd in Sciences and Arts
Solomons in nature and can read there
Even from the Hysop to the Cedar.
v


Thy Colledg, Gresham, shall hereafter
Be the whole world's Universitie.
Oxford and Cambridge are our laughter;
Their learning is but Pedantry.
These new Collegiates doe assure us
Aristotle's an Asse to Epicurus.
VI
By demonstrative Philosophie
They playnly prove all things are bodyes,
And those that talke of Qualitie
They count them all to be meer Noddyes.
Nature in all her works they trace
And make her as playne as nose in face.
VII


'Twas broach't att first but to make myrth
There was another world i' th' Moone:
The Colledg proves that Globe an Earth
And Made 't as playne as day att Noone,
Nay, in a glasse of Fiftie Foot
They shew us Rivers and Trees to boot.
58


MR. WILKINS
SIR P. NEALE




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


VIII
To the Danish Agent late was showne
That where noe Ayre is, there's noe breath.
A glasse this secret did make knowne      MR. BOYLE
Where[in] a Catt was put to death.
Out of the glasse the Ayre being screwed
Pusse dyed and ne're so much as mewed.
IX
The selfe same glasses did likewise clear
Another secret more profound:
That nought but Ayre unto the Eare
Can be the Medium of Sound,
For in the glasse emptied of Ayre
A striking watch you cannot heare.
x
And that which makes their Fame ring louder
With much adoe they shew'd the King
To make glasse Buttons turn to powder,
If off the[m] their tayles you doe but wring.
How this was donne by soe small Force
Did cost the Colledg a Month's discourse.
XI
These men take nothing uppon trust
Therefor in Counsell sate many howres
About fileing Iron into Dust
T'experiment the Loadstone's powers;
If in a Circle of a Board they strew it,
By what lines to see the Loadstone drew it.
XII
The noble learned Corporation
Not for itselfe is thus combyn'd
But for the publique good oth'Nation
And generall benefitt of Mankynd.
59




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
These are not men of common mould:
They covet Fame but contemne gold.
XIII
But yett they'd have the Colledge endow'd
With about a thousand pounds a year.
Such a Revenue being allow'd
What things they'll doe shall then appeare.
Each single Member hath undertooke
To shew a Trick or write a Booke.
XIV


The Prime Virtuoso hath undertaken
Through all the Experiments to run  SIR R[OBERT] M[ORAY]
Of that learned Man, Sir Francis Bacon,
Shewing which can, which can't, be donne.
If he doe not, be sure that none
Will ever fynd the Philosopher's stone.
xv


A second hath describ'd att full  SIR W[ILLIA]M P[ETTY]
The Philosophie of making Cloath,
Tells you what grasse doth make coarse wooll
And whatt it is that breeds the Moth.
Great learning is i'th' Art of Cloathing
Though vulgar people thinke it nothing.


XVI
A wondrous Engine is contriveing
In forme, 'tis said, much like a Bell,
Most usefull for the Art of Diveing
If't hitt, 'twill prove a Miracle:
For, gentlemen, 'tis no small matter,
To make a man breath under water.
60




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


XVII
A new designe how to make Leather
A third Collegiate is now scaning.  MR. [CHARLES] HOW[ARD]
The Question most disputed: wheather
Since without Barke there may be taning,
Some cheaper way may not be tryed
Of makeing Leather without Hyde.
XVIII
Another person of great noate       SIR K[ENELM] DIGBY
Hath writt a Learned tract of Strawe
The tallest Beane stalke and smallest moate
From their first principles to drawe.
A fifth writes that in no tyne shorter
Then twen[t]y yeers can be made good Morter.
XIX
A sixth is perfecting a treatise
Of Draweing, Paynting, Lymning, graveing,A most Ingenious peece, some say 'tis,
And wilbe richly worth men's haveing
For it declares the very Prime Age
Either of Painter or of Image.
xx
It proves that Aaron, the Jewes' high Priest,A controversie worth the cleering,Must fall within the sculpture's List;
When he mad Golden Calfe of Eare Ring,
He needs must use a toole of Mould
For fire could never shape the gold.
XXI
A Doctor counted very able
Designes that all Mankynd converse shall,
Spite o'th' confusion made att Babell,
By Character call'd Universall.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
How long this Character will be learning,
That truly passeth my discerning.
XXII


To guesse by one every one's meritt,
A Booke call'd Fumifugiam read.
Its Author hath a publique Spirit
And doubtlesse too a subtile head;
He must be more than John an Oake
Who writes soe learnedly of Smoake.


MR. EVEL[YN]


XXIII
He shewes that 'tis the seacoale smoake
That allways London doth Inviron,
Which doth our Lungs and Spiritts choake
Our hangings spoyle, and rust our Iron.
Lett none att Fumifuge be scoffing
Who heare att Church our Sundaye's Coughing.
XXIV


For melioration of the Ayre
Both for our Lungs and eke our noses
To plant the Fields he doth take care
With Cedar, Juniper and Roses,
Which, turn'd to trees, 'tis understood
Wee shall instead of coale burne wood.
XXV
O blessed witt that thus contrives
By new found out but facile Arte
In pleasure to lengthen out our lives,
To teach us next to perfume —,
And without fuell or smoake make fire
Some other Member will aspire.
62




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


XXVI
The Colledge will the whole world measure,
Which most impossible conclude,
And Navigation make a pleasure
By fynding out the Longitude.
Every Tarpaulin shall then with ease
Sayle any ship to the Antipodes.
XXVII
Of all the Arts Mechanicall
Printed shalbe a perfe[ct] Scheme,
And every Science Liberall
Shall be likewise a Colledge Theame.
When the King hath made them a Societie
They'll demonstrate all things but a Dietie.
XXVIII
These be the things with many more
Which miraculous appere to men
The Colledge intended: The like before
Were never donne, nor wilbe agen.
And to conclude in Ballad Fashion
God blesse the King and this new Corporation.
Thus the Royal Society by the end of 1663 had its charter, its membership list, its governing body, and a wideranging program in action, as well as a name, a coat of
arms with a motto, and a mace. On November 30, 1663, it
held its first anniversary meeting for the election of officers
for the next year. November 3oth happens to be St. Andrew's day, the patron saint of Scotland. Why this day
should have been chosen for the annual meeting instead
of November 28th when the agreement was actually drawn
up is not known. Possibly it was 'out of compliment to the
Scot, Sir Robert Moray, who had been most instrumental
in securing the King's favor and in getting the charters.
Anyway, John Aubrey, one of the Original Fellows, has
63




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
left a note of a conversation with another Fellow, Sir William Petty, who had been one of the virtuosi at least from
the early Oxford days. "I remember," Aubrey wrote, "one
St. Andrew's Day (which is the day of the generall meeting
of the Royall Society for annual elections). I says, 'Methought 'twas not so well we should pitch upon the Patron
Saint of Scotland's Day; we should rather have St. George
or St. Isidore (a philosopher canonized).' 'No,' says Sir
William, 'I had rather have had it been on St. Thomas's
Day, for he would not beleeve till he had seen and putt his
fingers into the holes; according to the motto, "Nullius
in verba" '."
That motto from Horace was, the official Record of the
Royal Society states, "an expression of their (the Society's)
determination to withstand the domination of authority
and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts." It was
the one they had chosen, at Evelyn's suggestion, to have
emblazoned on the coat of arms granted them in the second charter.
Early Difficulties
Questions of finance plagued the Fellows from the first.
Despite Charles' patronage and his gift of the mace, he
granted them no government subsidy. This was in marked
contrast to royal practice at the time on the continent. In
France, Colbert, the great minister under Louis XIV,
founded the Academie des Sciences in 1666 practically as
an arm of the government with its members appointed
and paid by Colbert, its work subsidized by the state and
its publications during its first years printed as the work
of the Academie rather than as the work of individual
members. The scientific societies that spread rapidly in
the next decades through the courts of Europe followed
the French model in being subsidized by the state, rather
than the English one of governmental favor and private
support.
The Royal Society in England had to struggle along on
64




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY


the funds supplied by its members as admission fees and
as weekly dues. Many of the Fellows let the payment of
their weekly shillings fall in arrears, and the officers hoped
eagerly for help from the King. First there was talk of a
grant of some of the confiscated estates in Ireland. Then
in 1669 came the royal gift of the Chelsea College lands,
but Charles bought them back some years later for other
purposes, and the Society continued to limp along with
a heavy debt of unpaid dues and with few gifts and bequests to relieve the financial strain.
Henry Oldenburg, one of the two first secretaries elected
(the other was Dr. Wilkins), complained bitterly about the
burden of work the Society gave him and about his need
for money to reimburse him. An intelligencer or news-distributor like his friend Hartlib, Oldenburg first visited
England in 1640 for eight years. Then, after some years on
the continent, he had returned to London in 1653 as an
agent for the city of Bremen, near which he had been born
and in which he had been educated. He came again the
next year, then stayed on, serving as a tutor to sons of the
nobility, Boyle's nephew among others, and traveling with
them abroad. Upon his return to London in 1660 he
joined the Royal Society in December while it was in
process of organization, and was elected one of the two
first secretaries. Later, with Robert Hooke as its first "curator," he became one of the two first salaried officers, to
be joined in 1672 by a third, Dr. Nehemiah Grew, the
noted plant anatomist. From 1660 till his death in 1677,
Oldenburg devoted himself to his work as an intelligencer
of scientific news, working especially for and with Boyle,
and also from 1665 on, as editor of the Philosophical Transactions.
The Philosophical Transactions and Oldenburg
Phil. Trans., as it is often spoken of familiarly, is the
oldest scientific journal in the English-speaking world, and
65




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


missed by three months being the oldest of all. It was first
issued in March, 1665; but the Journal des Savans of the
French academicians had first appeared that January, just
three months earlier. The English journal was an outgrowth of Oldenburg's work as secretary and reporter of
Royal Society affairs, founded and financed by him as a
means of personal profit if possible, but with the authorization of the Society back of him. He had had so many
inquiries to answer from correspondents abroad and at
home who wanted to know about the Society's work and
about scientific news generally that it seemed simpler to
( him to print a monthly report, and by its sale to get some
return for all the work he was doing for the Society.
A publication like this would have the especial advantage of recording priority of discovery. As he wrote Boyle
that year (Aug. 29, 1665), "I acknowledge that that jealousy about the first authors of experiments which you
speak of, is not groundless; and therefore offer myself to
register all those you, or any person, shall please to communicate as new, with that fidelity, which both the honour
of my relation to the Royal Society (which is highly concerned in such experiments) and my own inclinations, do
strongly oblige me to."
Quarrels about priority raged bitterly in those days.
Codes of ethics among authors as well as inventors were
notably absent. Writers took what they wanted from other
men's books and there were many complaints about the
stealing of men's ideas and inventions. In fact, one way
Oldenburg served Boyle whose sight was poor, making
him dependent on secretarial help, was by storing for him
"notes and other loose papers" which were not to be
shown to others without Boyle's permission. Oldenburg
also once wrote Boyle (Nov. 5, 1664) that he had sent
Boyle's manuscripts to a printer who would "keep them
unexposed to the eye of a philosophical robber."
However, Christopher Wren's biographers, his son and
his grandson, complained later that "Sir Christopher has
been heard sometimes to reflect sharply on the disin66




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
genuity of Mr. Oldenburg who had neglected not only to
enter divers inventions and experiments of his in the Registers of the Society, but conveyed the same into foreign
parts, France and Germany; where they were after published under other names, as their own." Sprat, too, complained that the early records were incomplete about
Wren's work, "many excellent things, whose first invention ought to be ascribed to him (Wren)" having been
"casually omitted." At least the Philosophical Transactions
was available to render a major service when it was properly used.
With its publication Oldenburg was not out of his financial troubles. Rather, his difficulties grew worse. The great
plague of 1665 seemed peculiarly fatal to printers, and the
Oxford printers whom he had had to use temporarily paid
him less than half the revenue he had expected from the
sale of his monthly. In September, 1666, came the terrible
Fire of London, destroying all the copies of the Transactions which had not yet been sold, as well as greatly increasing his own expenses and lessening his expected
income from publication. That December the Society
granted him a salary of ~40.
Finally, in June 1667, Oldenburg found himself a prisoner in the Tower of London "for dangerous designs and
practices." His heavy foreign correspondence evidently appeared suspicious to the authorities. On June 25th, Samuel
Pepys wrote in his diary: "I was told yesterday that Mr.
Oldenburg, our secretary at Gresham College [Pepys
means, of the Royal Society that meets at Gresham College] is put into the Tower, for writing newes to a virtuoso
in France, with whom he constantly corresponds in philosophical matters; which makes it very unsafe at this time
to write, or almost do anything."
Evelyn, the other great diarist, wrote on the 8th of August that he had visited Mr. Oldenburg, "now close prisoner
in the Tower, being suspected of writing intelligence,"
and added, "I am confident he will prove an innocent person." So it was. Oldenburg was released on August 26th and
67




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
a week later he wrote Boyle: "I was so stifled by the prison
air, that as soon as I had my enlargement from the
Tower, I widened it and took it from London into the
country to fan myself for some days in the good air of
Craford in Kent. Being now returned and having recovered my stomach which I had in a manner quite lost, I
intend if God will, to fall to my old trade if I have support to follow it. My late misfortune, I fear, will much
prejudice me; many persons unacquainted with me, and
hearing me to be a stranger [alien], being apt to derive a
suspicion upon me. Not a few came to the Tower merely
to enquire after my crime, and to see the warrant; in
which, when they found it was for dangerous designs and
practices, they spread it over London, and made others
have no good opinion of me."
Even more serious was the shutting down of his correspondents' activities following his imprisonment. The letters on which he depended for his news did not come,
which made him "conjecture that foreigners especially in
the neighboring parts, may be grown shy to resume that
commerce they were wont to entertain with me, out of
some tenderness and concern for my safety, which they
may judge may be endangered as well by their freeness in
writing to me as by mine of writing to them."
Oldenburg persevered, however, and by the end of 1667
(December 17) was "groaning" over the work. "I have no
less at present, than 30 correspondents, partly domestick,
partly foreign. Many of them I not only write to, but also
do business for; which requires much time to enquire after
such particulars and despatch such business as they desire
if I mean to be gratified reciprocally in such things as I bespeak of them. Besides my constant attendance on the
meetings of the Society and Council and preserving what
is said and done there, and giving order to have all registered and reviewing all the entries; soliciting also the
performances of the manifold tasks recommended and
undertaken by the members of the Society; and distributing and sending them abroad such directions and enquir68




THE FOUNDING OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
ies, as are thought conducive to advance our design, etc.,
I confess I extend my patience as far as I can."
On the last day of March, 1668, he wrote again: "The
fame of the Society riseth very high abroad; and makes
strangers flock hither in troops; insomuch that since this
March I have had no less than two dozen travellers addressed to me, whereof some make quick dispatch, others
stay longer." Two years later the Society increased his
salary, but he still had to supplement his income by the
translation of books into Latin.
Oldenburg continued as editor of the Philosophical
Transactions as long as he lived, issuing 136 numbers and
writing or translating 34 of the articles in them. Papers
read before the Society, letters, summaries and abstracts of
books of special interest to the virtuosi,-the scientific news
of the day was summed up in this journal. After his
death in 1677, the journal was continued under the
secretaries' private editorship through 46 volumes with
only limited supervision by the Society. For a brief while,
during Hooke's editorship it was called the Philosophical
Collections (1679-82), and once for a period of three years
(1688-90) it was not issued at all. Finally, with the 47th
volume in 1752, the Transactions was taken over by the
Society and published by its Committee on Papers. The intelligencers of the seventeenth century had at last given
way to the editors of the eighteenth century.
Oldenburg was not a scientist himself; he was the friend
and correspondent of science-lovers, for whom he served as
an intermediary. He had a small but active part in fertilizing the soil and watering the ground out of which grew
the work of the true scientists. He was one of the key men
during the first formative years of the Royal Society and
he founded its great publication, the Philosophical Transactions. His work, and that of others like him both in and
out of the Society, helped to make the seventeenth century
outstanding for its major contributions to the development of modern science.


69




5


EARLY OPPOSITION TO THE
ROYAL SOCIETY
O JUDGE the worth of an institution and of its
activities, one should consider the statements of its
critics as well as those of its friends. That the critics
of the Royal Society were influential as well as numerous
and vociferous during its formative years is apparent at
once. Otherwise why should an institution hardly five years
old have an official history written? Yet that is what Thomas
Sprat's History of the Royal Society is in name, though the
author admitted it was an apology or defense rather than a
history. Possibly the imprisonment of Oldenburg, the secretary, in 1667 shortly before the History was published,
gave added urgency for an official presentation of its case.
The Society had a number of difficulties with which to
contend. The members were not paying their dues
promptly and the total in arrears was mounting rapidly.
To outsiders their activities seemed both futile in themselves and also dangerous to the state and to the estab70




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY
lished church. They were thought dangerous too in their
daring disregard for ancient learning and time-honored
authority. Of course jealousy of the fashionable young Society was a factor also. The critics were keen and their
ridicule sharp. No one enjoys being laughed at.
Sprat's Defense of the Society
Therefore Sprat presented his case in favor of the virtuosi with all the eloquence at his command. His book is
in three parts. First, after a short review of ancient philosophy with an appreciation of the syllogistic reasoning
of the middle ages, he pleaded for an improvement over
the past as well as for a return to what he called the true
past when men really studied and observed nature's ways.
Thus he tried to meet the arguments of the traditionalists
who objected to the novelty of the "new philosophy" that
Francis Bacon had so brilliantly supported.
In the second part Sprat narrated the origins of the Society, stressing as he did so the influence of Cowley's proposed "philosophical college," a suggestion published just
at the time that the virtuosi were making plans for their
organization. Besides being a friend of Sprat, Cowley was
a well-known Royalist. Might not Sprat have emphasized
his friend's scheme both for its own sake and also because
of its author's political orthodoxy in those early Restoration days when the Cromwellian blight and the Puritan
cast of thought still marked the recent background of a
number of the virtuosi? 1 Was it not a subtle and discreet
indication that the Society had Royalist as well as Puritan
roots and so would not be dangerous to the re-established
regime?
After discussing Cowley's plan as too costly to be practicable but as wisely placing great importance on education, Sprat concluded that the Society was putting most
of his proposals into effect. He then went on to describe
1 Raven, C. E. John Ray, Naturalist (Cambridge, 1942) 145-6 and note.
71




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
the new organization and its membership with illustrations of the types of work being done and of the various
individuals doing it. Here he was meeting the arguments
of those who considered the work frivolous and laughable,
and who held that the Fellows demeaned themselves in
associating with craftsmen and artisans, practical men who
were not "gentlemen scholars." Among the Fellows whose
work he selected as illustrations were Sir William Petty,
Robert Hooke, Lawrence Rooke, and especially Christopher Wren. Posterity has only recently begun fully to
appreciate and understand his choice of Wren. Christopher Wren, not long ago referred to by an eminent English historian as "probably the greatest Englishman since
Shakespeare" 2 has been obscured as a scientist by his fame
as the architect of London after the Great Fire. St. Paul's
Cathedral has stood so long as the monument to his architectural genius, together with some fifty London churches,
that not many have realized fully the universality of his
genius. Sprat might well consider that he and these other
men, by their personal character, their social standing,
and their already great scientific achievements should stop
the mouths of the critics and still the scoffers. But as will be
seen, Sprat did not succeed. The wits continued to belabor
the Society and its activities for many years to come.
In the third part of his History Sprat defended the Society and its activities against the charge of atheism, and
pointed to the bishops and other clergy who were active
in the Society as living proof that it was no threat to religion nor to the established church, but on the contrary
was a supremely worthwhile activity, in keeping with the
true temper of that age and for its best interests.
Taken as a whole, the main theme of the History is an
enthusiastic support of experiment and observation as the
basis for the advancement of learning. It places the emphasis upon nature rather than upon books, upon objects
rather than theories, and upon the importance of assem2 H. A. L. Fisher, Nov. 8, 1929, cited by John F. Fulton. The Rise of the
Experimental Method. Yale Jour. of Biol. & Med. March 1931, p. 315.
72




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY


bling data by cooperative enterprise rather than by singlehanded effort. Thus knowledge would be furthered, and
comfort and convenience as well.
Sprat the Author
Thomas Sprat himself was not a scientist nor apparently
even an amateur of science, for all his support of the "new
philosophy." He was a man of letters and a friend and fellow-student of many of the virtuosi. He was elected a Fellow in 1663 along with a number of other notables in
London society. He had been at Wadham College in Oxford under Warden Wilkins, matriculating there in 1651,
receiving his B.A. in 1654, his M.A. in 1657, and a fellowship at the College immediately thereafter. He was ordained to the priesthood of the Anglican Church at the
time of the Restoration, and through his friendship with
Cowley, the poet, became chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham. Sprat received his B.D. and his D.D. in 1669, resigning his fellowship at Wadham the following year. He
became chaplain to Charles II, then dean of Westminster
Abbey, and ultimately bishop of Rochester for nineteen
years before his death in 1713. Both at Wadham College
and in London he had been in the midst of the virtuosi,
"turning about" with many of them from moderate support of Puritan and Cromwellian affairs to acceptance of
the Stuart line and of the established church. Thereafter he
was a churchman and later a Tory. After his History was
published, scientific matters apparently concerned him little, if at all.
Sprat's reputation as a wit was great and he had already
had occasion to rise to the defense of the Society. He had
been annoyed by Mons. Samuel Sorbiere's Relation in
1664 of a journey he had made to England shortly before.
Through Oldenburg, whom he had met when he was in
Paris with Boyle's nephew, and Sir Robert Moray, Sorbiere had been presented to the King in England and had
73




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
also attended meetings of the Royal Society. As he did
not understand English, Sir Robert had sat beside him and
acted as interpreter.
Sorbiere's comments on what he saw at the court and at
these meetings reflected the somewhat amused detachment
with which the educated regarded the virtuosi's enthusiasms. He considered it a most edifying sight to see so prominent a nobleman as Sir Robert himself adjusting telescopes
and setting up experiments. Such activities, Sorbiere understood, had been taken up by people of quality during
the exile of the King and in the absence of the court. Even
the King himself, he related, had found consolation in
these occupations during his exile, and still continued his
interest, having brought a chemist over from Paris and
having had a laboratory built for him at St. James' Park.
But the King's greatest interest lay in the problems of
navigation about which, in Sorbiere's opinion, he had a
remarkable understanding. That special interest was to
bear fruit later on in the founding of the Royal Observatory.
The Royal Society particularly impressed Sorbiere by
the range and usefulness of its activities and also by the
conduct of its meetings. He found the rooms at Gresham
College convenient and spacious and the meetings themselves orderly and direct. No one interrupted. Disagreements were not pushed, nor made in a disagreeable tone
of voice. The debates could not be more civil, more respectful, nor better conducted. If anyone talked to his
neighbor he whispered, and stopped instantly at the president's rap of his little gavel, so no one failed to hear what
was said. Sorbiere was so much impressed (or did he wish
to be in the fashion?) that he joined the Society himself
in 1663 and signed the charter book. After his book had
appeared, however, the Society debated whether to eject
him or not; but a majority of the Fellows voted in his
favor.
Sprat did not think that the Frenchman had done full
justice to the Society and said so in some Observations he
74




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY
printed in 1665 as a letter to Wren. He protested that
Sorbiere had made the meetings appear like the sessions
of a school and he denounced in no uncertain terms Sorbiere's reference to the beginnings of a library, saying that
the Society had none, for it had no intention of having a
"Professorian Philosophy."... "With Books they meddle not farther than to see what Experiments have been
try'd before; their Revenue they designe for Operators and
not for Lecturers." Sprat pointed out also that Sorbiere
had confused the Society with Gresham College, a totally
different institution, though the Society was meeting in
the College buildings.
It is not surprising, therefore, that when the virtuosi
wanted a full account of their Society presented in answer
to the rising criticisms of it, they turned to Sprat who had
already spoken out in their defense. With their official
sanction and assistance he wrote the History for them.
This was his main service to the Society,-and to English
literature.
Sprat well knew that the conservatives of his time, who
were particularly well entrenched in the universities, were
staunch supporters of medieval Aristotelianism. Aristotle
had written on almost every subject,-on nature, on the
soul, on plants, and on politics, on astronomy, and on the
generation of animals, to name but a few,-and he had
spoken with an authority upheld by men of learning for
centuries upon centuries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, as has already been pointed out, Francis
Bacon had done his best in all his books to shake that
dominance which the Aristotelian philosophy still retained
over men's minds. So Sprat, giving full credit to Bacon's
influence as the inspiration of the Royal Society's work,
asserted that the Fellows were showing no disrespect to
Aristotle and to other ancient authorities in making further explorations of the natural world and in testing the
truth or falsity of what they had already declared. But the
supporters of the ancients continued to think otherwise,
nor did Sprat succeed in shutting off the attacks along this
75




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


line. This quarrel between the ancients and the moderns
raged on vigorously during the remainder of the century
not only in science but also in literature-"the battle of
the books" as it came to be called.
The Microscope and Divine Works
In dealing with the supposed antagonism of the "new
philosophy" for that other "authority," that of the established church and of religion itself, Sprat not only countered
with the numbers of active Fellows who were divines
and even bishops, like Dr. Wilkins and Seth Ward, the
Bishop of Exeter, but he also emphasized the revelation of
God the Creator as seen through the study of His handiwork even in the minutest objects of the natural world.
The authority of the Bible and of the church was not
shaken, he claimed, rather it was strengthened by such
evidence as Robert Hooke had uncovered with the recently
developed compound microscope. In emphasizing these
discoveries, little could Sprat have realized what excellent
ammunition they would provide for the attacks on the
Society by the wits and the satirists in the years to come.
Even before the Society had received its first Charter,
Robert Hooke, Boyle's assistant at Oxford, had been appointed curator of the Society's experiments, on Boyle's
recommendation, and had been included as one of the
Original Fellows. He had published his classic Micrographia in 1665 on his researches with the first compound
microscopes. His drawings of the eye of a fly, of a hair, of
a bit of cloth, of seeds as magnified by these lenses had captivated the virtuosi, and observations with the microscope
were often made at the early meetings of the Society. Christopher Wren, while at Oxford with Wilkins at Wadham
College, had already done some of this work, improving
the microscope mechanically, and with his mathematical
genius finding how to calculate the magnification of the
object under the lens. Some of Wren's drawings of what
76




EARLY    OPPOSITION     TO ROYAL SOCIETY
he had seen thereby, a louse, a flea, a nit, were already in
the King's collection of rarities. Charles wanted more of
these "divine works," Sprat wrote to Wren. Instead, Wren
asked release from this request and encouraged Hooke to
go on with the experiments. The Micrographia resulted.
Sprat held that the revelation of such perfection in the
tiniest of objects, far from lessening one's faith, strengthened and increased it.
Such activities, however, were just what the wits of the
day jumped at. "They [the virtuosi] can admire nothing
except fleas, lice and themselves," declared Dr. South, the
university orator at Oxford.3 The occasion of this outburst
was the dedication on July 9, 1669 of the Sheldonian theater given to the university as an auditorium for great
occasions by Archbishop Sheldon and designed by Christopher Wren. Presumably many of the virtuosi were
present there that day. Dr. John Wallis describing the
festivities to Robert Boyle in a letter later that month
wrote: "Dr. South as university orator made a long oration. The first part of which consisted of satyrical invectives against Cromwell, fanaticks, the Royal Society and
new philosophy; the next of encomiasticks in praise of the
archbishop, the theater, the vice chancellor, the architect
and the painter; the last of execrations against fanaticks,
conventicles, comprehension and new philosophy; damning them ad inferos, ad gehennam (to hell, to Gehenna)."
Evelyn also was present and recorded that "Dr. South, the
University Orator, made an eloquent speech, which was
very long, and not without some malicious and indecent
reflections on the Royal Society, as underminers of the
University, which was very foolish and untrue, as well as
unseasonable."
3 I. D'Israeli quoted this sentence in the early nineteenth century as
though he had read the speech itself. It is a matter of great regret that
prolonged search in 1930 failed to unearth this oration.


77




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


Charles II and the Society
Meantime others besides Sorbiere came to visit the
meetings of the Society: royalty, foreigners, a great court
lady even. Charles II was genuinely interested in the new
science and in the work of the Society of which he was
Founder and Patron. When he let it be known he wished
to visit a session, preparations were most carefully considered. Lord Brouncker, the president, wrote to Wren in
Oxford asking for his suggestions for suitable experiments
to be presented. Wren's long letter in reply was full of
good sense. The experiments to be shown "should open
new light into principles of philosophy" and yet "whose
use and advantage is obvious, and without a lecture, and
besides may surprize with some unexpected effect and be
commendable for the ingenuity of the contrivance." Wren
went on to consider the difficulties of various types of demonstrations for such an occasion, as for example, "Experiments in anatomy, though of the most value for their
use, are sordid and noisome to any but those whose desire
of knowledge makes them digest it." Finally he suggested
from among his own devices, "the weather-wheel (the only
true way to measure expansion of the air)," an artificial eye
"at least as big as a tennis ball," and a "needle that would
play in a coach" [a kind of compass] joined with a "waywiser" [an odometer or roadmeasurer] as both useful and
diverting to a traveler and as an acceptable present for the
King.
The Council itself on July 6, 1663, made plans for the
King's entertainment at a meeting a week later. Mr.
Hooke and the operator (or technician) were to take care
that the compressing engine would not fail that day.
Various Fellows were to have on display their personal collections of rarities; Dr. Ent was to prepare a dissection of
an oyster or a lobster; Wren was to suggest some experi.
ments and Dr. Wilkins was requested "to undertake the
experiment of raising a great weight by a man's breath;
78




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY
and that of a metallic tree, both with mercury, after Dr.
Power's way, red and green, and to engage Dr. Power to
do magnetic experiments." Dr. Goddard also was to make
some experiments. There is unfortunately no clear record
whether or not the King ever actually came to a session
of the Society.
Wilkins' own report on his type of experiment is still
among the manuscripts of the Royal Society and in itself.
forms an interesting illustration of the Society's struggles
with laboratory work and of the way these early experiments were reported. Any one who has ever had to write
up a laboratory report of any sort according to the exacting standards of modern science might be interested in
seeing how a report was made for the files less than three
hundred years ago. In modern terms, Dr. Wilkins was investigating the effects of compressing air through tubes of
small caliber. Similar weight lifting is now used in tests
of lung capacity. (See Plate 11.)
Experiments concerning the Force of Blowing
Xn       with a man's Breath       Read July 31,61
By Dr. Wilkins           Ent'd. R.B. 1.57
Take the Bladder of an Oxe or Cow. Fasten to the neck of it
a pipe of about a Quarter of an inch bore and 6 or 8 inches long.
Let one end of the pipe be trumpet fashion, for the more convenient applying of the lippe to it. If the whole body of this
Bladder to that very end where 'tis fastened to the pipe, be
layde flatt upon a table (All the Aire being first thrust out)
then a joint stoole turned upside downe, being set upon the
bladder, and a footeboy of about 16 or 17 yeares old sitting on
the other end of the joynt stoole: A man may by blowing this
Bladder lift up the stoole and boy about 2 Inches.*
* My attention has been called by Miss Edith Bruce Paterson to a similar
experiment appearing in a textbook published in 1942 for use in junior
high school classes in physics. In this experiment, a board about six feet
long is used instead of a box. For the bladder a football is substituted into
which compressed air is forced by a bicycle pump. If one end of the board
is placed on the empty football and a pupil stands on the board near that
end, air forced into the ball will lift the pupil a few inches. (Clarke, J. A.,
Fitzpatrick, F. L., and Smith, E. L., Science on the March, Boston, 1942,
78-9.)
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Let a string be fastened to the lower end of the Bladder, the
other end of it being tyed to a Chaire or stoole lying upon a
Table, a little beyond the edge of the Table. Let the other
end of the string which hangs down, be fastnd to a Weight on
the Ground (suppose of 50 or a hundred pound). Let the
string be so tyed betwixt the bottom of the Bladder, and the
Ring of the Weight that it may be pretty tense and not Laxe.
Then if one blowe into the Bladder, as that doth extend and
shorten, the Weight will rise from the Ground about 3 or 4
Inches.
If a Square boxe be made, open at one end, with a hole at
the bottom or other end, to put through the neck of the bladder
and the pipe, Each corner of this bottom having a legg of about
2 or 3 inches long to keep it of[f] from the table. Let the empty
bladder be equally tyed at the bottom of this boxe. Then lay
upon the bladder thus tyed a Square borde that may move
easily within the hollow of the Boxe. Upon this borde sett lo
lb. weight, or somewhat more. Then blowing at the pipe, this
weight will ascend about 5 or 6 Inches.
Note: If the Bore of the Pipe be much lesse, like that at the
small end of a tobacco pipe, a man will not be able to stirre
this Weight so that it would seeme that there is a certaine proportion to be observed in the Bore of the Pipe beyond or short
of which, the blowing of the same man will not be of the same
force.
Quaere. Whether this proportion be not answerable to that
of the Aqua Salienter.
King Charles, for all his interest in the Royal Society,
loved a good joke. He "mightily laughed at Gresham College," Pepys reported on February i, 1663/4, "for spending time only in weighing of ayre and doing nothing else
since they sat." One wonders if the King didn't have his
tongue in his cheek when he sent his query to the Society
asking "why sensitive plants stir and contract themselves
upon being touched." A committee of five, including Wilkins, Evelyn, and Boyle, was appointed on July 17, 1661,
"for examining the fact relating to these plants"; but their
report, if they made one, was not recorded. Previously he
had sent them two "loadstones" or magnets with the re.
8o




PLATE 8. The Mace given to the Royal Society by Charles II, Founder
and Patron of the Society
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the
Royal Society)




PLATE 9. Henry Oldenburg
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY


quest that they send him accounts of any considerable experiments made with them.
A few months before he had sent them five little glass
bubbles, two with liquor in them and the other three
solid, to get the Society's judgment on them. The Society
spent some time that summer in getting more glass bubbles made and in experimenting with them. Finally the
minutes for August 14 record a full report, stating among
other facts: "A blow with a small hammer... will not
break one of the glass drops made in water, if it be
touched no where but upon the body. Break off the top
of it and it will fly immediately into very minute parts
with a smart force and noise; and these parts will easily
crumble into a coarse dust." In his Micrographia in 1665
Hooke also reported on some of the phenomena of these
glass drops.
The King's brother, visitors from abroad, and various
ambassadors and foreign agents resident in London were
not the only guests who came with curious interest and,
some of them, accepted membership in the Society. Lon,
doners and science-lovers from other English cities coming
to the capital also wanted to see for themselves some of
the amazing experiments about which there was talk. Perhaps their appetites were whetted by the current ballads
and the jokes and also by the literary controversies already
stirring. One of the younger virtuosi, Joseph Glanvill,
soon to be elected a Fellow, had written a highly enthusiastic book (The Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661) about the
many marvels that might soon be expected from this "new
philosophy." He was shortly to be challenged by one of
the Society's bitterest critics, Dr. Henry Stubbs. Sprat in
his History again and again refers to the jibes of such
critics which made him produce an apology or defense
rather than a historian's record.




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


The Visit of the Duchess of Newcastle
One of these important visitors whose request for an invitation to a meeting of the Royal Society created considerable stir was Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. She was making one of her rare visits to London
in the spring of 1667 and was attracting great attention
wherever she went; for she was'remarkably "wise, witty
and learned" 4 and also remarkably eccentric. "Mad
Madge," she was called, and a sight she must have been
as she drove through the London streets with her coach,
her horses, her attendants and herself all in the black and
silver she affected. Pepys remarked that May he could not
get near her in the streets to see how she looked because
of the crowd of boys and girls running after her coach, and
on another occasion because of the people in coaches who
followed and crowded on her wherever she went. When she
asked to come to the Royal Society, the members debated
long before they invited her; for, as Pepys recorded, "we
do believe the town will be full of ballads of it."
The Duchess finally came on May 30, 1667, and a very
large crowd assembled to welcome her; but Pepys was not
impressed. "Anon comes the Duchesse with her women attending her.... The Duchesse hath been a good comely
woman; but her dress so antick and her deportment so
ordinary, that I do not like her at all, nor did I hear her
say anything that was worth hearing, but that she was full
of admiration. Several fine experiments were shown her,
of colours, loadstones, microscopes and of liquors: among
others, of one that did, while she was there, turn a piece
of roasted mutton into pure blood, which was very rare...
After they had shown her many experiments, and she
cried still she was full of admiration, she departed, being
led out and in by several Lords that were there..." (One
wonders how Pepys would have voted in 1945 when two
4 Her epitaph, cited by B. G. MacCarthy, Women Writers, Their Contribution to the English Novel, z621-1744 (Cork University, 1944) 91.
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EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY


distinguished women scientists were proposed as Fellows!)
The minutes of the Council for May 23, 1667, list the
experiments planned for her entertainment, while the Society's minutes give those actually performed. The Council selected experiments with "1. Colours, 2. The mixing
of cold liquors, which upon their infusion grew hot, 3.
The swimming of bodies in the midst of water, 4. The
dissolving of meat in the oil of vitriol, 5. The weighing
of air in a receiver, by means of the rarefying engine,
6. The marbles exactly flatted, 7. The magnet, and in particular that of a terrella [a spherical magnet] driving away
the steel-dust at its poles, 8. A good microscope. These
experiments Mr. Boyle and Mr. Hooke were desired to
provide and take care of." Of these they weighed the air.
They showed several experiments on mixing colors, and
one on mixing two cold liquors which then became hot.
They tried drawing water into the rarefying machine.
They tested "a body swimming in water" and finally they
sought to pull apart "two well wrought marbles which
were not separated but by the weight of 47 pounds."
Pepys' opinion of the Duchess is hardly fair to her, however closely he reflected the opinion of his age that she
was queer. Another story about her, whether apocryphal
or not, reflects that same contemporary opinion. One day
at court she was talking to Dr. Wilkins, then Bishop of
Chester, about his schemes for journeying to the moon
and asked, if the trip took 180 days, where would he bait
[feed] his horses on the way. He expressed surprise that
she should be the one to ask that question, she "who had
built so many castles in the air, she might lie every night
in one of her own." 5
Modern scholars claim she had sufficient genius to justify her eccentricity even though lack of education rendered
her intellectual powers ineffectual. After reviewing her
books a recent critic sums up the Duchess in the following sentence: "Her genius was so productive and so various,
5 Daniel Neal, History of the Puritans, ed. by Toulmin (5 vols. London,
1822) III, 393 n.




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
her ideas so original and ill-regulated, her vision so exalted, her ignorance so profound, her style alternately so
preposterous and so perfect, that one despairs of ever reducing to the cold canons of criticism the inspired confusion of her works." 6
But of ballads about the Duchess' visit to the Royal
Society there is no trace today.
Wren and the Transfusion Experiments
/   Popular interest was particularly aroused by experiments some of the virtuosi had been undertaking by
themselves and had later brought before the Society.
These were on the transfusion of blood. Christopher Wren
is credited with first proposing "the noble anatomical experiment of injecting liquors into the veins of animals"
when he was in his late teens and early twenties at Wadham College with the other virtuosi. Wren had already
been interested in anatomical matters; for as a lad in his
early teens, after leaving school and before going down
to Oxford in 1649, he had worked as a demonstrator for
the well-known Dr. Charles Scarburgh in his public lectures at Surgeon's Hall in London. He had even made
anatomical models out of pasteboard for the doctor to use
in demonstrating the action of the muscles of the body.
At Oxford he had worked with another famous doctor,
Thomas Willis, on his classic dissections of the brain,
drawing the plates of these dissections for Willis' book
(1654).
Wren's many and varied interests included studies of
the structure of fishes, the anatomy of the nerves, the human eye and the problems of vision. It was not surprising,
therefore, that when only twenty-four years old, he was
the one who suggested and first successfully demonstrated
in 1656 the infusion of a liquid directly into a dog's veins.
"By this Operation divers Creatures were immediately
6 MacCarthy, op. cit., lao.
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EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY
purg'd, vomited, intoxicated, kill'd or reviv'd, according
to the quality of the Liquor injected: Hence arose many
new Experiments, and chiefly that of Transfusing Blood,
which the Society has prosecuted in sundry instances, that
will probably end in extraordinary Success." 7 How extraordinary, the wounded of World War II knew in the
1940's even if Sprat in 1667 could only guess.
Boyle and Wilkins were present at that first infusion,
and perhaps others too. Using a syringe Wren injected
tincture of opium through a quill into a vein which he
had opened in a dog's hind leg. When the dog lapsed into
a stupor, they all whipped and beat it into activity, thus
keeping it alive. Rumors about the experiment led to the
stealing of the dog. Nevertheless they kept at their tests
with other dogs and other drugs, Wren characteristically
and rapidly improving his techniques as he proceeded.
Finally, in 1659 Wren successfully tried transfusion of
blood through a quill directly from one animal into another. Interestingly enough, it has been pointed out that
in the course of these experiments Wren had also by his
use of the syringe introduced the idea of what we now
know as the hypodermic needle, a device that had to wait
for its full development until the nineteenth century.
In the midst of these transfusion experiments Wren returned to London to be Gresham professor of astronomy
for some three years until in 1661 he was recalled to Oxford to be Savilian professor of astronomy there. During
this time he continued work on his scientific ideas with
the virtuosi, becoming not only an Original Fellow but
also a member of the first Council of the Royal Society.
Wren himself, having proved his point that transfusion
was possible and practical, had long since passed on to
other problems and soon became deeply involved in the
rebuilding of London after the Fire. Architectural matters were his major concern from that time on for the remainder of his long life; but he did not lose touch with
the Fellows and their work. As president in 1680 for two
7 Sprat. p. 317
85




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
years he served them greatly, despite the pressure of his
multifarious activities; after 1667, however, Wren was
primarily the great architect, not the scientist that his
earlier work had made him.
In May, 1665, Dr. Wilkins suggested to the Society
that the experiment of injecting the blood of one dog
into the vein of another might be tried; but they were
busy then testing the oil of tobacco on small animals and
birds. Next the Plague and the Fire intervened. At length,
on March 28, 1667, the Society watched the bleeding of
a sheep's blood into a spaniel's veins. Paris meantime had
taken up the idea and was trying the transfusion of animal
blood into man. When an insane man died while undergoing such a transfusion, the experiments were stopped. Dr.
Wilkins during the summer read reports of these Paris
experiments to the Royal Society. And on November 23rd,
Dr. Richard Lower and Edmond King for the first time
in England successfully performed a human transfusion
for the Society. They introduced with no apparent illeffect nine or ten ounces of blood from the artery of a
sheep into a man variously described as a "harmless lunatic" and "an eccentric scholar." Thus they provided more
curious ammunition for the wits and the critics to use in
attacking the virtuosi. People speculated on what would
happen to a man's nature if he received into his veins the
blood of a lion or of a sheep.
Dr. Stubbs Against the Society
Popular interest in the new science stimulated in part
by the kinds of experiments done, and in part by the lively
controversies among the learned, developed still more under the attacks by the satirists and the ridicule of the poets
and the dramatists. Among the learned opponents, the
most prolific writer and the most virulent critic was Dr.
Henry Stubbs. According to Anthony Wood, he was "a
person of most admirable parts, of most prodigious mem86




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY
ories (his enemies said he read indexes), the most noted
Latinist and Grecian of his age... and a singular mathematician." His great talents we now know 8 were employed
by Dr. Hamey, a fellow and a benefactor of the Royal
College of Physicians, out of jealousy and fear of the
Royal Society. This doctor was afraid of its growing power
and especially of what it might do in the fields of medicine, anatomy and surgery, which he considered the rightful province of his own College. So he engaged Dr. Stubbs
secretly to criticize the Society as vigorously and as violently at every point as he could. This just suited Dr.
Stubbs, for he was "a man of as much acrimony as wit,
with as knowing a head as he had an able hand and that
wanted no ill nature to complete ye satirist in him."
What his contemporaries saw was that Stubbs "took a
pet against the Royal Society," as Wood expressed it. He
accused the virtuosi, either "very great impostors, or men
of little reading," of attempting "to overthrow the universities and all others as idiots and ignoramus's," and
claimed that "neither the ancients nor modern academicks
were so foolish as they painted them out to be, nor the
Royal Society so inquisitive as they would seem." That
Protestants and Papists could converse together in friendly
discourse as Sprat had said, he considered dangerous to
religion. His concern, Stubbs asserted, was "the interest of
the monarchy and religion in this land, the welfare of the
Church or State, the happiness of this generation and of
posterity." They on the other hand were seeking to undermine the universities, or at least to make them inconsiderable. They were seeking to destroy the established
religion and to involve the nation in popery "and I know
not what." So alarmed was he, as he claimed, that he was
willing to hazard his life and fortune in pointing out these
dangers; for he doubted whether "God would support us
by His Providence, when they had debauched the Nation
from all piety and morality, as well as civil wisdom."
8 See Harcourt Brown, Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth Century
France (Baltimore, 1934) 256-257.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
From Sprat's History and from other books, Stubbs
found "undeniable arguments of the common danger, and
the general and constant discourse as well as the deportment of the comical wits or virtuosi were such that no
gloss or comment could create another representation of
things." He pounced on the books of the young Joseph
Glanvill, an ardent enthusiast of the new learning. He
pointed out the laughter aroused among men of true
learning and no strangers to mathematics, by the proposals
some made of flying to the world in the moon, a design
they thought superlatively ridiculous, though the contrivance of wings for mankind was then being projected, as
he said, at Wadham College. He attacked the transfusion
experiments, asking "what regulations shall we have for
this operation, shall a man transfuse he knows not what,
to correct he knows not what, God knows how?" To Robert Boyle, already one of the most distinguished and respected of the virtuosi, Stubbs wrote on June 4, 1670, "All
men apprehend it now that their common interest is to
oppose the Royal Society. I know not what physicians may,
as the mode is, tell you to your face; but except it be
such as Dr. Sydenham9 and young Coxe, I believe that
not one lives that doth not condemn your experimental
philosophy." Stubbs' attacks were shrewd for his learning
was great; but his language was intemperate and at times
scurrilous, and his common sense and sobriety so lacking
that he made himself and his learning cheap.
/  Joseph Glanvill was not easily silenced. He rose to the
fray with further books and pamphlets pointing out that
Stubbs had ignored Bacon's philosophy and had failed to
note that the experimental philosophers were attacking
not the ancients but their method. Glanvill pointed up his
attack by asking, in reference to Stubbs' hair: "I said your
head was red-hot. Why did you make yourself ridiculous
at Oxford by plucking off your periwig and showing your
9 Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) called "the English Hippocrates,"
famous for his independence as well as for his work on fevers.
88




EARLY OPPOSITION      TO ROYAL SOCIETY
head to every freshman to demonstrate your charge of
lying against me?"
The virtuosi, despite Glanvill's vigorous replies to these
ill-tempered arguments, must have breathed a sigh of relief when they heard of Stubbs' accidental death in 1676.
Not all could have been as serene and unconcerned under
his whiplash of scorn and vituperation as Evelyn was when
he wrote to Glanvill, on June 24, 1668, congratulating
him upon his vindication of himself and of all useful
learning against "the science (falsely so-called)" of his
"snarling adversary." Evelyn went on: "I do not conceive
why the Royal Society should any more concern themselves for the empty and malicious cavils of these delators,
after what you have said; but let the moon-dogs bark on,
till their throats are dry: the Society every day emerges,
and her good genius will raise up one or another to judge
and defend her; whilst there is nothing which does more
confirm me in the nobleness of the design, than this spirit
of contradiction which the devil (who hates all discoveries
of those false and prestigious ways that have hitherto obtained) does incite to stir up men against it."
The Scoffers
But the moon-dogs or the devil were not stopped. Instead of the learned invective of a Stubbs or a South, the
jokers, the satirists and the dramatists directed their
pointed barbs at the Society in a manner hard to parry.
Too often the laugh was on the virtuosi. The Fellows
guarded themselves as best they could from the practical
jokers. Of course they were eager to add to their repository
specimens of every kind, even employing a collector in
1669 to travel through England and Scotland to assemble
for them rarities of all sorts, and they welcomed gifts from
outsiders as well as from their own members. But by 1668
the Society had to rule that gifts from outsiders, not Fellows, must first be shown to the president before they
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
could be accepted, "for fear of lodging unknownly ballads
and buffooneries in these scoffing times." So Oldenburg
wrote to Boyle early in January that year.
The virtuosi in general and especially the Fellows knew
well that they and their work were decidedly vulnerable to
the ridicule of the scoffers. Had not the King himself
laughed at their concern over the weight of the air? What
could seem more futile than such experiments when the
scientific study of the weather was in its infancy and the
laws of barometric pressure were still being worked out?
Observations with the telescope had been widely made
and were generally known, but the enthusiasm of some of
the amateurs and their excited imaginations had carried
them into some surprising flights of fancy about possible
voyages to the moon. Similarly the more recent work with
the microscope seemed preposterous. Why was it important to see what the eye of a fly looked like? Such observations and inquiries, and many more besides, that the
Philosophical Transactions were recording from month to
month under Oldenburg's editorial hand were fine material for the satirists.
Sprat in particular had had the "wits and railleurs" of
the age on his mind, hoping when he wrote his History
to win them over to make common cause with the Royal
Society, for "if they shall decry the promoting of Experiments, they will deprive themselves of the most fertil Subject of Fancy. And indeed it has been with respect to
these terrible men that I have made this long digression
[on the inexhaustible treasures of natural knowledge for
the wits]. I acknowledge that we ought to have a great
dread of their power. I confess I believe thit New Philosophy need not (as Caesar) fear the pale of the melancholy
as much as the humorous and the merry. For they perhaps
by making it ridiculous, because it is new, and because
they themselves are unwilling to take pains about it, may
do it more injury than all the Arguments of our severe
and frowning and dogmatical Adversaries." 10
10 Sprat. p. 417.
9~




EARLY OPPOSITION      TO ROYAL SOCIETY
What Sprat feared came to pass all too soon. Among the
various writers attacking the Society's activities were Samuel Butler, Thomas Shadwell and Mrs. Aphra Behn, three
of the most brilliant satirists to use this reservoir of experimental learning not, as Sprat had hoped, for their
noble flights of fancy, but for the exercise of their wit and
irony against the virtuosi and their activities. Butler to
some extent differentiated between the enthusiast in pursuit of the new and strange, no matter how fantastic, and
the true science-lover possessed of some common sense. The
other two lumped them together as the common victims
of their attacks.
Butler's poem "Elephant in the Moon," though written
sometime in the 166o's or 7o's, was not printed till 1759,
together with a fragment "On the Royal Society" that was
even more scathing In the poem a group of virtuosi observe the moon one night through a long telescope. They
discover that the moon's inhabitants are evidently at war
and one claims to see an elephant striding across its surface. They fall into eager discussion about this, and a footman standing by decides to look for himself. He reports
that he can see nothing because there is something in the
tube near the eye-piece. A less credulous virtuoso looks
and discovers a mouse caught in the tube. They all still
debate violently the truth or falsity of their observations
but finally decide to open the long tube. There they discover gnats, flies and other insects caught in it, and they
realize that these were their great "armies battling" on the
moon. Thus Butler ridiculed those who, misled by "tales
stupendous and far fet," endeavored to explain "appearances, Not as they are but as they please, In vain strive
Nature to suborn, And, for their pains, are paid with
scorn." In the footman Butler typified the common sense
of the ordinary individual who, without the learning of
the virtuosi, uses his head instead of his imagination, and
upsets the speculations of the learned men.
With equal scorn Butler wrote "On the Royal Society"
about the Fellows:
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
"These were their learned speculations
And all their constant occupations:
To measure wind and weigh the air
And turn a Circle to a Square...
If Chymists from a Rose's ashes
Can raise the rose itself in Glasses...
To stew th'Elixir in a bath
Of Hope, Credulity, and Faith."
Though these verses were not printed till long after Butler's death in 1680, might they not have been passed around
before then by word of mouth or from hand to hand? In
all probability Butler was one of the "terrible men" whose
mockery Sprat dreaded.
Far more deadly in its ridicule and less discriminating
in its satire between the true virtuoso and the credulous
one was Thomas Shadwell's play, "The Virtuoso," produced and also published in 1673. In this Shadwell created
the famous character, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, supposedly
representative of the scholars absorbed in the new science
without differentiating between the true scientist and the
credulous enthusiast.
In the vocabulary of the Society's publications, Shadwell
composed the dialogues. He drew the material for his
scenes from the Philosophical Transactions, from Hooke's
Micrographia and from Sprat's History, adding his own
twist to what he used. Parodying the Society's study of insects and the tests they made on the supposed "eels in
vinegar," he added stings to the eels' tails which gave vinegar its bite. He parodied the experiments on transfusion
by recounting a transfusion of a spaniel into a bull-dog
and of a sheep into a madman. He used what seemed the
most fantastic of the virtuosi's activities, such as their
studies of the possibility of flights by man, of the topography of the moon, of the density of the air, and by carrying them to extremes, he made scientific observation
absurd. He made the virtuosi turn from the study of nature to a search for the philosopher's stone to serve mankind.
Any attempt to differentiate between the true and the
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EARLY OPPOSITION      TO ROYAL SOCIETY
false virtuosi was lost in his play, and all were charged with
"the artificial folly of those who are not coxcombs by nature, but with great art and industry make themselves so."
Shadwell's twentieth century critic, Claude Lloyd, added:
"The laugh was on the experimental science of the Royal
Society."
The laugh was also on the experimenters themselves,
for Sir Nicholas Gimcrack has lived on in literature. Certainly none of the virtuosi would care to be thought to
have sat for this portrait of one of themselves. Various
characters in Shadwell's play take their turn in describing
him as "the finest speculative gentleman in the whole
world... Not a creature so inanimate to which he does
not give a tongue; he makes the whole world vocal; he
makes flowers, nay weeds, speak eloquently and by a noble
kind of Prosopopoeia instruct mankind." "He's an enemy
to Wit, as all Virtuoso's are." He is "a sot, that has spent
2ooo pounds in microscopes to find out the nature of eels
in vinegar, mites in a cheese, and the blue of plums; which
he has subtilly found to be living creatures." He has
"broken his brains about the nature of maggots".. 
"has studied these twenty years to find out the several sorts
of spiders, and never cares for understanding mankind."
His wife describes the well-known swimming lesson: "In
his laboratory, a spacious room, where all his instruments
and fine knick-knacks are... He has a frog in a bowl of
water, tyed with a packthread by his loins; which packthread Sir Nicholas holds with his teeth, lying upon his
belly on a table, and as the frog strikes, he strikes, and
his swimming-master stands by to tell him when he does well
or ill." Sir Nicholas himself remarks: "I swim most exquisitely on land." When asked if he intended to practise in the water, he replied: "Never, Sir, I hate the water.. I never come upon the water, Sir." "Then there will
be no use in swimming?" Sir Nicholas retorts: "I content
myself with the speculative part of swimming, I care not
for the Practick. I seldom bring anything to use; 'tis not
my way. Knowledge is my ultimate end." One of his ques93




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
tioners satirically comments: "To study for use is base and
mercenary, below the serene and quiet temper of a sedate
philosopher." Another remarks: "I believe if the blood of
an ass were transfus'd into a virtuoso, you would not know
the emittent ass from the recipient philosopher."
Sir Nicholas dabbled in astronomy too. In talking about
the moon, he knows it is like the earth for he can see "the
larger sort of animals on it, as elephants and camels" and
"publick buildings and ships very easily. I have seen several battles fought there. They have great guns, and have
the use of gunpowder. At land they fight with elephants
and castles. I have seen 'em."
In this play, called by another modern critic perhaps
the most deadly of all the attacks upon the Society, Shadwell presented a picture of the virtuoso as "a crank, superstitious and gullible, and interested only in the eccentric
or monstrous; a sham philosopher, vain and shallow,
whose ostensible love of learning was at root but an idle
curiosity, and whose learning itself was studiously divorced from practical reality." The play was immensely
popular.
Hardly less deadly in its mockery was Mrs. Aphra
Behn's farce, "The Emperor in the Moon," produced in
London in 1687 and long a favorite. Again parodying the
vocabulary of the virtuosi and their fantasies about people inhabiting the moon, the plot concerned the daughter
and the niece of one of the virtuosi, a doctor, who has
restricted the girls too closely. Scaramouche disguised as a
man from the moon helps the two lovers similarly disguised to fool the doctor and get access to the girls. The
plot was slight but there were dances and songs to add
attractiveness to the ridicule of contemporary interest in
lunar phenomena and their interpretations. Once more
the virtuosi were the victims.




EARLY OPPOSITION TO ROYAL SOCIETY


Cumulative Effects
Ridicule skillfully applied is indeed a dangerous weapon. The battle of the books could and did rage on for
some decades to come, over the respective merits of the
ancients and the moderns. But accusations of revolutionary activities against the state or against religion and the
established church died down as Charles II passed through
the twenty-five years of his reign, and as the age of rationalism drew near. Unquestionably the scoffers, the wits
and the satirists, by their barbed thrusts, seriously weakened the development of the Royal Society after its first
brilliant decade. The critical years for the Society were
not those first ten years, but the next thirty. Neither
Sprat's eloquent defense nor the power of royal patronage
had sufficiently covered the vulnerable places. Surely the
one new Fellow elected to membership in the Royal Society in 1690 reflected not only weakness within the Society as well as disturbed political conditions without, but
also the cumulative effect of such brilliant satire as Shadwell's and such clever mockery as Mrs. Behn's. Who would
have wanted to be considered a Sir Nicholas Gimcrack
himself?
Some support for this contention may be found in William  Wotton's Reflections Upon Ancient and Modern
Learning, first published in 1694. He wrote: "Though the
Royal Society has weathered the rude attacks of such as
Stubbs who endeavour'd to have it thought that study of
natural philosophy and mathematics was a ready method
to introduce scepticism at least, if not atheism into the
world: yet the sly insinuations of the Men of Wit that no
great things ever were or are ever like to be perform'd by
the men of Gresham and that every man whom they call
a virtuoso must needs be a Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, together with the public ridiculing of all those who spend
their time and fortunes in seeking after what some call
useless natural rarities, who dissected animals, little as
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
well as great, who think no part of God's workmanship
below their strictest examination and nicest search; have
so far taken off the edge of those who have opulent fortunes, and a love of learning, that physiological studies
begin to be contracted among physicians and mechanics.
For nothing wounds so much as a jest; and when men do
once become ridiculous, their labour will be slighted and
they will find few imitators. How far this may deaden the
industry of the philosophers of the next age is not easie to
tell."
Would the Society survive the difficulties from within
and the attacks from without? For years that question was
unanswered, and for a time the critics seemed to be victorious. Though the virtuosi were fundamentally right in
recognizing the unity of all knowledge and in searching
out the answers to their questions by constant trial and
experiment; yet the true scientists among them were less
than a third of their number, and the amateurs among
them were too often led astray into absurdities and fantastic speculations. The Society suffered in consequence.
Nonetheless, the Society was accomplishing much useful
work during these critical decades.


96




6


THE CRITICAL YEARS
N JANUARY 11, 1671, the Journal-book of the
Society recorded that, on the nomination of Dr.
Seth Ward, then Bishop of Salisbury, Mr. Isaac
Newton, professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, was elected a Fellow. In 1687, urged on by Halley,
the astronomer, and sponsored by the Royal Society, Newton published his monumental Principia, enunciating the
universal application of the law of gravitation. In 1703,
when he had been in London since 1696, first as warden
and then in 1699 as Master of the Mint, Newton was
elected president of the Royal Society and was reelected
annually until his death in 1727.
Some have said that with the publication of the Principia in 1687 the classical period of the Society's history
came to an end and its development as a scientific society
was assured. Lyons, however, points out that the last three
decades of the seventeenth century were the difficult
period in its life. Would it survive the death of some of
its leading members, Wilkins in 1672, Moray in 1673,
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Oldenburg in 1677? Would it solve its ever-present financial troubles? Would it again attract to itself enough scientifically-minded men to keep it in existence at all? Not
even the prestige the Society received with Newton as its
president for nearly a quarter of a century was an entirely
adequate reenforcement. The membership question remained unsettled for a hundred years and more, and not
till well on in the nineteenth century did the Society develop into the association of leading scientists that it is
today. Yet, despite these unsettled questions, during the
critical period of its existence at the close of the seventeenth century, the Society set in motion or sponsored a
number of significant activities.
The Charters of the Society had set no limit to the number of its members or Fellows. After the original proposal
in 166o that they number fifty-five, this limit was soon
removed and in 1663 one hundred and nineteen were
listed as Original Fellows. Eleven more were elected later
that year. By 1671, in addition to the Royal Patron and
the Royal Fellows, there were 187 ordinary Fellows and
foreign members. Yet, twenty years later there were only
116, less than the original charter group. In 1680 the meetings were so poorly attended that Evelyn wrote to Pepys
in June asking for "one-half hour of your presence and
assistance toward the most material concern of a Society
which ought not to be dissolved for want of an redress... I do assure you we shall want one of your courage
and address to encourage and carry on this affair. You
know we do not usually fall on business till pretty late in
expectation of a fuller company, and therefore if you
decently could fall in amongst us by 6 or 7 it would, I am
sure infinitely oblige... the whole Society." 1
That year the Fellows sought to have as their president
their best-known scientist, the Honorable Robert Boyle,
in the hope perhaps that his great renown would re-establish the standing of their organization. Boyle had been liv1 Cited in A. Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Years of Peril (New York, 1935)
337.
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THE CRITICAL YEARS
ing in London since 1668 with his sister. Though he was in
poor health, he refused the election not for that reason but
because of his unwillingness to take the oaths required of
the president.2 The Council then turned to Sir Christopher
Wren (he had been knighted in 1674) and under his active
leadership instituted a number of administrative reforms
concerning the payment of dues and fees. The next year
twenty-three non-paying members including nine peers
were struck off the rolls and twenty-five new members were
elected, more than in any one year since 1667. Among these
new members was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.
The Period of Greatest Weakness
Sir Christopher was president for only two years as he
had far too many other affairs to attend to as architect for
St. Paul's and for many other public buildings being rebuilt
after the Fire. Unfortunately, the Society's recovery under
his presidency was only temporary, despite the efforts of
his immediate successors. One of these, Samuel Pepys the
diarist and Master of Trinity House, became Secretary to
the Admiralty in his second and last year in the presidency. He had the honor as president of sanctioning for
the Society the publication of Newton's masterpiece, the
Principia.
The Royal Society in its Record has listed all its past
presidents with brief annotations about their positions, distinctions and achievements. Pepys' successor in office,
John, third and last Earl of Carbery, has one line giving
the dates of his birth and death, and of the four years he
was governor of Jamaica. Yet he was president for three
years. One wonders why the Society elected this man who,
as Lord Vaughan, was characterized by Pepys himself in
1667 as "one of the lewdest fellows of the age." He was a
sworn enemy of Lord Clarendon who, Pepys claimed,
"hath more friends in both Houses... by the reason
2 Cited in Lyons, 91.
99




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


that they do see what are the hands that pull him down."
During his term as governor Lord Vaughan "made haste
to grow as rich as his government would let him" and was
charged with selling even his own servants. Lord Clarendon wrote of him: "A person of as ill a face as fame, his
looks and manner both extreme bad." After these comments all the Dictionary of National Biography can say
in his favor was that he had literary tastes and was one of
Dryden's earliest patrons. It concludes that he was one of
Charles II's most servile courtiers. But Charles was dead
and his brother, the Duke of York, was ruling as James II.
Perhaps his wealth and his succession to his father's earldom in 1686 were influential in securing the new Earl his
election to the presidency.
After the Earl of Carbery's administration came that of
the Earl of Pembroke, whose presidency of one year is
notable in that he is said not to have attended a single
meeting of the organization during that year, —689-9o.
Perhaps he did not care to be too closely associated with a
Stuart-supported group when his political star was rising
under the favor of the new sovereigns. For in 1690, after
the Bloodless Revolution, he became First Lord of the
Admiralty under William and Mary, and under Anne,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord High Admiral. He
had, however, been a Fellow since 1685, for his antiquarian and mathematical interests did give him certain common interests with the science-lovers.
It is worth noting, also, that during these years that
these two Earls were presidents, the publication of the
Philosophical Transactions was suspended, not to be resumed till 1691. At that time Richard Waller as secretary
took over the task of publication which Halley had held
in 1686 and 1687. The failure to issue the Transactions
is an important indication of the Society's weakness during
this period, for the various issues were the chief indication
of its activities not only for the membership as a whole but
also for the learned world in Britain and abroad.
During the nearly thirty years of its organized existence
100




THE CRITICAL YEARS
up to this time, the Society had had eight presidents. Its
first, Lord Brouncker, was a distinguished mathematician
as well as a loyal supporter of the Stuarts. Sir Christopher
Wren, the third, was a remarkable scientist though the
greater part of his long life was devoted to architecture.
The other six are listed as statesmen and diplomats, or
holders of high office under the Crown. Three could be
considered virtuosi,-Hoskins, Wyche and Pepys. Two, Sir
Joseph Williamson, Secretary of State and later a diplomat, and the Earl of Pembroke, even though a do-nothing
president, at least had official distinction. But what can
be said of the Earl of Carbery, except that he represents
the lowest ebb in the long line of notable men who have
been able to write P.R.S. after their names. It is not surprising that in 1689 the Society elected only four new
members, in 1690 only one, and in 1691 just three. After
that the tide turned as stronger leadership made itself felt.
The membership of a society with as weak leadership as
that of the Royal Society in the late 'eighties and with the
death or defection of some of its strongest members, could
hardly fail to find the ridicule of the wits difficult to bear.
The virtuosi could not have enjoyed being classed as Sir
Nicholas Gimcracks, and might well have been reluctant
to ally themselves publicly with a group so sharply criticized. One of his friends wrote to Dr. Sloane in 1687: "The
Royal Society declines apace, not one correspondent in
being." 3 The times were stormy, revolution impended,
and until William and Mary were firmly established on
the throne and freedom under law restored with their
coming, the Society was indeed in a bad way. By the time
of Newton's presidency thirteen years later, public affairs
were steadied, membership in the Society had increased,
and there were some 125 Fellows. Thereafter the membership grew steadily.
Whatever the factors affecting this membership situation-the public uncertainties, the critics, the lack of leadership-problems of money were almost hopelessly en3 Cited in C. E. Raven, John Ray, Naturalist (Cambridge, 1942), 243.
101




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
tangled with it. The weekly fee of a shilling a member
from the very first had been disregarded by many of the
Fellows, despite the efforts of the treasurer to collect it.
At the annual meeting in 1663 the treasurer had to report that the members owed ~158 and then, in 1670
that they owed ~1475. The Society received no aid from
the government and with one or two exceptions, gifts and
bequests had not come in. Hampered thus financially, the
Fellows in 1669 could not take up the request of the King
that they measure a degree of latitude in a geodetic survey
comparable to the one that the French scientists had just
completed with the support of Louis XIV. They even
were unable to pay in full at first the sums they had promised those who worked for them. Oldenburg, the hardworking secretary, protested repeatedly against being left
"unassisted"; but for years he did not receive his full pay.
The Collections and the Library
William Ball, an astronomer who was the Society's first
treasurer, on his retirement from that office in 1663 presented the Fellows with an ironbound chest with three
separate locks (and one key for each of three officers) to
hold their documents and their cash, a chest that the Society still treasures to this day (Plate 13). In it, Evelyn
recorded, he had placed a gift of ~0oo towards their expenses. Another Fellow gave the same amount three years
later which the Society used to buy a collection of rarities
as the formal inauguration of its repository or museum.
They already had had various oddities presented to them;
now in 1668 they began a more systematic collection.
In those days there was no public museum or other place
where specimens could be sent for preservation or for
identification. The Society was therefore performing a
useful and proper service in collecting, arranging and
cataloguing specimens in natural science, however the wits
might laugh. The collections grew rapidly. When Dr.
102




THE CRITICAL YEARS
Nehemiah Grew published a catalogue and a description
of the museum in 1681, the book was a folio of about 450
pages and listed by name 83 donors, including the East
India and the Royal Africa Companies. A century later
the Society gave these collections to the British Museum
when it had to move to other quarters. There at the Museum the Society's collections were added to those already
bequeathed in 1753 by Sir Hans Sloane, Newton's successor as president of the Society, to form the basis of the
great Museum today.
Regardless of Sprat's disclaimer in his Observations of
the Society's desire to collect a library, Evelyn proposed
in January, 1667, to Henry Howard, later Duke of Norfolk, that he give the Society his ancestral collection of
books and manuscripts. Howard was the Society's host at
Arundel House for some years after the Fire of London,
while the Gresham College building was being used by
the City authorities. Evelyn, watching the books disappearing as visitors carried away volumes that appealed to
them, suggested that the collection be turned over to the
Society. Howard agreed and in 1678 more than 500 manuscripts and nearly 3000 printed books were transferred to
the Society's rooms in the College. Some one hundred and
fifty years later, in 1830, most of the manuscripts were
turned over to the library of the British Museum, and the
money given to the Society in return was spent for English and foreign scientific publications that were of more
value to them than were the manuscripts on philosophical
and theological subjects. As the Fellows down through the
years have usually presented to the library copies of their
publications, the Society today has a valuable library including many autographed first editions.
Expedients About Finances
Gifts of a library and specimens for a museum did not
solve the Society's financial problems. Still the members
103




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


did not pay their weekly shillings. In 1675 with the approval of the Attorney-General each newly elected Fellow
thereafter was required to sign an agreement to pay each
year in quarterly amounts fifty-two shillings, or ~2.12s.od.
But a year later the unpaid dues amounted to ~2000. The
Council of the Society tried various expedients from dunning letters to threats of lawsuits. In 1685 it listed fortyseven Fellows then in considerable arrears, informing
them that their names would not be printed in the list of
Fellows at the end of the year unless their debts were paid.
Lawsuits were not actually undertaken, however, until
1728 when under the presidency of Sir Hans Sloane some
were successfully carried through.
Disregarding their needs, the Council would on occasion release a Fellow from part or all of his dues when the
circumstances seemed to justify it and the Fellow was
important to the work of the Society.4 And somehow or
other through these critical years money did come in.
One particularly troublesome question was happily
solved in this difficult period. While King Charles had
granted the Royal Society no state subsidy, in 1669 he had
turned over to the Fellows the Chelsea College lands. The
gift proved burdensome indeed; the buildings were in
bad repair, lawsuits threatened over various claims to the
estate, and tenants were difficult to secure. The Fellows
must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when the King
expressed a desire in 1682 to have these lands returned to
the Crown and in exchange promised them ~ 1300, a
promise unfortunately not kept.5
Nevertheless the financial difficulties continued. One or
two small investments had been made by 1676 in the stock
of the East India Company and of the Africa Company;
but the sale of the East India Company stock was only
narrowly averted in 1687 when one of the Fellows became
4Newton, for example. L. T. More, Isaac Newton, a Biography (New
York, 1934) 154, 156, 252.
5 Weld (I, 279) states that the Council voted to invest this sum in the East
India Company. The present Librarian of the Royal Society says (in a
letter January 6, 1948) that the grant was never paid.
104




THE CRITICAL YEARS
personally responsible for the debt owed by the Society.
When Dr. Hans Sloane became secretary in 1693, he
tackled the financial problems with sufficient success to
permit increased investment in the stock of the two companies after several years. Slowly the Fellows' payments
were stabilized and made more regular, especially after
the successful conclusion of several lawsuits. But throughout the first half-century of its existence, the lack of adequate financial support hampered the Society considerably
and was a target for the critics, one that Dr. Henry Stubbs,
for example, did not overlook.
The first considerable legacy the Society received was
~400 from Dr. John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, the man
who throughout his life had been a devoted friend of
science and of scientists, and a leader not only in the Royal
Society but also in the Oxford Philosophical Society and
in "the invisible college" preceding it. This legacy from
the Bishop posed an interesting problem of investment for
the young Society. It was nearly two years after his death in
1672 before the cash was turned over to the Society by his
executors, and then only after prodding. The money was
placed in the iron-bound chest while the Fellows debated
what to do with it. The Mercers Company refused to accept it as a loan at interest. Proposals to purchase various
houses were discussed and rejected. Finally in 1675 the
money was invested in three fee-farm rents 6 in Sussex,
bringing in ~24 a year.
By 1703 the payment of these rents had been allowed to
fall into arrears amounting to a debt of ~45o. An appeal
in 1704 to the Chancery Court brought the decision nine
years later that the estate holding the farms was obligated
to pay both the annual rent and also the amount in arrears. For more than two hundred years these fee-farm
rents continued to be paid. Characteristically enough, however, during the period of great laxity in the Society's ad.
6Payments made in recognition of the occupant's obligation to the
lord of the manor. A survival from the medieval system of land ownership,
found similarly in the "ground rents" collected in Maryland.
105




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
ministration early in the nineteenth century, the annual
payment was allowed to shrink to ~19. 14s. od. without
apparent cause. Finally, as Lyons reports, in 1937 the estate
owning the farms sought release from these long continued
annual payments and, after two years of negotiation, redeemed them by paying twenty-five years' rent, ~570.
Thus not until 1939 did Bishop Wilkins' legacy as invested in the fee-farm rents disappear as a separate item
from the treasurer's report.
Support of Scientific Activities
While the Fellows for financial reasons could not undertake important scientific work like the geodetic survey the
King had proposed, they could and did encourage and
help scientific work in other ways. From the outset individual members in committees or in informal groups
worked on questions which the Society wanted answereda mode of procedure which the Society has used from that
day to this. Boyle as a member of the "georgical" (agricultural) committee was one of those who agreed to have his
gardener try planting the recently introduced potato as part
of the Society's scheme to encourage its cultivation throughout England "as a way of preventing famine." This georgical committee planned to make lists of what plants were
cultivated in England and several times at its meetings
considered what winter greens (vegetables) were grown or
growable. This same committee asked Sir William Petty,
Dr. Wilkins and Robert Hooke to consider a suggestion
by Hooke that London's water supply might be improved
by increasing the flow of the Islington River.
The Committee of Correspondence in its turn planned
a series of inquiries to be undertaken by travellers to the
East Indies, and for seamen generally, but on the memorandum of the second meeting is the notation that "they
never mett since Mr. Povey's feasting of them." The Society sent out inquiries to be made and requests for speci106




THE CRITICAL YEARS


mens to be collected by persons going to far places,-to
Iceland, to South America, to India. Dr. Grew's Catalogue
of the Society's museum in consequence lists many objects
of all kinds from the Americas as well as from the other
continents. The Society as a whole and through its individual members was definitely trying to fulfil its purposethe promotion of natural knowledge.
Thus they encouraged each other to write various books
especially on the development of the crafts that had long
interested the virtuosi, as engraving, dyeing, the making
of glassware and the cultivation of orchard and other trees.
Beside their own History which they asked Sprat to write,
they gave their imprimatur of approval for publication to
Dr. Wilkins' Essay toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), to Hooke's Micrographia (1665),
Evelyn's Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees (1664), Malpighi's Anatome Plantarum (1675), Willughby's Ornithologiae supplemented by Ray (1676) and his Historia
Piscium (History of Fishes) (1686), several of Hooke's writings, Flamsteed's Tide-Table for i687 and Newton's Principia (1687),-to name only some of about thirty publications sanctioned, if not actually subsidized before 1700.
Through Oldenburg's Philosophical Transactions and
through Hooke's Philosophical Collections after Oldenburg's death, subscribers as well as members received abstracts or announcements of some of these books and were
informed about other scientific works published on the
continent as well as in England. The wide range and the
variety of the Society's interests and of the Fellows' activities are clearly evident in these different publications.
However, an indication of the serious uncertainties of
these years is registered by the absence of any book published in the Society's name after the Principia in 1687
until 1696. The lapse of three years in this same period in
the publication of the Transactions has already been
noted in connection with the presidencies of the two
Earls. Three editors had followed Hooke in quick succession when he stopped his Philosophical Collections (as
107




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


he called his issues of the Transactions) in 1682. After
Halley ended his editorship (was he too absorbed that
year in getting out the Principia for Newton?) there were
no further issues until Waller undertook the task under
the supervision of the Council. Since 1691 the Transactions have been issued every year.
Of course one of the great aids to scientists is just such
information relating to their fields of interest as the Transactions could bring to them. The Royal Society was taking over the work of the earlier intelligencers, like Hartlib.
Another great aid is the publication of scholarly works
when commercial publishers see small chance of making
any profit thereby. The Royal Society served scientists
well by having important papers published in the Philosophical Transactions and by contributing to the cost of
publication where a bookseller was unwilling to undertake the task without a subsidy. The Society gave five
pounds and a copy of the book to the printer of Horrox's
Opera Posthuma. It paid for the publication of Willughby's History of Fishes and it wanted to pay for the publication of the Principia, but it lacked the funds. Fortunately, Halley, a Fellow since 1678, though not a rich man
was sufficiently enthusiastic over the importance of Newton's book to pay the costs himself for the Society. In that
way, Newton's masterpiece was made available.
Services to English Style
At this point it might be well to note a less generally
recognized but important service these early science-lovers
of the Society rendered to the English language and to
literary style. One of the virtuosi's complaints against the
Aristotelianism of the university professors and against
learned men generally, was that they used an over-elaborate style and a pedantic vocabulary that only the learned
themselves could understand. The science-lovers on the
other hand came to the conclusion that knowledge was for
108




THE CRITICAL YEARS
the general public, especially knowledge of the natural
world. The facts of their investigations, the reports of
their experiments should be as direct, straightforward and
explicit as the investigations and experiments themselves.
Sprat characterized it as a "naked" directness and simplicity of expression.7
Wilkins was a leader in developing this new style. Edmund Gosse, the English literary critic, wrote of him, "he
was the first man in England to write commonly in the
new kind of prose. His style deserves great praise. His
sentences are short, pointed and exact... Justice has
never yet been done him as a pioneer in English prose."
One has only to dip into some of the writings of the
earlier part of the seventeenth century and to compare
them with Sprat's own History or with Wilkins' Essay
toward a real Character and a Philosophical Language to
note the difference.
In fact, the Royal Society in December 1664, and January 1665, included a study and reform of the English
tongue as part of its early program, appointing Wilkins
to meet with the committee of twenty-one members to
improve the philosophy of the language. Evelyn also was
asked to make suggestions and on June 20, 1665, replied
with a long letter to the chairman, Sir Peter Wyche. His
suggestions reflect his wisdom and his vision. They also
in themselves are a commentary on the state of the English
language in the seventeenth century. It has taken two
centuries for most of his proposals to be put into effect.
One of these, the omission of superfluous letters in words,
like the second "o" in woomen and, for Americans, the
"u" in honor has come about with the attrition of time;
but simplified spelling as Evelyn advocated it, is still not
generally adopted. However, English grammars have been
compiled and rules laid down to make English a "learnable tongue" in line with Evelyn's ideas. English lexicons
or dictionaries now exist giving first the "prime, certain
and natural" meaning and then the symbolical. Technical
7 Sprat. 111-115.
log




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
terms have been collected from shops as well as from
books. Determinations of weights, measures, coins, honors,
obsolete or abrogated customs have been listed and explained. Exotic and unusual words have been expounded
and idioms and proverbs collected. Foreign words for
which there was no English equivalent have been made
part of the language, such as "bizarre, concert, defer" and
have become "good citizens." Examples of the best in ancient and modern prose and poetry have been collected
as a guide for the improvement of taste and as an encouragement of the art of rhetoric.
All these Evelyn recommended; but their development
has come about not primarily through the efforts of the
Royal Society's committee but as later ages realized and
met the need. The Society's committee seems not to have
been active, and the improvement of the English tongue
came about as a by-product of the Society's activities rather
han as a main end to be achieved. The Royal Society after
that first effort did not thereafter attempt to parallel the
work of the Academie Franpaise in standardizing the language.
Dr. Wilkins' labors on his Essay and the help of his
friends had other values besides that of finding the exact
word to express an idea in naked simplicity. His search
for some form of a universal written language that could
be read by the people of any nationality as easily as the
notations in a piece of music or the symbols in mathematics are read, led him to try to classify all knowledge
and to reduce it to its bare essentials, in order to express
those essentials by written symbols or signs. A written expression for the term dog, for instance, could have an
added symbol to indicate a certain kind of dog, as a hound.
The symbols he used in the writing or "character" he
described in his Essay naturally required a kind of dictionary to accompany them that would help to place the
idea to be expressed in its proper classification among the
symbols.
In working out these classifications Wilkins had the
110




THE CRITICAL YEARS


help of some of his younger friends, notably that of
Francis Willughby and John Ray, the two foremost naturalists of their time. One of their biographers claims that
this endeavor under Wilkins' guidance to classify knowledge of the natural world gave them an impetus toward
their own later scientific work on the classification of
plants and of fishes.8 Wilkins' classifications were also followed in the arrangement of the Society's museum specimens, and through Grew's printed Catalogue continued
to be of influence on classification long after Wilkins had
died. His Essay had attempted the impossible under the
limitations of that time and is now itself merely a curiosity
in scientific history. But the Royal Society had encouraged
him to write it and had sponsored its publication. Thus
indirectly through such by-products, so to speak, the Society served the English tongue better than the Fellows
had with the large committee they had set up for that
purpose, a committee that never reported.
The Society and the Royal Observatory
During these critical years at the end of the seventeenth
century the Society rendered a direct and notable service
to science in connection with the Royal Observatory. This
institution was established in 1675 at Greenwich by
Charles II on a site suggested by Sir Christopher Wren
and erected according to his plans. Dr. John Flamsteed was
the first "Astronomical Observator" by royal appointment.
Dr. Flamsteed was another of these science-lovers who
earned their living in some other field, yet seemed to give
most of their time, thought and money to their scientific
pursuits. His plan was to take charge of a parish and at
the same time to continue with his astronomical studies.
He had long since discovered how inaccurate were the
current astronomical tables and how great was the need
for the more precise foretelling of celestial phenomena.
8 G. S. Boulger, "John Ray" Dict. of Nat. Biog.
111




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
He had prepared such a revised almanac for 1670 and had
sent it up to the Royal Society. In time he himself came
up to London to meet his various correspondents among
the virtuosi. They welcomed him and gave him additional instruments as well as other help. These men also
talked about Flamsteed's work with the King and his
brother, the Duke of York.
By 1674 the Royal Society was considering setting up its
own observatory, possibly under the direction of Flamsteed, when a Frenchman appealed to the King for his
help; he had "solved the problem of finding the longitude
at sea." Until the chronometer was invented in the eighteenth century, finding a ship's longitude at sea was a
very difficult problem. Local time was easily ascertained,
but standard time at the prime meridian was most difficult
to learn. Yet the difference of the two times measures the
longitude of the observer east or west of the prime meridian. The Frenchman's scheme was to use the shifts of the
moon's positions among the fixed stars as a basis for calculation.
Charles referred the matter to a committee that included with some others, nine. Fellows, among whom were
Wren, Hooke, and Moray. Flamsteed, then in London,
came to one of the meetings of this committee and
pointed out the inaccuracies in the existing star-catalogues.
Charles was "startled at the assertion of the fixed stars'
places being false in the catalogue" and said he "must have
them anew observed, examined, and corrected, for the use
of his seamen." Forthwith he appointed Flamsteed the
first Astronomer Royal and ordered the construction of
an observatory not to cost more than ~500.
The next year, 1676, the building was completed and
Flamsteed installed; but all the equipment consisted of a
sextant and two clocks which were the gift of one of the
mathematicians in the Royal Society. The King characteristically had made no provision for equipment nor for
expenses other than Flamsteed's salary. The Fellows came
to Flamsteed's aid by lending him their own astronomi112




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PLATE 10. Experiments concerning the Force of Blowing with a Man's
Breath reported by Dr. Wilkins, July 31, i66'
(From the original manuscript in the Library of the Royal Society, by courtes~y of the Royal Society)




4 i
PLATE 1. Frontispiece of Sprat's History of the Royal Society with the inscription by Dr. Wilkins
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal
Society)




THE CRITICAL YEARS
cal instruments for two years until they reclaimed them
again for their own use. They also elected him a Fellow
in 1677. With what instruments he had, Flamsteed went
to work, drawing upon his own funds for further equipment. The result of his labors was the preparation of a
star-catalogue of nearly 3000 stars (the best up to then had
had only iooo) with an accuracy that reduced prevailing
errors from several minutes to only a few seconds.
Meantime the Royal Society was in the closest touch
with Flamsteed. Newton, Halley and the others needed
his accurate observations for their own work and they
wanted publication of his findings as soon as possible.
Flamsteed wanted to wait until he had completed them.
The result was a bitter quarrel in the astronomer's later
years over an imperfect and unauthorized publication of
some of his observations in 1712, secured by Newton and
Halley without his consent. Some years later Flamsteed
was able to recover the unsold copies and, having done so,
began to arrange for publication in full at his own expense. He could not do this before, both because he
wanted to complete his work and because he had to finance the publication from his own resources. Because
he had no help from the government aside from his small
salary, he had had to take private pupils to supplement
his income. Altogether he spent about ~2000 of his own
funds on the work of the observatory. Before he could
complete publication he died in 1719, and his friends and
helpers had to finish the task for him. The three volumes
appeared in 1725.
Queen Anne in 1710 had appointed Newton, then
President of the Royal Society and such other Fellows as
the President thought fit, to be Visitors of the Observatory. Years later to the five Visitors from the Royal Society were added five from the Royal Astronomical Society
together with the professors of astronomy from Oxford
and Cambridge. Later still an officer from the Navy was
appointed and the professors no longer used. That Board
of Visitors has continued ever since.
113




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
The Royal Observatory in Wren's building, with others
erected later, has been in operation ever since. But astronomical work at Greenwich has become too hampered in
recent years by the spread of city life with the vibrations
resulting from increasingly heavy traffic and with the glare
from night lights, together with the bomb damage of the
war years. So in 1946 the removal of much of the equipment and of the work to a quiet place in Sussex was begun. But "Greenwich time" will continue to standardize
the world's clocks.
This close relationship between the Royal Society and
the Royal Observatory is not only the oldest but also the
first of a long series of consultations about scientific institutions and scientific matters for which the government
has turned with increasing frequency to the Fellows of
the Royal Society for advice and help, from that day to
this. In later chapters there will be more proof of this.
The End of a Period
Long before 1700 the most vivid and colorful years of
the Society's history were over, but now also the critical
ones were ending too. An important new problem still had
to be faced, that of housing, for the Gresham College
building after more than a century's hard use was in a sad
state. However, thanks to Dr. Sloane's efforts as secretary,
the accounts of the Society were in better shape, and the
size of the membership had increased a little, giving signs
of further growth. The Philosophical Transactions, under
the Council's oversight after 1690, were appearing regularly. A long list of notable books had been either published or sponsored by the Society. The library and the
museum were well established and were growing steadily.
There were foreign members in Europe and other Fellows
in the colonies, and their foreign correspondence was
heavy. The Society was already renowned in learned circles at home and abroad, in spite of the critics and the
wits.
114




THE CRITICAL YEARS
It continued, of course, to be a society of "gentlemen,"
not all of them even amateurs of science, and certainly less
than a third true scientists; but scientists have not been
numerous anywhere until relatively recently. The fundamental problem of the proper qualifications for membership would not be solved until well on into the nineteenth
century. However, it was largely because of these "gentlemen" that the new science secured a hearing and received
much needed encouragement. These men were its patrons
and protectors. They provided funds, equipment and a
critical, keenly interested hearing for the workers they
themselves recognized as making genuine scientific progress. Naturally they fumbled and groped with what seems
to us, perhaps, amazing naivete; but without the backing
of these amateurs, the Royal Society would hardly have
survived, nor possibly would science itself have progressed
as rapidly as it has in the past two centuries.
As the Society entered upon the eighteenth century, it
could face its immediate future hopefully. With Newton's
election to the presidency in 1703, the critical years of the
organization had come to a close.


115




7


STABILITY
O   BVIOUSLY the Royal Society was not developing
independently of the life around it, however remote from reality its researches seemed to its
critics. As time passed the Society must inevitably either
shrivel and die or else draw strength from the environment to which it was making its own contribution. As yet,
however, the viability of the Society was still uncertain.
Criticisms and quarrels continued; but Newton's long
presidency gave it both prestige and permanence. Under
Sloane, Newton's co-worker in the Society and his successor, the Society continued to gain in numbers and financial strength; but Sloane was more a patron of science
than a scientist. So also was Sir Joseph Banks whose presidency covered the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In many respects the
problems which the Society faced under Newton at the
opening of the century were similar to those which confronted it under Banks at the close. During the eighteenth
century the leadership of the Society in scientific work
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wavered and slackened as the Society became more and
more like a gentleman's social club. Fundamental reorganization and development had to await the reforms of
the nineteenth century.
All three-Newton, Sloane and Banks-as presidents
were strong administrators but less scientists than patrons
of science. Even Newton during his old age, after his Opticks was published in 1704, was more concerned with history, religion and the problems of chronology presented
in the Old Testament than he was with sustained creative
scientific work.' His great work had been done both in
science and in national service before he was elected president. His position as Master of the Mint from 1699 until
his death involved fairly routine matters, though it was
not the sinecure that it has been called. Furthermore,
Hooke's death early in 1703 had removed from the Society one of Newton's most jealous and quarrelsome critics, one whom Newton had avoided meeting whenever
possible. Now he could give time and attention to the
affairs of the Society in which he had been a Fellow for
more than thirty years. His presidency gave the Society
security because of his personal prestige and scientific
eminence.
After Sloane resigned in 1741, however, the influence of
the scientists among the officers and the Council diminished and weaknesses developed dangerously. The Fellows who were historians and antiquarians, not scientists
at all, increased in number and importance. This chapter
and the next will consider the affairs of the Society in the
administrations of Newton and Sloane. Then in the following chapters will be presented some of the major activities of the Fellows in the same century as they helped
to place Sir Joseph Banks in the presidency and to keep
him there until his death. Unavoidably there will be a
certain amount of overlapping in such a division; for
growth is not necessarily continuous and all of a piece,
even though its recorder may have to present it that way.
1 L. T. More. Isaac Newton, a Biography (New York, 1934) pp. 514, 519.
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Conditions in England
First, a glance at conditions in England during the early
eighteenth century may serve as an aid to a better comprehension of the Society's varied interests and concerns.
Newton came to the presidency early in the reign of
Queen Anne, last of the Stuart rulers. He died at the close
of the reign of George I, first of the Hanoverian line on
the British throne. That the change over to the Georges
was not made without a struggle, is proved by the uprising of '15 and confirmed by that of '45. As a result
England was yet more closely involved in the complexities
of continental relationships and problems. Within England under the German-speaking King, management of the
government devolved upon the leaders in the Whig party
that had supported his accession to the throne. Thus
Robert Walpole became the first prime minister. But
while Parliament was itself supreme, having determined
who should reign in England and who should not, it was
nevertheless under the control of the landlords and the
rich. Relatively few people had the right of suffrage, the
vote was open, and the voting period long. "Every man
has his price" and Walpole and his party acted accordingly.
The effects of the commercial revolution of the preceding centuries,-the development of business and of
great fortunes derived from trade and commerce, the
growth of stock companies and of banking-had already
begun the marked shift from power based on vast landed
estates to power based on large amounts of capital, from
country life to city life, from production for little more
than subsistence to production for profit made as rapidly
as possible. England even under the later Stuarts, like the
Low Countries and Prussia, had benefited from the coming of the French Huguenots, fleeing from the renewal
of persecution after Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of
Nantes in 1685. They were an industrious people, with
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skilled workers in many trades, especially weaving. Some
were men of wealth and learning, while all were steadfast.
Some of these exiles remained in England. Others, after a
few years, sailed across the Atlantic to add their skills and
their culture to the colonies, an addition registered not
merely in city names, like New Rochelle, and on the tombstones in the cemeteries, but in the evident French ancestry of some of their American descendants today. Theirs
was a peculiarly dominant strain.
The rapid growth in wealth by the few aroused the
cupidities of the many. Gambling in the shares of companies formed to do business of all sorts and even of none,
resulted in a mad wave of speculation that swept over
England, France and the Low Countries after the great
European war, known as the "Spanish Succession," had
come to an end. For a new king was on the throne in
France as well as in England, and peace seemed permanent once more. The inevitable financial crash came with
the bursting of the South Sea Bubble and of several similar schemes. But already the great movements of this century-agricultural, industrial, and religious-were under
way. Steam engines were being studied and tried, improvements in weaving had begun, and experiments with turnips for winter fodder for cattle were making possible the
improvement of the herds. The wealthy were not now
content to remain on their estates the greater part of the
year, but began to build beautiful eighteenth century town
houses in London and in other cities, and to develop
squares and places filling in the areas between the milesquare City of London and the outlying districts such as
Westminster and Kensington.
Though there was great wealth, there was still greater
poverty. Beggars roamed the streets by day, highwaymen
and thieves made them dangerous at night. To man its
ships, the government used press-gangs who dragged the
able-bodied from the streets to the docks. Great fortunes
were being made in shipping captive Negroes from their
African homelands, to be sold as slaves in the markets of
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the New World. It was a coarse and violent age, as anyone
who has seen Hogarth's caricatures can well imagine. Even
the Church of England was not, in general, much better.
Many of its clergy were as corrupt, as ignorant, and as in
need of reform as the society of which they were a part.
Their unsatisfied parishioners were to provide a rich soil
for the reforms of the Methodist movement which spread
throughout England and into the colonies, under the
leadership of the Wesleys and of Whitefield.
During the early years of this century there seems at
first glance little connection between the activities of the
Royal Society and public life. The Society had been a
favorite project of Charles II. His brother, James II, had
been elected a Fellow when he was still Duke of York.
Neither William nor Mary had signed the Charter-book
of the Society during their reign, perhaps naturally enough
since they were on the throne of England by the will of
Parliament and not by reason of Mary's Stuart lineage.
Would they be likely to look with favor on a Society
many of whose members had been at the courts of Charles
and James? No wonder the prestige of the Society was
clouded in those years just before Newton came to the
presidency in 1703.
Newton as President
Within a year after his election, Newton succeeded in
persuading Prince George of Denmark, Queen Anne's consort, to accept membership in the Society. Thus once
again after a long lapse, close connections were reestablished with the court. Queen Anne, always appreciative
of courtesies paid to her husband, indicated her royal
favor by bestowing knighthood upon Newton the day she
spent visiting Cambridge University in 1705. More, Newton's recent biographer, calls this an unprecedented expression of the unique position Newton occupied in his
world, for no scientist before, except Wren, had been so
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honored and Wren, he claimed, had been knighted more
for his public work than for his scientific eminence. Yet
Wren was knighted in 1673 by Charles II very early in his
architectural career and after his scientific achievements
had been many and renowned. Was not his knighthood at
that time for scientific eminence as well? It is true also
that Sir William Petty was knighted (in 1662); but this
seems to have been based more on his services to the government in Ireland and in the field of economics than in
science. Be that as it may, Sir Isaac Newton was now foremost among scientists by a royal recognition that helped
him politically, for he was a moderate Whig, as well as the
Royal Society of which he was the president.
Prince George expressed his appreciation of his election
to the fellowship by agreeing to defray the cost of publishing Flamsteed's catalogue of the stars. Delays ensued,
the Prince died, and the committee in charge, dominated
by Newton, turned to Halley to bring out the edition.
These were the years of the long and bitter controversy
between Newton and Flamsteed to which reference has
already been made.
One gathers the impression from this affair that Newton
was a rather high-handed, determined old gentleman, an
impression strengthened by the way he carried through
the removal of the Society from Gresham College to new
quarters in Crane Court.
After well over a century of hard use, Sir Thomas
Gresham's old home had become thoroughly dilapidated,
costing the Mercers Company heavily for repairs at a time
when the Company itself was financially embarrassed.
Would it not be wiser to tear down the old buildings, sell
some of the land, and rebuild the College on a more convenient plan? In this way the Society could also continue
to share the buildings with the College and both could
profit from the library, the collections and the opportunities provided by such an educational and scientific center in the City. Parliament had to approve, as this involved
trust funds, but because of Hooke's violent opposition,
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the bill was thrown out in 1701. After Hooke's death, the
bill was reintroduced, incorporating suggestions made by
Wren for the needs of the Society, together with a clause
requiring completion of the rebuilding within five years,
subject to a heavy penalty. This too failed to pass. As there
seemed no further prospect of any immediate rebuilding,
the Council of the Society started, just before Newton's
presidency, to consider the housing problem confronting
them.
Wren's specifications in 1703 for adequate housing of
the Society2 are interesting. The building should be so
situated as to provide easy access "for the coaches of the
members (some of which are of very great quality)" and
should have three storeys and a "good cellar underground
so high above it as to have good lights for the use of an
elaboratory [sic] and housekeeper." On the main floor
would be a fair room with a large closet, next above it the
repository and on the top floor the library, with the roof
covered with lead for observing the heavens. A good staircase was to run from bottom to top and there must be
plenty of space in back of the building to give light to the
back rooms. Ground with a forty foot frontage and a
depth of sixty feet would be adequate. Wren's plan still
remains in the archives of the Society, with the various
dimensions carefully worked out.
The Society had neither the land nor the money available for building. Meanwhile the Mercers Company in
1705 notified the Society that they had resolved not to
grant it any room at all in the College. Accordingly the
Council considered many avenues, unavailingly, until
finally in September, 1710, Newton as president informed
the Fellows of a house in Crane Court about to be sold
that might be suitable as it was "in the middle of town
and out of noise." This information was laid before a
special session called just before the Council meeting.
An anonymous pamphlet of the period, Weld reports,
described the surprise and dismay of the Fellows when
2 Cited in Lyons, 132.
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Newton told them of the proposed move and asked for any
objections to it. Apparently the Council had not kept the
Fellows, as a whole, in touch with its difficulties nor with
the decision of the Mercers Company not to grant them
room any longer. The Fellows protested that they were
comfortable and satisfied where they were and that the
Society had met in the College from the very first. Why
was it necessary to move now? Newton is quoted as replying, "That he had good reasons for their removing, which
he did not think proper to be given there." He was supported by Dr. Hans Sloane, then the secretary, whose management both of the Society's affairs and of its president,
the anonymous writer considered despotic. The Fellows
were not satisfied and asked for a delay until the annual
meeting the end of November, or at least until another
special meeting of the Fellows could be called. Newton
refused to consider this, nor would he allow an expression
of opinion on the matter by the taking of a vote. Whereat
the meeting broke up, leaving Newton, Sloane and two
or three others to handle affairs at the Council.
Crane Court
The Council finally approved the purchase of the Crane
Court property with the little house adjoining it, borrowing the money for the purpose. The cost of the necessary
alterations and repairs also had to be met. For these, a
number of gifts were made by the Fellows, including
~ 190 3 from Newton himself.
On November 8th, 1710, the Society met in its own
house for the first time. Soon thereafter the library and
the collections were installed and the close connection
with Gresham College came to an end. To the prestige
of Sir Isaac Newton's presidency was now added the sta3 The Record, printing the Council's minutes (p. 141) gives this amount.
More (p. 504) says Newton gave ~190; Lyons (p. 142) says ~120; Craig (p. 77)
says ~1lo.
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bility of a permanent home, one which the Society was to
occupy for seventy years, even longer than it had been at
Gresham College. The Society's gain was the College's
loss. For many years the Society's presence and activity in
the Gresham College buildings had been at the service
of the professors as well. The professors who were Fellows
had also by courtesy been excused from the regular fees.
With the removal of the Society to Crane Court all that
was changed, and the College's historian lamented the Society's departure.
Yet Gresham College went on and still exists today. The
original College buildings continued in use, in spite of
their dilapidated condition, until 1768 when by Act of
Parliament the trustees surrendered them to the government in return for a room in the Royal Exchange and
~500 a year. After a couple of other shifts of location, the
trustees in 1843 erected a building for the College in
Gresham Street. In 1913 this too was replaced by the present tall office building. This building still stands, despite
the bombing of the City of London, to startle the sightseer
by the College name on a modern office building-an unexpected reminder of an honorable, century-long record
in an eventful period in the history of ideas. Sir Thomas
Gresham's desire to make available to the citizens of London the learning of the day, was both useful and fruitful
for many years. Nearly three hundred and fifty years since
his death and the opening of his College, the name and
the trust continue, though his original plan, unique at
its outset, has long since been modified. Since 1876, for
example, all lectures have been given in English. In recent years four lectures in each of the seven subjects continue to be given each term with free admission; and
some, it is said, are well attended.
What was the Crane Court house like? Its description
by the anonymous writer, quoted by Weld, forms an interesting comparison with Wren's proposals:
"The approach to it, I confess, is very fair and handsome through
a long court: but then they have no other property in this
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than in the street before it; and in a heavy rain a man can
hardly escape being thoroughly wet before he can pass through
it. The front of the house, towards the garden is about 42 ft.
long; but that towards Crane Court not above 30 foot. Upon
the ground-floor there is a little hall, and a direct passage from
the stairs into the garden about 4 or 5 foot wide; and on each
side of it, a little room about 15 ft. long and 16 ft. broad. The
stairs are easie which carry you to the next floor. Here there
is a room fronting the Court, directly over the hall, and of the
same bigness. And towards the garden is the Meeting-room,
which is 251/2 foot long and 16 foot broad. At the end of this
room there is another (also fronting the garden) 121/2 foot long
and 16 foot broad. The three rooms upon the next floor are of
the same bigness with those I have last described. These are all
that are as yet provided for the reception of the Society; except
you will add the garrets, a platform of lead over them, and the
usual cellars 8cc. below, of which they have more and better at
Gresham College. The garden is but 42 foot long, and 27 broad,
and the coach-house and stables are 40 foot long, and 20 foot
broad."
Here under its own roof, the Society was to stay till
1780 when it moved into the rooms offered it by the government at Somerset House. Here visitors to London came
to see the most remarkable collections of rarities up to
that time available to the curious. Here came Voltaire,
Benjamin Franklin, Maupertuis, Buffon, Reaumur, Montesquieu, lords (but not ladies), high churchmen, ambassadors, writers, divines, doctors, and guests from far and
near. Many, like those named, were proud to accept election to membership in the Society; others were interested
in the people of "very great quality" they saw there as well
as in the discussions, and still others, as will be seen, having come, were bitter because they had not been elected to
membership in what was still more a club of notables than
a scientific association.
Here Newton came regularly to preside over the meetings to the wonder and awe of visitors, even though one
of these visitors was to record that the famous old man
had opened the meeting, then slept peacefully in his chair
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until the end.4 As he grew old and feeble an effort was
made to relieve him of some of the cares of office and Sir
Hans Sloane, in 1720, was made a vice-president. But till
his death in 1727 Newton continued in the presidency,
and is to this day considered the most distinguished of all
who have held that office.
His death and that of Sir Christopher Wren, not long
before, brought to a close the period in which a few men
still knew at first hand about the Society's early days.
Pepys had died long before, in 1686, followed by Boyle in
1691. Hooke had lived on until 1703, growing ever more
irascible, while Evelyn had lived till 1706 and Sprat till
1713. Wren, who had continued active until his death
early in 1723, and Newton were the exceptionally longlived members.
Contemporary Interest in the Society
The passing of these leaders notable in the early life of
the Society, combined with the discussions about the removal from Gresham College, must surely have aroused
considerable interest in the Society's origins. Why else
would there have been a new edition of Sprat's History in
1702 even though Dean Jonathan Swift called it "the best
book in the English language"? Hans Sloane, so he told
Newton's nephew-in-law, had often pressed others to continue it but in vain. "Sprat's first sketch which was intended as a sample and to encourage others to continue it
was written with such perfection that no one durst continue." Among other re-issues, in 1705 there appeared a
collected edition in one volume of Wilkins' mathematical
and "philosophical" works, and also a Miscellanea Curiosa
reprinting papers from the Society in two volumes, with a
third volume following some years later. Then, too, a collected edition of Boyle's works was published early in the
seventeen-twenties.
Definite proof of contemporary interest in the Society
4 Cited by More, op. cit. 457.
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and its activities comes from essays in the Spectator and
the Tatler, even though Addison and Steele wrote in ridicule and disparagement. Would they have written at all,
had not the Society's affairs been subjects of general discussion at the time? In October of 1710, just after the decision in favor of the Crane Court house had been pushed
through, Steele commenting in the Tatler (No. 236) on the
frequent elections in "our" Royal Society remarked:
"They seem to be in a confederacy against men of polite
genius, noble thought and diffusive learning; and choose
into their assemblies such as have no pretense to wisdom,
but want of wit; or to natural knowledge but ignorance
of everything else. I have made observations in this matter so long that when I meet a young fellow that is a
humble admirer of science, but more dull than the rest
of the company, I conclude him to be a F.R.S."
A year later in the Spectator (No. 262) Addison wrote
about the improvement of natural knowledge: "Among
these advantages... it is not the least that it draws men's
minds off from the bitterness of party and furnishes them
with subjects of discourse that may be treated without
warmth or passion. This is said to have been the first design of those gentlemen who set on foot the Royal Society;
and had then a very good effect as it turned many of the
greatest geniuses of that age to the disquisitions of natural
knowledge, who, if they had engaged in politics with the
same parts and applications, might have set their country
in a flame. The air-pump, the barometer, the quadrant,
and like inventions were thrown out to those busy spirits,
as tubs and barrels are to a whale, that he might let the
ship sail on without disturbance, while he diverts himself
with those innocent amusements."
Like Shadwell, Butler and the other writers in the last
decades of the seventeenth century, both essayists again
and again poked fun at the Fellows and ridiculed their
activities. Steele, making use of a Fellow's advocacy of cold
baths, recounted the autobiography of a month old baby
who had been neglected and not fed, and was pining
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away. Then came this F.R.S. who protested the baby was
utterly lost for want of that method and promptly soused
him head and ears into a pail of water, "where I had the
good fortune to be drowned." (Tatler, No. 15.)
Addison, commenting on "one of these whimsical philosophers" who set greater value on collections of spiders
than on a flock of sheep and sold a coat to purchase a
tarantula, went on, "I would not have a scholar unacquainted with these secrets and curiosities of nature (as
the generation of a mite) but certainly the mind of man,
that is capable of so much higher contemplations, should
not be altogether fixed upon such mean and disproportionate objects. Observations of this kind are apt to alienate us too much from the knowledge of the world, and
to make us serious upon trifles, by which they expose
philosophy to the ridicule of the witty, and the contempt
of the ignorant... Studies of this nature should be diversions, relaxations and amusements; not the care, business and concern of life... I have been shown a beetle
valued at 20 crowns, and a toad at a hundred... Whatever looks trivial or obscene in the common notions of
the world, looks grave and philosophical in the eye of a
virtuoso."
Sir Nicholas Gimcrack Again
Whereupon Addison picked up Shadwell's famous character, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, and proceeded to write his
will. To his wife Sir Nicholas according to Addison left
one box of butterflies, one drawer of shells, a female
skeleton and a dried cockatrice. To his daughter Elizabeth, he left his receipt for preserving dead caterpillars,
his preparation of winter May-dew and his embryo pickle;
to his little daughter, three crocodile's eggs, and his humming-bird's nest upon the birth of the first child if she
married with her mother's consent. His oldest son was cut
off with a single cockle-shell, but his second son he made
his sole executor and heir of his "flowers, plants, minerals,
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shells, pebbles, fossils, beetles, butterflies, caterpillars,
grasshoppers and vermin not previously specified," and
also all his "monsters, both wet and dry." (Tatler, No.
216.) Addison had been reading the Fellows' papers as well
as visiting the Society's repository!
In a paper in the Spectator (No. 21), the next year Addison expressed his concern about what he considered the
over-stocking of the three great professions, divinity, law
and physic, and the importance of entering trade. He recounts the maxim, "that when a nation abounds in physicians, it grows thin of people" and speaks of the physicians as a body of men "like the British army in Caesar's
time... Some of them slay in chariots, and some on
foot." Then he refers to the "retainers to physicians, who,
for want of other patients, amuse themselves with the
stifling of cats in an airpump, cutting up dogs alive, or
impaling insects upon the point of a needle for microscopical observations; besides those that are employed in
the gathering of weeds, and the chase of butterflies; not
to mention the cockle-shell merchants and spider catchers."
Addison himself was interested in the microscope and
knew of the observations the Dutch Leeuwenhoek was reporting to the Society and those that others were making
during these years. So he recorded,-Tatler, No. 119,-a
dreamed discourse by a good genius who said: "Your microscopes bring to sight shoals of living creatures in a
spoonful of vinegar.. You have often seen a dog
opened to observe the circulation of the blood, or make
any other useful inquiry; and yet would be tempted to
laugh if I should tell you, that a circle of much greater
philosophers than any of the Royal Society were present
at the cutting up of one of these little animals which we
find in the blue of a plum; that it was tied down alive
before them; and that they observed the palpitations of
the heart, the course of the blood, the working of the
muscles and the convulsions in the several limbs with
great accuracy and improvement." Addison.adds, "I take
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greater pleasure in considering the works of the creation
in their immensity than in their minuteness,"-and his
magnificent hymn (1712) beginning "The spacious firmament on high" was one of the results of this greater
pleasure.
In another issue of the Tatler,-No. 221,-supposed to
have been written by Addison, the widow Gimcrack writes
a letter telling of her husband's becoming a virtuoso and
asking about the disposal of his estate. The first indication or symptom she noted was about fifteen years ago
when he ordered the dismissal of an old weeding-woman
because "there is no such thing in nature as a weed, and
it was his design to let the garden produce what it
pleased." His death from a fever had come after he had
run after an odd-colored butterfly for some five miles. On
his death-bed he had made his will, saying he would follow the Roman custom and release his slaves. "He ordered me to bring him a flea which he had kept for
several months in a chain with a design, as he said, to
give it its manumission. This was done accordingly." Now
his widow offers bargains in a parcel of dried spiders for
a penny-worth and also in cockle-shells, and asks if it is
"best to sell my beetles in a lump, or by retail."
Addison's use of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack is proof of the
vitality of Shadwell's creation many years earlier, just as
Gimcrack's collections reflect the special interest of the
amateurs in natural history. Among these naturalists Hans
Sloane was one of the most conspicuous, as will appear
later.
Gulliver's Travels
Swift, too, joined the writers who ridiculed the Society
and its activities. The very setting of Gulliver's Travels
(1726) mirrored the travellers' accounts popular with the
Society in those years. Each of Gulliver's voyages satirized
some phase of English contemporary life, the third one in
particular, "The Voyage to Laputa," being the one most
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concerned with science. Swift's method has been described
as that of simple imitation with the addition of a flourish
of his own, with nonsense at the end, with the combination of two experiments in one, or with tenuous speculation presented as fact.5 The Grand Academy of projectors
of Lagado, which Swift described in the third Voyage, in
its physical appearance resembles more probably the new
government buildings being erected at this time along
Whitehall than it does the Crane Court house of the
Royal Society, though Swift had visited the Crane Court
rooms soon after the Society had moved there. At the same
time while Swift drew heavily on Boyle's works, published
in complete form the year before, and on the Philosophical
Transactions, yet he called his thinkers "projectors" and
their schemes "projects," not "virtuosi" and "experiments."
His terms were those of the speculative mania of that
time, the promoters of the get-rich-quick schemes who sold
shares to all comers, as the members of the Grand Academy begged for money "from all who go to see them."
The "projects" themselves were based on actual accounts
but presented "text without context."
A man at the Grand Academy sought to extract sunbeams from cucumbers to be placed in vials and released as
needed,-and the studies of Grew, Boyle, Hooke, Hales
and others on plant respiration were brought to the
readers' mind. A blind man mixing colors by feeling and
smelling "much encouraged by the whole fraternity" reflected Dr. Finch's report to Boyle of a blind man in the
Low Countries who could at certain times distinguish
colors by the touch of his fingers, and Boyle's suggestion
that perhaps he could smell the dyes. The Laputan mathematicians and philosophers were contriving new rules
and methods of agriculture and building, and new tools
for all trades and manufactures... "but none of the
projects are yet brought to perfection and in the meantime the whole country lies in waste."
5 S. J. Gould. Gulliver and the moons of Mars. Jour. of the Hist. of Ideas,
VI (January, 1945) 91.
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Swift's denunciation of the government and the leaders
of his day in scientific as well as in political life were not
shots in the dark, for a contemporary of his wrote: "However wild the description of... the manners and various
projects... yet it is a real picture embellished with
much latent wit and humor... It is a satire upon those
astronomers and mathematicians who have so entirely
dedicated their time to the planets, that they have been
careless of their family and country, and have been chiefly
anxious about the economy and welfare of the upper
world." 6 Halley must have writhed, Flamsteed and other
astronomers and mathematicians must have turned in
their graves, but Newton was probably too old to care.
Swift too had not forgotten the Society's collections, and
Gulliver, in the land of the Brobdingnags during his second Voyage, slew four wasps as big as partridges, cut out
their stings which were 1 l/ inches long and as sharp as
needles and carefully preserved them. Upon his return to
England, "I gave three of them to Gresham College and
kept the fourth for myself." Evidently the move to Crane
Court some fifteen years earlier did not prevent Swift's
readers from recognizing the Royal Society in the reference to Gresham College. The interchangeable use of the
names still persisted.
When Newton died and Sir Hans Sloane succeeded him
in the presidency, Sir Hans took office in a Society that
had grown half again as large as it had been twenty-four
years earlier at Newton's coming. The foreign members
had increased from about thirty to around seventy. Instead of an average of nine new members a year, as in the
last decades of the preceding century, an average of fifteen
were joining each year. The Society owned its own home
and, regardless of the critics, it had an assured permanence,
a stability that gave it an opportunity to develop. Under
Sir Hans it did just that, even though certain weaknesses
continued to invite ridicule before they were reformed.
6 Cited in Nicolson, M. and Mohler, N., Scientific background of Swift's
"Voyage to Laputa." Annals of Science II, No. 3 (July 1937), 334.
132




8


TARGETS FOR SATIRE
OR SIXTY-THREE YEARS Hans Sloane (1660 -1753) was connected with the Society in one position
or another. As a councilor and a secretary he had already begun important administrative improvements before Newton had moved to London. He worked closely
with Newton during the latter's presidency, and after the
latter's death was at once in his turn elected president and
continuously re-elected until he resigned in 1741. He remained on the Council, however, until his death twelve
years later.
In his youth Sloane had studied botany in Paris, as well
as medicine at Montpellier. A friend of Boyle and also of
John Ray, the great English naturalist, and a Fellow since
1685, he had made large collections of natural history
specimens in Jamaica where he had gone as physician to
the ducal governor for some fifteen months. Upon his return to London, while rapidly building up his medical
practice, he prepared and published his Catalogue Plantarum (1696) for Jamaica and followed this some years
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
later with volumes on his voyages there, to other islands in
the West Indies and to Madeira. Meanwhile Oxford
granted him his M.D. in 1701. Queen Anne called upon
his professional services. George I created him a baronet
in 1716 and appointed him physician-general to the army
in 1722. George II made him   his own first physician
a few years later. He was also active in the Royal College
of Physicians of which he had been made a fellow in 1687,
serving as its president for sixteen years,-for many of
which he was also president of the Royal Society.
His house in Bloomsbury was a center of hospitality as
well as of books and of specimens, and he had also a manor
in Chelsea which he bought late in Anne's reign. There
he established a botanical garden and to this manor he
retired in 1741. At both his homes, his library and his
collections were freely available to his learned friends
and visitors. Not every one of his contemporaries appreciated these collections, however. Edward Young, the poet
who wrote Night Thoughts, in a collection of satires under the title of Love of Fame, the Universal Passion first
published in the seventeen-twenties, wrote:
But what in oddness can be more sublime
Than Sloane, the foremost toyman of his time?
His nice ambition lies in curious fancies;
His daughter's portion a rich shell inhances,
And Ashmole's baby-house, is in his view,
Britannia's golden mine, a rich Peru!
How his eyes languishl How his thoughts adore
That painted coat, which Joseph never worel
He shows, on holidays, a sacred pin,
That touched the ruff, that touch'd Queen Bess's chin.
"Since that great dearth our chronicles deplore,
Since that great plague that swept as many more,
Was ever year unblest as this?" he'll cry,
"It has not brought us one new butterfly." (IV)
When Sir Hans died, he left his gardens to the Society
of Apothecaries which he had established thirty years earlier, with the proviso that if they were not accepted, they
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TARGETS FOR SATIRE
were to go to the Royal College of Physicians and to the
Royal Society jointly. His magnificent collections he left
to the nation, if the government would pay his family
~20,000, a fraction of their value. These included 40,000
books and some 3500 manuscripts as well as nearly 8,00ooo
specimens of all kinds. (No wonder Young had called him
"the foremost toyman of his time.") With the acceptance
of these collections in 1754 and their removal to Montague House by the trustees for the government, to be
combined with the Cotton Library and the Harleian
MSS., the foundations of the British Museum were laid.
For that first group of trustees, the government appointed
the president of the Royal Society ex officio and nine of
the members of the Council. And the president of the
Society by virtue of his office has ever since continued to
serve as a trustee for the Museum.
Dr. Sloane as Secretary
Dr. Sloane was secretary of the Royal Society from 1693
to 1712. With the aid of his fellow secretary, Richard Waller, a zoologist, he proceeded to bring order into the administration of the affairs of the Society, still in a
precarious state. He insisted that the Philosophical Transactions, suspended between 1687 and 1691, be published
regularly and he himself served as their editor for sixteen
years. One result of the interruption in their publication
for three years was that their circulation outside Britain
had been seriously curtailed. The wars of these twenty
years between England and France were a further interference with normal communication.
In spite of the wars, not only did Sloane revive Oldenburg's custom of inviting foreign correspondence, but he
also took pains to send copies, and even sets, of the Transactions abroad, especially to his friends in France. He
helped the librarian of the Bibliotheque Royale fill in the
missing volumes in the set there, besides sending many
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
other English books of scientific interest to that library.
In the midst of the war, he was elected in 1709 to foreign
membership in the Academie des Sciences, and in his turn
recommended Frenchmen to membership in the Royal
Society. After the war had ended, at least temporarily,
there were some twenty of these French Fellows whose
candidacies Sloane sponsored,-most of them while he was
president,-among them Maupertuis and Reaumur, Buffon
and Montesquieu.
As secretary, Sloane succeeded so well in restoring the
financial well-being of the Society that by 1697 it was able
to increase its investments. He was not satisfied, however,
and pushed the Council into a long series of meetings to
plan ways to improve matters further. Not till after he
was himself president did he succeed in enforcing by legal
process the obligation to pay the fees required of every
candidate by bond after 1674, and too often disregarded.
In the interim, the Society was often so handicapped financially that it did not have the money to pay the honoraria
of its officers but would sometimes make gifts to them instead, as a remission of fees, or a number of copies of a
book it had published. Waller and Sloane, both well to
do, served without pay.
The Presidency of Sir Hans Sloane
During the fourteen years of Sloane's presidency three
important innovations were made. Foreign members were
exempted from paying subscriptions on the ground that
their position was wholly honorary. Candidates required
nomination by no less than three supporters over their
own signatures. Fellows not meeting their financial obligations to the Society were to be sued if necessary. As
a result of this third innovation, the treasury filled up
rapidly as arrears in dues were paid.
In 1732 the Council was able to purchase for ~1600
lands in Acton on the outskirts of the London of that day.
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TARGETS FOR SATIRE
One hundred and fifty years later when the Society's activities had outgrown its ordinary receipts and finances for
administration were again a problem, these lands, needed
for building purposes, were sold for more than ~32,000.
The income from this capital helped the Society over a
difficult time in the eighteen-seventies. Imagine Sir Hans
Sloane's astonishment could he have seen this outcome of
the purchase made during his administration!
The various reforms of course strengthened the framework of the Society and helped to attract supporters. The
membership rolls rose rapidly; in 1740 at the close of
Sloane's presidency, the Fellows numbered 301. But still
the non-scientific members outnumbered the scientific
ones by two to one.
During these years of Newton's and Sloane's rule, the
mathematicians and astronomers as well as the doctors and
the naturalists among the Fellows continued their scientific work. Halley succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer
Royal, to be followed after his death by James Bradley
who had discovered the aberration of light. Stephen Hales
was not only interested in Newtonian physics but also in
animal and vegetable physiology, and then in the application of science to hygiene, ventilation and the purification
of water and the preservation of foods. The long voyages
of those days needed just such help to which Dr. James
Lind also contributed in 1753 by his treatise on scurvy.
Some among the physicians and surgeons-the largest
group among the scientist Fellows even as late as 1860 -including Sir Hans Sloane were greatly interested during
this period in the use of inoculation for the control of
smallpox. The practice had become fashionable through
the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, with the aid
of the court, after her return from Turkey where she had
seen it used. A number of papers in favor of inoculation
were published in the Philosophical Transactions and two
large folio volumes of manuscripts on the statistics of the
subject still remain in the Society's Library, as both Weld
and Lyons report.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


Studies of the weather-meteorology-had concerned the
Fellows from the earliest days. Now it was proposed that
the Society should help competent observers by furnishing
them with the improved instruments available, such as
thermometers, barometers, pendulum watches, and so
forth. For Newton had invented the reflecting telescope
by using a concave mirror for the convex lens of the refracting instrument. Dollond's discovery of the achromatic
lens in 1758 was a long step forward towards its later perfecting. Fahrenheit had adopted the melting point of ice
and the boiling point of water as fixed points of a scale for
measuring temperatures and the values of 32~F. and
212~F. were respectively assigned, making thermometers
at last useful instruments.
After Newton's death, however, under Sir Hans Sloane
and his successors in office, many of the papers and studies
presented to the Society tended to become more or less
academic and some were downright trivial. Sloane himself has recently been characterized as both a snob and a
dilettante.' Still, useful work went on and increasingly
the government was turning to the Society for advice in
connection with perplexing scientific matters. Parliament
in 1714 had offered a reward to anyone who would devise
a satisfactory method of obtaining an accurate determination of longitude at sea-a problem troubling the Fellows
from their earliest days, as "The Ballad of Gresham College" reflects,-and had established a Board of Longitude
with the Society's president as one of the Commissioners.
During the next decades much work was done on the
question; even Sir Christopher Wren in his old age worked
at it.2 The series of chronometers devised by John Harrison finally solved the problem, winning for him the
Copley Medal from the Society in 1749, and on recommendation from the Council a number of grants from the
government totaling ~15,000.
1 By C. E. Raven. John Ray, Naturalist (Cambridge, 1942), 336.
2 Parentalia, 247, 346.




TARGETS FOR SATIRE


The Copley Medal
The establishment of the Copley Medal, incidentally,
belongs to this period also. This, the highest distinction
that the Royal Society has to bestow, originated in a legacy
received in 1709. At first the interest from the one hundred pounds was used for experiments presented before
the Society by its curator. Then in 1736 the suggestion
was made that, instead, "a medal or other honorary prize
should be bestowed on the person whose experiment
should be best approved, by which means... a laudable
emulation might be excited among men of genius to try
their invention, who, in all probability, may never be
moved for the sake of lucre." The awards were to be made
by the two trustees of Sir Godfrey Copley's will, one of
whom was Sir Hans Sloane. After Sloane's death in 1753,
the nomination was made by the president and the Council. At that time also, the restriction was removed that
limited the award to those of British nationality.
Since 1831 the Copley Medal has been awarded to the
"living author of such philosophical research, either published or communicated to the Society, as may appear to
the Council to Le deserving of that honor." An additional
gift from the Copley family in 1881 provided for a bonus
to accompany the Medal, a gift now amounting to ~35.
With few exceptions since the seventeen-thirties, the Copley Medal has been awarded annually. The roll of the two
hundred and more recipients of this Medal as the Record
presents it is a proud one, ranging from men like Hales,
Benjamin Franklin, Priestley, Cook, Herschel, Hunter,
and Volta in the eighteenth century to Pavlov, Einstein,
Sir William Bragg and Niels Bohr in the twentieth.
In the eighteenth century, however, by no means all the
Fellows were concerned with science. Indeed, after Sloane's
death, the men of science among the officers of the Society
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
dwindled. In ten different years there was none at all.3
Antiquarians, historians, librarians, there were aplenty.
The Society of Antiquarians had been formed in 1717 and
was incorporated in 1751. Many of its members were Fellows also and held office in the Society. Three of the six
presidents in the thirty-year period between Sloane and
Banks are listed as antiquarians in the Record. To one
antiquary, the Reverend Thomas Birch, who was a secretary of the Society for thirteen years, scholars today are
deeply indebted. He it was who transcribed and published
the minutes of the Society from its first days through
December, 1687.
Other Fellows were writers in various fields, or leaders
in public affairs, but not men of science; for the Society
had regained the prestige and the social prominence that
led many to hope for election to membership because of
the distinction F.R.S. after their names would give them.
John Hill versus the Society
Among these would-be candidates was John Hill, a man
who failed to be elected, but who rendered the Society a
signal service by causing it to revise its publications in
answer to his ridicule of them. Hill ran a shop in London
as an apothecary; but he also had a flowing pen, publishing some seventy-odd poems, operas, plays and novels,
scientific and pseudo-scientific papers. His translation of
Theophrastus' On Gems won him public recognition and
he hoped with that and the two papers of his published
in the Philosophical Transactions to win election. At the
same time, however, in his newspaper writing he was poking endless fun at the antiquarians, calling them "medalscrapers" and "antediluvian knife-scrapers," while the scientific collectors he termed "cockleshell merchants," and
the naturalists "recorders of histories of stickle-backs and
3 Lyons, 163.
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TARGETS FOR SATIRE


cockchafers." These jests proved expensive for no three
Fellows would sign Hill's nomination for membership in
the Society.4 So he took his revenge.
His most effective production was A Review of the
Works of the Royal Society of London: containing animadversions on such of the Papers as deserve Particular
Observation (1751). This he dedicated to the president of
the Society, with bitter sarcasm, holding him directly responsible for the charges he made. In the preface, Hill
stated that he had been criticized for assuming to know
more than the Society and added "surely a man may do
that, and yet be very ignorant." He hoped that his work
would be of use in establishing truth, in contrast to what
the Society-"the Grand Champion of Errors"-had published, and "that the Society may by means of it become
ashamed of what it has been and that the World may
know he is not a member of it, till it is an Honour to a
man to become so." As a final thrust he concluded his preface with Steele's paragraph from the Tatler already
quoted (p. 127).
He selected and edited "the more trivial and downright
foolish articles" which appeared in the Transactions from
the first issue on through the contemporary ones, and "underlined in his own words their absurdities." He divided
his papers under the headings of arts, antiquities, medicine, miracles, zoophytes, animals, vegetables, and minerals. "A Way to kill Rattlesnakes" was compared with a
way to kill fleas. There were papers on a merman (based
on a contribution from Cotton Mather), on the unicorn's
horn, on the transmutation of water into maggots, and
"incontestable proofs of a strange and surprising Fact,
namely, that Fish will live in Water." The lack of discrimination on the part of the editor of the Transactions
was his major target, one which he made painfully clear.
At the same time, he showed his own common sense and
his own fund of knowledge as he scored the obvious and
4 D'Israeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, ed. by his son (London,
n.d.) II, 364-5.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
the incomplete observations, the obscure terms and the
faulty logic of the arguments.
Two of the shorter papers from the Review illustrate
these comments. One, from Part III "on Medical Cases
described in the Transactions" is the fifth chapter:
A miraculous Cure for Fresh Wounds
This is a Remedy taken from the Vegetable World; it is published in the hundred and seventeenth Number of the Philosophical Transactions, and the World is obliged to that ever
memorable Knight Sir George Mackenzie for it. It was discovered to him in the Way of most of the old Physick of the
World, according to some Authors, that is, by the Brutes. The
Plant is the Lancashire Asphodell, the Asphodelus Lancastriae
Verus of Johnson, as Sir George says, tho' he tells us it grows in
Forests, and Johnson makes it an inhabitant only of rotten
Morasses; this however is of small Consequence, be the Plant
what it will, or grow where it will, its Effects are sufficiently
ascertained, and these are all a Royal Society need take any care
about. He says, it is so miraculous a Vulnerary, that but to touch
it, is to be healed; and for Conviction, assures us, that the Deer,
when wounded, only run to this Plant, and lie down upon it, in
order to cure themselves. Sir George, not above learning from
the Brute Creation, made a salve with the Herb with Butter
and Wax, which he tells had no Fault, but that it healed a
Wound too quickly. Ought not one to suspect from this, that
Sir George was a Surgeon?
We are vastly apt to suspect two Things, in regard to this
Miraculous Matter; the one is, that Sir George, or somebody
for him, stole this Account of its Virtues on the Deer, from the
old Story of the Goats of Mount Ida, curing themselves of their
Wounds by the Dittany that grows there; the other, that if ever
the Ointment mentioned was made, the Wax and Butter had
more Effect in the Cure than the Asphodell.
The other paper is the second chapter of Part VI, Book
IV "of Animals":
Of the Manner in which Reptiles
change or cast their Skins.
It seems impossible to be of the Name of Baker, and not to be
a Philosopher: The Author of this curious Dissertation is a Son
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TARGETS FOR SATIRE
of the Gentleman of that Name, so often and so justly celebrated
in this Work. It stands in the four hundred and eighty-third
Number of the Philosophical Transactions.
This young Gentleman, after taking up somewhat too much
Paper in telling us, that the Water-Newt changes or casts its
Skin as Serpents do, and communicating some other Observations of equal Consequence, observes, that the Reason of his
troubling the Royal Society with this Relation is, that tho' it
has been long known, that the Serpent Kind cast their Skins,
yet we are ignorant of the Manner of their doing it, because
they do it in their Holes; but that by knowing how this of the
Newt is done, we may form a reasonable Guess at the Way in
which the others perform it.
He tells us, that the Newt gets its Skin off by loosening with
its fore Feet the Skin about the Jaws, and getting first one Leg
and then the other of this Pair out, after which the rest is easy:
And who will doubt, but that this must convey a very distinct
Idea of the Manner in which Serpents do it, which have no Feet
at all.
The Youth of this little Philosopher pleads against our saying
any more: We are not censuring him for writing, but the President of the Royal Society for countenancing such Matters.
Such satire was not new. A certain Dr. King, with a
degree in civil law, a friend of Swift's, had with a rare
sense of humor taken many a shot at the Transactions before, and also at Sloane's not impeccable English in some
of those papers. (Sloane as secretary acted as editor of the
Philosophical Transactions from 1695 to 1713.) Sloane, for
instance, had given an account of a "child born without
a brain." "Had it lived long enough," remarked King, "it
would have made an excellent publisher of Philosophical
Transactions!" 5
Hill's method was, by combining a humor like King's
with a knowledge like Stubbs', to make the reader aware
that the papers burlesqued had not the slightest scientific
value, or else added nothing to previously known observations or theory. And D'Israeli has long since pointed
out that there was no inconsiderable knowledge on Hill's
5 D'Israeli, op. cit. II 358-360 and note, 363.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
part interspersed with the ridicule. What Hill accomplished may be inferred by the fact that in 1751-2 the
Council took the editing of the Philosophical Transactions
out of the hands of the secretary, Dr. Cromwell Mortimer,
who had been in charge since 1730, and placed the responsibility for it in the hands of a committee. D'Israeli's
comment was that Hill did more for the improvement of
the Philosophical Transactions than did any other contemporary.
That Hill's barbs struck home and that the Society
winced under his attacks seems clear from the Advertisement which still precedes each volume of the Philosophical
Transactions almost two hundred years later. In it the
Society states that until the 47th volume, the printing of
the Transactions had been "the single act of the respective
secretaries." The Society as a body had not concerned
itself further except by occasionally recommending their
revival when they had been intermitted. This was done,
the Advertisement states, principally to satisfy the public
that the usual meetings were continuing. With the growth
of the Society "lately" and the increase in the number of
communications, a committee had been set up March 26,
1752, to read and select the papers for publication, but
they were not answerable "for the certainty of the facts"
nor for "the propriety of the reasonings." It was an established rule of the Society never to give opinions as a
body upon any subject either of Nature or Art. Therefore the thanks proposed from the chair for a speech or a
book was merely a matter of civility. This held true also
for any projects, inventions and curiosities exhibited, even
though their demonstrators might report that they had
met with "highest applause and approbation." "It is hoped
that no regard will hereafter be paid to such reports and
public notices; which in some instances have been too
lightly credited, to the dishonour of the Society." Thus
the Society answered Hill.
Hill's egotism survived undiminished all the quarrels
and antagonisms he provoked-and they were many-but
144




PLATE 12. The Honorable Robert Boyle
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal
Society)




PLATE 13. A Drawing of the iron-bound Treasurer's Chest with its three locks
presented to the Royal Society in 1663
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 194o, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




TARGETS FOR SATIRE
it is hard to understand today how a man such as he,
after his affronts to the Society and to Sloane, should have
publicly advertised himself in his newspaper articles as
"the properest person" to be placed in charge of the Sloane
collections when the government took them over two or
three years later.
"That foreigners will resort to this collection is certain, for
it is the most considerable in the world; and that our own
people will often visit it is as sure, because it may be made the
means of much useful as well as curious knowledge. One and
the other will expect a person in that office who has sufficient
knowledge: he must be able to give an account of every article,
freely and fluently, not only in his own, but in the Latin and
French languages.
"This the world... sees is not a place that any one can
execute: it requires knowledge in a peculiar and uncommon
kind of study-knowledge which very few possess; and in which... the bitterest of my enemies (and I have thousands, although neither myself nor they know why) will not say I am
deficient...
"What are my own abilities it very ill becomes me thus to
boast; but did they not qualify me for the trust... I would
not ask it. As to those of any other, unless a man be conjured
from the dead, I shall not fear to say there is not any one whoever that is able so much as to call the parts of the collection by
their names...
"Many excel... in other studies; it is my chance to have
bestowed the labour of my life on this: those labours may be
of some use to others..." 6
Suffice it to say, Hill did not receive the appointment.
Through the influence of Lord Bute he did become connected with the Royal Gardens at Kew. His main achievement, the publication of which ruined him financially,
was twenty-six folio volumes on his Vegetable System,
containing 1600 plates illustrating 26,ooo different plants.
By his genuine ability in this field he helped to spread a
more general interest in botany.
6 Cited by D'Israeli, op. cit. II, 373-374 note.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
As far as the Royal Society was concerned, though his
scientific work was done without the F.R.S., Hill's service
to the Society was important. By his critical satires he had
brought to light a serious weakness in the Society's main
activity, the futility of many of the papers presented to it
and accepted for publication. Reform in the selection of
the papers to be printed carried with it improvement in
the quality of the papers presented before the Society. A
threatened subsidence into complete triviality and puerility in the Society's major work was finally checked. Again
the Society had weathered a dangerous period in its
history.
Thereafter, also, the Philosophical Transactions was the
better able to serve scientists by giving their researches
widespread publicity through its pages. Little if anything
of major importance in the scientific world during these
centuries has failed to be recorded therein, a service so
valuable that late in the nineteenth century it was claimed
that were all scientific literature destroyed except the Transactions, science would not have suffered an irreparable loss.
For in the Transactions would be preserved all work of
importance. Whether or not this claim was valid, its assertion highlights the outstanding usefulness of the Transactions to science.


146




9


CONTACTS OVERSEAS*
A       BREAK in the strictly chronological sequence of
events seems appropriate at this point to present
two aspects of the Society's affairs. One is a consideration of the Society's changing procedures in connection with its selection of members, the other, a swift survey of its selection of Americans as Fellows through the
years.
If the Royal Society was to become a scientific association, the change would have to come through the election
of properly qualified members. The eighteenth century
provided the procedures necessary, after earlier experience
had made clear the disadvantages of non-selective admissions; but the application of these procedures depended
upon the Council. Not until scientists were in the majority
on that powerful group of twenty-one men, could the procedures be successfully applied. As that did not happen
* See Bibliography and Sources, Chapter 9. Attention should be called to
the valuable article on colonial Fellows published after this chapter was
completed. Denny, M. The Royal Society and American scholars. Scientific
Monthly, vol. 65, no. 5 (November 1947) 415-427.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
until the nineteenth century, the Society continued to be
mainly an association of science-lovers, of amateurs, with
a growing resemblance to a fashionable men's club.
Linked inextricably with this problem of a qualified
membership was the one of finances, for it must always
be remembered that the Society through these years received no subsidy from the government and later received
only its housing rent-free. It was solely dependent upon
membership fees, gifts and legacies. Gifts and legacies were
slow in coming in and membership fees were too often in
arrears. The Society's financial situation was a continual
concern to its Council until the late nineteenth century.
Procedures of election to membership had therefore a
twofold importance.
Election Procedures
The original plan (1663) provided that a candidate
could be proposed at one meeting of the Society, and be
balloted for at a subsequent meeting if a quorum were
present. He then became a Fellow upon signing the obligation to support the work by his presence and by the
payment of the weekly shilling. This was to be done
within four weeks after his election when the candidate,
after paying his admission fee of forty shillings, was received formally into the Society by the president.
The following year the Council added a provision that
anyone living in foreign parts, after having been duly
elected, should be registered among the Fellows without
having to make these payments and without going through
the usual appearance in person to be formally accepted.
Certification of his election under the Society's seal would
be sent him. These statutes were then extended to cover
colonials as well as foreign members, making it unnecessary for any of them, while residing abroad, to pay the
weekly fees. Ten years later the Council provided further
that Fellows absent from England for more than three
months were released from similar payments until they
148




CONTACTS OVERSEAS
had returned home. These measures proved too lax and
the finances of the Society suffered severely.
The first important corrections of the situation were
made during the presidency of Sir Christopher Wren in
the critical period. Some years before, in August, 1674, as
the Society was slowing down after the excitement of its
first decade, the Council had set as its policy: "To make
the Society prosper, good experiments must be in the first
place provided, to make the weekly meetings considerable,
and that the expenses for making these experiments must
be secured by legal subscriptions for paying the contributions; which being done, the Council might then with
confidence proceed to the ejection of useless members."
With Sir Christopher's firm guidance, the Council now
required that hereafter it must first pass upon the name of
a proposed candidate. Only if the Council thought that
the candidate might be useful to the Society, would his
name be presented at the next meeting and be balloted
on according to the statutes. Also, the candidate was to
sign a bond, an obligation, for the payment of the dues.
Other modifications were made later; but these two have
remained unchanged,-the Council's control over nominations and the candidate's obligation to pay (though now
for more than a hundred years he has not had to sign a
note).
This control by the Council over nominations to membership was fundamental; for by it the Council could determine the character of the Society as well as its size.
How important this power was-and is-will be made still
more apparent when the reforms of the nineteenth century are considered later. Meantime, until 1753 when all
these remissions of fees were cancelled, English residents
abroad as well as foreigners and colonials, continued to
be exempt from the formal subscription, the ceremonial
admission and the payments of the weekly shillings. (Later,
an alternative payment of ~21 was permitted.) Colonials
at no time could vote, however, until they had come to
London and been formally admitted.
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When Cotton Mather wrote from Boston in 1712 that
he was sending a small collection of curiosities from America to the Society and would be glad to write annually on
appropriate subjects, he added that he would welcome
election to membership, agreeing in advance to support
the purposes of the Society. The next year, Waller the
secretary proposed his name, the Council approved, and
according to Waller's letter to Mather, the Society admitted him; but it left his name as a non-voter out of the
printed lists prepared for the use of the Fellows resident
in England and participating in the annual elections.
Existing minutes of the Society do not record that election, and when Mather's associates in America questioned
his use of the F.R.S., not finding his name on the printed
lists, one of them wrote to the Society desiring a certificate
whether or no Mather was truly a Fellow. Finding no
record of a vote having been taken, in 1723 the Society
formally elected him, though today the Society lists Cotton
Mather as elected a Fellow in July, 1713.
Under Sloane's presidency a few years later, because
of Mather's difficulties, fellowship for the non-residents
was defined as beginning when the election had been
registered in the journal-book. They would be non-voters
until they had qualified by appearing personally at the
Society when they first came to London thereafter. Fifty
years after the Council under Wren had set up the first controls, under Sloane's guidance another step was taken.
After 1730 every candidate must be proposed by three or
more members in written statements over their own signatures. (Nowadays at least six such endorsements are required.) These statements or certificates, to be filed with
the secretary, were to give the candidates' occupations,
their chief qualifications, their inventions, discoveries,
works or writings, as well as their names and addresses.
If the Council approved them, these papers were then to
be posted for ten or more meetings of the Society before
the ballot would be taken. The only exceptions were for
those of royal blood, peers, the sons of peers, privy coun150




CONTACTS OVERSEAS
cilors and foreign princes or ambassadors; these could be
proposed by any individual and elected on the same day.
Rather amusingly, the Council soon had to rule that the
signers of these certificates should have personal knowledge of their nominees!
Had the Council then carefully considered and controlled these certificates of nomination, the Royal Society
might indeed have become a scientific body a hundred
years before that was actually accomplished. Since the
Council failed to do this, the non-scientists continued to
out-number the scientists by about two to one and the
antiquarians, historians, and "gentlemen" of wealth and
title continued in control.
Colonial American Fellows
Such were the procedures by which colonial Americans
as well as foreigners were welcomed into the Society. Colonial Americans, it should be remembered, were those
who were making their homes in the British colonies overseas, though many of them might have relatives or business
in the British Isles that would bring them back for visits
of varying lengths. These colonials are to be differentiated
from the Britishers who went out to the colonies on government business or as visitors, returning afterwards to
England to live. Until the Revolution released the colonials from their allegiance to the Crown, they were in a
kind of special category of membership in the Royal Society, as they were obviously not foreigners nor were they
voting members until they had come to London and been
formally admitted in person.
From the formation of the Society until the American
Revolution was over, there were some twenty notable
colonial Fellows. Like most of their British associates, they
were important men of affairs or of the learned professions,-doctors, clergymen, lawyers,-for whom  scientific
pursuits were a side interest rather than a main activity.
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Only two or three of them were professors of "natural
philosophy" or of mathematics. But they were all interested in the natural world about them; they enjoyed reading, observing, experimenting, collecting as they had time
and opportunity. Naturally, like Cotton Mather, they
wanted to keep in touch with people of similar interests
through the Society as a kind of clearing-house for contemporary scientific news. Cotton Mather's case also illustrates the probable distinction that election to membership
in the London organization might confer in the colonies.
In general, however, only those colonials who came to
London themselves or who had powerful friends there to
make known among the Fellows their publications and
their scientific interests would be likely to attract attention. So it is not strange that in the course of the years till
1788 there were only about a score of these colonial
Fellows.
A glance through the list of names illustrates these comments, though it is not always clear whether a man was
elected as a colonial temporarily in London or as a Briton
with experience in the colonies who has returned to England as a permanent resident. Governor John Winthrop
of Connecticut, as has been pointed out earlier, joined the
Society in its infancy, becoming an Original Fellow. He
kept up active correspondence with it until his death in
1676. The next to be elected was William Penn, under
Wren's presidency in 1681. He presented the Society with
a map of "Pennsilvania" on that occasion. William Byrd of
Virginia was elected next, in 1696 after he had been a
guest at various meetings. He was able to attend the meetings frequently during the next few years and was twice
elected to membership on the Council. Upon his return
to Virginia until his death in 1744 he sent back letters and
curiosities from that colony.
The fourth of these American colonials and the first Fellow to have been born in the colonies was Cotton Mather,
whose unrecorded election in 1713 caused such difficulties
ten years later. Just before his election, the Society had
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CONTACTS OVERSEAS
had read to it by the secretary some of Mather's communications "concerning some Plants, Observations on the Rattle-Snake, and of Rain-bows, with a Confirmation of what
had formerly been communicated to the Society concerning the Changing of the Direction of a Magnetical Needle
to the contrary Poles by a Storm of Thunder at Sea."
From these the Fellows judged him "a very inquisitive
and proper Person" with whom to have a correspondence.
Among the Britishers elected in part because of their
experiences in the colonies were William Burnet, later
governor of New York and New Jersey, and then of Massachusetts, and Francis Nicolson, lately governor of Maryland and of Virginia and soon to be governor of Nova
Scotia and then of South Carolina. Both were elected
in 1706. But these men were not colonials like Byrd and
Mather; nor were the Fellows from the West Indies like
Dr. Thomas Hoy of Jamaica and Colonel Walter Douglas,
governor of the Leeward Islands. Their membership, however, and that of others from the British possessions in the
New World, widened the contacts of the Society and channeled a diverse series of communications and curiosities
into the Crane Court house.
Among the colonials, William Brattle, a clergyman of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, apparently declined the honor
of his election in 1713/14 as he held himself unqualified.
(The Fellows had hoped through his election to secure
the scientific papers of his brother Thomas, who had recently died and who had been one of their correspondents!) But John Leverett, president of Harvard College,
and Elihu Yale, Boston-born philanthropist for whom Yale
College was named, both accepted their elections. Three
other Massachusetts science-lovers, Paul Dudley, naturalist
and lawyer, Dr. Thomas Robie, a Harvard tutor, and Dr.
Zabdiel Boylston, the famous physician, were elected before Newton's death. Mr. Dudley; as a naturalist, for
twenty years sent to the Royal Society communications on
scientific matters concerning New England. Dr. Boylston
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
was elected while in England "to study the new method
for cutting the Stone."
In the seventeen-thirties John Winthrop, grandson of
the Original Fellow, having been a guest at the meetings
and having made various gifts with promises of Tnore, was
deemed "a proper person" for election for he was "well
skilled in Natural knowledge, and particularly in Chemistry." Soon thereafter he presented to the Society a collection of 364 items from New England, which was the
largest single gift received up to that time. In recognition
of it, the Society returned his bond and exempted him
from all fees.
James Oglethorpe, founder of Savannah, Georgia, and
chief supporter of Georgia in its early years, like Dr. John
Mitchell of Virginia, was not elected to membership until
after he had become a London resident. Oglethorpe was
described as "well versed in Natural History, Mathematicks, and all branches of Polite Literature," while Dr.
Mitchell had sent from Virginia "a very curious dissertation concerning the Colour of the skin in Negroes" and
from his study of "Natural History, especially Botany,"
had become "very well acquainted with the Vegetable
production of North America." Two others elected Fellows
with similar scientific knowledge and colonial experience,
were Henry Ellis, hydrographer and for three years governor of Georgia, and Francis Fauquier, lieutenant-governor of Virginia but actually its head for a decade or so.
Fauquier was stated to be "a gentleman of great merit,
well versed in Philosophical and Mathematical inquiries,
and a great promoter of usefull Learning." Yet again these
men were not American colonials like Dr. Boylston and
Cotton Mather, even though their qualifications for membership as stated in the certificates by their sponsors often
referred to their American experiences.
Robert Morris of New York, later governor of Pennsylvania, was a true colonial, however, and his presence in
London in the early fifties led to his election then and to
his formal admittance when he returned there some years
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CONTACTS OVERSEAS
later. He was chosen, it appears, as "a Gentleman studious
of promoting Natural and Experimental Knowledge and
of Communicating to this Society any curious or useful
Observations that may arise within the said Province." A
notable Philadelphian also elected was Dr. John Morgan,
founder of the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, medical director of the Continental Army, professor of medicine in the College of Philadelphia, and a
"zealous Inquirer into Anatomical and Physiological Subjects." Though he sent his fees in full, apparently he never
presented himself in person for the formal admission. Another physician, Dr. John Tennent of Virginia and New
York, was in London in 1765 and therefore able to be
formally admitted after his election that year. He had long
been in correspondence with Sir Hans Sloane and other
Fellows about medical botany.
Benjamin Franklin, elected in 1756, is the most famous
of all these colonials. As more will be said about him later,
only the fact of his election is noted here.
Nominated by Franklin and four others, and with his
bond signed for him and his fees paid by Franklin, John
Winthrop, professor of mathematics and "natural philosophy" at Harvard College, became a Fellow in 1767.
Franklin did a similar service about the same time for Dr.
Arthur Lee of Virginia,-a gentleman esteemed "for his
Learning, Ingenuity and Knowledge in Natural Philosophy." But Dr. Lee was a lawyer and a publicist as well
as a physician. With the establishment of American independence, he considered himself released from his obligations to the Royal Society-he had previously signed his
own bond and Franklin's had been returned-and refused
to heed the reminders sent him about his arrears in dues.
Consequently in 1788 the Council accepted this as a resignation and canceled his membership.
Two loyalists who were elected during this period were
Dr. Alexander Garden, the eminent naturalist of "Charles
Town," South Carolina, and Peter Livius of New Hampshire, later chief justice of Canada. His gift of the horns
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
of an American elk seems to have paved the way for
Livius' election, although he too was "well versed in various branches of Science." Another American who came to
England to stay just before the Revolution and became
a Fellow in 1779, was Benjamin Thompson, better known
as Count Rumford, the physicist and inventor. Seventeen
years later he bestowed on the Society the Rumford Fund,
the income from which was to provide the Rumford
Medal for "the author of the most important discovery or
useful improvement made public in any way during the
two previous years on heat or on light, as would tend
most to promote the good of mankind."
With the election to the list of foreign members in 1788
of James Bowdoin of Boston, governor of Massachusetts
in 1785, one of the founders of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in Boston and its first president, the
Royal Society recognized American independence. Thereafter Americans were not colonials; they were foreigners.
Hindrances to Americans as Fellows
During this colonial period the Royal Society had welcomed into its fellowship leaders in American political
and intellectual life, men most of whom were not primarily scientists but important men of affairs. The Society
also had welcomed Londoners who had made names for
themselves in the colonies through government service
and whose recreation had been the promotion of natural
knowledge. Through them and through the friends and
relatives of these and other science-lovers, the Society had
kept in close touch with the lands overseas from the days
of the first Winthrop to the coming of the young Benjamin Thompson. The award of the Copley Medal to Franklin in 1753 was an ungrudging recognition of superior
achievement by a colonial overseas.
These colonials in their turn welcomed contact with the
Society. They offered to conduct regular correspondence,
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CONTACTS OVERSEAS
they sent specimens and they asked for election to membership. They tested their own studies and observations
by the criticisms and experiments of their fellow sciencelovers in London. And they followed their example by
establishing their own American Philosophical Society
and Academies of Arts and Sciences. Throughout the
colonial period of American history, the Royal Society
was in fairly close touch with American scientific work.
But after the Revolution Americans became foreigners
and American scientific pursuits, with few exceptions,
developed more or less independently of the Society's interests, for the next half century or more.
The severance of the political tie was not the sole cause
of this separation. The Society itself continued to suffer
because of the non-scientific character of the majority of
its members. In spite of the steps taken to make possible
a more seriously scientific organization by requiring the
Council's approval of nominees before their names could
be balloted on, and the support of these nominations by
a written statement of their qualifications, the Society remained an association of notables interested in science,for the most part amateurs and patrons of science. Actually, as Lyons has pointed out, between 1740 and 1820,
in ten different years not a single scientist was an officer of
this supposedly scientific body, and in thirty-nine other
years there was only one scientist among its officers.
The dominance of Sir Joseph Banks, president of the
Society for more than forty years until his death in 182o,
made increasingly difficult any check upon its weakness and
stagnation during the early nineteenth century. When the
reformers finally succeeded in bringing about the necessary
changes, more years had to pass before these changes went
into full effect. The story of these struggles will be told in
later chapters. They are mentioned here, for they also serve
to account for the curiously limited number of American
Fellows elected during the first seventy-five years of the
nineteenth century.
Americans were now foreigners, of course, and the So157




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
ciety attacked one aspect of its membership problems after
Sir Joseph's death by deciding to restrict the number of foreign members. There had been as many as 161 of them in
the seventeen-sixties. Sixty years later they were down to
forty, and the Council held fifty to be an adequate number.
That, too, helps to account for the shrinkage in the number
of Americans in the list. But why should there have been
only three elected between 1800 and 1861?
American Members on the Foreign List
It will be remembered that James Bowdoin in 1788 was
the first American elected to foreign membership after
the Revolution had ended. His election was followed seven
years later by that of David Rittenhouse, Philadelphia's
leading instrument-maker and astronomer.
Then in 1818 came that of Captain Bowditch, mathematician and astronomer whose New American Practical
Navigator became the seaman's guide. Sir Joseph Banks,
himself an old sailor and explorer, must have taken particular interest in his election.
After that there is a long gap in which three men with
American connections, to be sure, are elected but not on
the foreign list. Though David Hosack became one of
New York's leading physicians, he was elected in 1816 to
the ordinary fellowship, for he was the son of a Scot and
had followed his American training with studies in Edinburgh and London and had read a paper on vision before
the Royal Society while he was over there. James Audubon, the ornithologist, similarly was elected to the ordinary list in 1830, while Louis Agassiz, Harvard's great professor of natural science, was added to the foreign list as a
Swiss, some years before he came to the United States.
After Bowditch in 1818, the first American to be elected
to the foreign list was Benjamin Pierce, the Harvard
mathematician, in 1852. He was followed nine years later
by Alexander Bache, Franklin's great-grandson, a physi158




CONTACTS OVERSEAS
cist who held many important positions before becoming
regent of the Smithsonian Institution. Then again there
were no American members until 1873 when Asa Gray, the
botanist, received election.
Surely the three American members, Bowditch, Pierce
and Bache, elected to the foreign list between 1800 and
1861, do not represent the total of American distinction
in science during those decades. Where were Beaumont,
Silliman and Dana, for instance?
It is true that Dr. William Beaumont, the army surgeon whose classic studies published in 1833 on the physiology of digestion as observed in the stomach of his patient, Alexis St. Martin, may have been too little known in
those early days to gain him foreign recognition. But
Benjamin Silliman's career at Yale University as professor
of chemistry and geology,-" pathfinder in American science," as he has been called-must have been noted by the
Fellows. For Silliman as a young man in 1805 had spent
a year abroad and while in London, had breakfasted with
Sir Joseph Banks, had attended sessions both of the Royal
Society and of the Royal Institution, and had met some of
the leading scientists of the day. With these London connections already established, it is the more surprising that
his later achievements were not rewarded by election to
the Fellowship.
His successor in 1856 as professor of geology, James
Dwight Dana, had already published in 1837 a study of
mineralogy that for sixty years was the standard classic in
the field, widely acclaimed in Europe as well as in the
United States. Dana's work as an explorer with the Wilkes
expedition for four years in the Pacific regions ought also
to have attracted the attention of the Society that had for
so long been encouraging similar expeditions.
It was not that American science was unimportant, but
that the Royal Society during these years was absorbed in
its own difficulties. By 1873, however, the reorganization
of the Royal Society into an association of scientists had
begun to take effect.
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Thereafter, elections of American scientists came at
close intervals, and once, in 1919, five Americans were
elected at one time. By 1938, there had been in all thirtythree of them among the foreign members, while five
others had been elected in the ordinary or home classification as residents of Britain. In 1946 there were altogether
fifteen Americans among the forty-seven living foreign
members of that year.


i6o




10


CONSER V A TISM
E      NGLAND under its Hanoverian kings lived in an
era of sharp contrasts. The old order died slowly
for Toryism had penetrated many phases of its
national life. The winds of revolution and reform were
rising as the eighteenth century wore on, but they blew
in gusts. In the lulls between, the established order continued in education as in politics, in science as in theology.
Newton had lived on to the reign of the second of the
Georges. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1820, Sir Joseph
Banks and George III had both died. Then, after seventeen years, Queen Victoria ushered in a new age which
already had made its approach felt.
The course of the Royal Society needs to be considered
against the background of these changing times. It should
also be noted that, while its Fellows were many of them
prominent in public affairs, most of them belonged to the
aristocracy either by birth or by virtue of their positions
and affiliations. If Sloane was a snob, so also was Sir Joseph
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Banks, the critics claimed. Weld wrote of Sir Humphry
Davy's "inordinate admiration of hereditary rank." Even
Dr. Granville, one of the Society's severest critics in the
1830's, declared that he had voted for the Royal Duke of
Sussex as president in preference to his astronomer opponent, the younger Herschel, because the issue in that election as he saw it was: "Whether a Royal Prince, well known
for his love and patronage of the arts and science, with an
influence equal to his willingness to exert it on behalf of
those who cultivate 'natural knowledge,' or a Philosopher
of powerful talents and universal reputation, but without
some of the many qualifications which were peculiar to the
position in society of his illustrious competitor, was the
most likely to benefit the learned body over which he was
called to preside".... The Royal Society had indeed
become a gentlemen's club by the late eighteenth century,
seemingly unaffected by the winds of reform and equality
that were blowing more and more strongly around it.
Wars and Their Consequences
The latter half of the eighteenth century was a turbulent time in English history, and an unhappy one; for the
people were swept by smallpox, debased by gin-drinking,
and oppressed by the increasing severity of the penalties
for crimes. Always there were wars.
Great Britain under the Hanoverians was too closely
involved in European questions and colonial rivalries to
be for long at peace during this century. The great trading ships on the high seas sought to outdo their competitors or their ancient rivals. Smuggling was a virtue. In the
forties the War of Jenkins' Ear merged into the War of the
Austrian Succession. The return of peace brought only a
return to the status quo ante bellum and shortly thereafter
the greater Seven Years War of the midcentury embroiled
the nations. Now as never before the struggle was being
fought out in far countries as well as on the continent of
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Europe,-in India and in Canada, on the Ohio River and
on the St. Lawrence,-and on the high seas also.
The causes of the conflict were not just the continental
rivalries of Hapsburg and Bourbon for a throne, but the
century-long struggle between two great commercial and
colonial powers, Britain and France, and their respective
allies, for the control of vast undeveloped territories, for
the wealth of the Indies, for the raw materials for manufacture, trade and export, and for the right to sail the
high seas where they would. Thus during the eighteenth
century, from the War of the Spanish Succession to the
Napoleonic Wars, with few short intermissions, Britain
and France were locked in fierce competition. In the process Britain lost her thirteen colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, but she won India and Canada and her captains
discovered Australia for her as well.
Wars cost money as well as men. Government expenditures ran high; so taxes were levied on salt, windows,
bricks, candles, newspapers, thus hindering the improvement of the people's condition. Newton's coinage in its
turn was being debased or counterfeited. People counted
their money by weight with pocket balances, to guard
against chipped or light weight coins.
Yet this was the Age of Reason, of formal writing and of
formal gardens. Statesmen and literary men, artists and
inventors, scientists and philosophers gave it distinction.
Addison and Steele in their essays had helped to lift literature out of the depravity of the Restoration era. Swift's
satires, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, Horace Walpole's letters, Fielding, Richardson, and Goldsmith in novels and
poetry portrayed the period in writing just as Hogarth,
Reynolds, Gainsborough, Raeburn and Romney did in.art. Handel's music charmed the court while David Garrick and Mrs. Siddons won immortality on the stage. The
eloquence of the contemporary French writers,-Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, to name but a fewstirred, many of them, by the ferments arising from England's "century of genius," spread their ideas of liberty
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
and reform far beyond the borders of France to stimulate
political thinking and to train the minds of John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and many another
leader of revolution in lands across the sea as well as at
home.
This was the century when in England improvements in
road-building enabled easier communication, and the
building of canals facilitated commerce, while new devices
in spinning and weaving increased the supply of cloth to
be bought and sold. Kay's flying shuttle and the spinning
jenny helped speed up production; but the demand for
more wool to supply the cottage workers led to the enclosing of the ancient common lands and the dispossessing of
the small farmers to provide more pasturage for larger
flocks of sheep. The cry for more cotton from the New
World was unceasing. The smelting of iron by coal, and
the application of power, first water and then steam, to
the looms producing the cloth, made the mining of coal
more important. The miners dug deeper and the pumps
worked harder to clear these mines of water. It would not
be long before these stationary steam-driven pumping engines would be developed into the railway locomotives of
the nineteenth century. And the Royal Society shared in
many of these activities by welcoming the leaders into
their membership and by publishing their ideas and repeating their experiments.
Population in England more than doubled. But the ill
effects of the growing industrial revolution were already
apparent as the workers shifted from the farms to the
slums of the towns and cities. Soon the labor of women
and children in the mills would be in demand, while the
sturdy father and husband could find no work in the
towns far from the farm from which he had been forced
to move. By the end of the century the industrial revolution was in full tide, unchecked as yet, while the government pursued the let-alone policy advocated by Adam
Smith and other economists of the day.
This same attitude of governmental indifference had al164




CONSERVATISM
lowed the colonies overseas to "flourish by neglect"
throughout the greater part of the century, though farseeing statesmen like the elder Pitt and later Fox and
Burke might recognize their importance. Finally, the high
cost of wars undertaken in part for the protection and
defence of the colonies, seemed properly to be paid for
at least in part through taxation of the colonists themselves. The American Revolution resulted, followed shortly by the French Revolution. By the end of the eighteenth
century the age of revolution was shaking all the New
World, both north and south, and the benevolent despots
on European thrones found themselves confronted by
popular strength and growing forces of nationalism which
compelled both cruel suppression and grudging reform.
Education, Dissenters, and Science
Before we return to the Royal Society's activities during
this tumultuous period, one additional aspect of the times
should be mentioned. What was happening to education,
especially as it affected science? The two universities after
the upheavals in connection with the Civil War of the
seventeenth century, had also been "restored" to their
accustomed routines with the King's return, there to remain with but few changes until well on in the nineteenth
century. The Clarendon Code of legislation in the sixteensixties, requiring strict adherence to the Prayer-book and
the Thirty-nine Articles, had effectively closed the doors of
universities and schools for some two hundred years, to all
except those who would support the Established Church.
Dissenters, or non-conformists as the Puritans then became, had to seek their education as well as their churches
elsewhere.
The Act of Uniformity of 1662 applied not only to the
professors and the candidates for degrees in the universities, but to every school-master, public or private, and to
every tutor,-all were required to conform to the liturgy
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
and to secure a license to teach. The Five-Mile Act levied
a heavy fine against those who disobeyed, while at the
same time it compelled the non-conformists to live away
from the cities. Soon many small dissenting schools and
academies developed, at first around some ejected teacher
or professor, later around a group of tutors employed perhaps by a fund or by a group of ministers. Quite naturally,
the ejected ministers and dissenting laymen would not
send their sons to the universities, and often the ejected
professors and tutors had been among the best teachers in
their universities, the most progressive and efficient. As a
result these schools flourished and gave such an excellent
education that even the Anglicans sent their sons to them
also, for they were open to all.
The dissenting academies, as distinct from the schools,
were of university standing and were attended by students of 15, 16 and 17 years of age who would have gone to
the universities had it not been for the Act of Uniformity.
These academies soon became rivals of the universities
who bitterly opposed them. In the first half of the eighteenth century there were thirty-four of them scattered
through the land; but the most influential one of all, Warrington Academy, was not established till 1757. The lectures were given in English, though the study of the classics was still important. English books like Bacon's were
read as literature. The curriculum was not directed solely
to preparation for the ministry or the other professions,
but included a general education and preparation for
"commerce." This meant the study of "modern" subjects
such as history, geography, science and French. Lectures
were not formal, pedantic affairs but often conversations
instead, and considerable help was given to individual students. Also, in great contrast to the universities, expenses
were very low.
Warrington Academy, where Joseph Priestley taught
from 1761-67, during its twenty-five years trained a total
of nearly four hundred students in an atmosphere of free
discussion, open-mindedness to new truth and recognition
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CONSERVATISM
of the inalienable right of private judgment and of conscience. The dangers of growing Unitarianism and even
of atheism led some of these academies toward the close
of the century to emphasize credal matters for their students and gradually to decay, especially as debts added to
their burdens. But in its heyday Warrington Academy was
described as "the center of the liberal politics and the
literary taste of the entire country." Manchester College
at Oxford is its present-day descendant.
The academies with their firm but broad principles,
their sober earnestness, their high moral tone and their
independence of thought were in great contrast to the universities of the time. The academies advanced, while the
universities sank to their lowest depths of attainment and
discipline. An intellectual blight was upon them that was
not lifted until the nineteenth century brought reform.
At the outset the universities had shared in the ferment
over the new learning. Oxford had welcomed the Savilian
professorships in astronomy and in geometry established
there in 1619. Able men had held those posts, men like
Henry Briggs and Christopher Wren who, themselves actively engaged in scientific pursuits, attracted about them
others of similar interests. Thus in the Cromwellian period
the Oxford Philosophical Society had grown out of the
brilliant group connected with Wadham College when
Wilkins was Warden, only to languish and die before the
century closed. When Wilkins became Master of Trinity
College, Cambridge, for a few months before the Restoration caused his ejection, he began the formation of a similar
scientific group there, according to Dr. Birch some eighty
years later. Whether this was true or not, science had flourished at Cambridge also. Newton was Lucasian professor of
mathematics after 1669 for nearly a generation, overshadowing even such a distinguished scholar as Isaac Barrow who
resigned that professorship to give place to the greater
genius. Most of these men, like their associates in Gresham
College, were among the early Fellows. Then times changed
and academic activity died down. By the early eighteenth
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


century the universities had reached a state of lethargy out
of which they did not arise for scores of years. Their outlook was medieval, their training "formal, classical, Ciceronian, non-utilitarian." Reaction against Puritanism in
church and state had included a reaction against changes
in education which Puritanism had also supported.
It is not remarkable, therefore, that in the eighteenth
century the non-conformist academies should flourish, nor
that science at the same time should develop without
instead of within the older institutions. It grew as individuals caught the spirit of such teaching as the academies
represented, whether the individual scientists had their
training in those academies or not. Thus in London
the great Dr. John Hunter and his almost equally great
brother William, built the science of medicine upon the
foundations laid by Harvey and the other experimenters
of the seventeenth century and at the same time they
trained the younger men who came to them as pupils and
assistants. Most notable of these latter was Edward Jenner
who carried back to his country practice Hunter's admonition "Don't think, try," to discover the efficacy of vaccination against smallpox, the scourge of the century.
The influence of such teaching as Warrington and the
other academies represented seems to have been a major
stimulus to the scientific development that Great Britain
was experiencing as the nineteenth century began. The
Royal Society since its foundation had been the center of
the scientific movement; but the leadership of the Society
had grown slack. From these academies, not from the universities, came a fresh impetus to scientific work. It would
be difficult to account for Britain's scientific growth without them.
Lord Macclesfield
What were the fortunes of the Royal Society after Sir
Hans Sloane's retirement from the presidency in 1741?
Six presidents in turn served the Society during the next
i68




CONSERVATISM
three decades before Joseph Banks was elected in 1778.
But until George III came to the throne in 1760 there
was little notable scientific activity. The Society lacked the
funds to undertake large enterprises and the government
had its hands full with the War of the Austrian Succession
and the Seven Years War.
Lord Macclesfield, for example, who was the second of
the six presidents, helped in the computations necessary
for the change over from the Old Style Julian calendar to
the modern Gregorian one approved by Parliament in
1751. He realized the urgent need for new and better instruments at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and,
with satisfactory results, persuaded the Council to ask the
government for funds to provide them. It was he, too, who
recognized the importance of the proper editing of the
Philosophical Transactions, under the goading of John
Hill, and succeeded in establishing the Society's Committee of Papers, with full responsibility ever since. When
discussions of the standard weights and measures in England and their comparison with French ones, brought out
the need for greater accuracy in their definition, he had
the Society order a standard brass yard of its own to be
made,-a fact that was useful in 1834 when the government standard rods were destroyed in the burning of the
parliament buildings.
Lightning Rods: Pointed or Knobbed
Of course, subjects in science as in other fields are more
fashionable at one time than another, or appeal to popular interest more. One such subject during this mid-century was the outgrowth of Benjamin Franklin's experiments in 1727 with electricity. Not only did the practical
value of his suggestion to use lightning rods to draw off
electricity and protect buildings, appeal to the popular
imagination; but also the presence in England of this
notable American printer, author, statesman and scientist
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
attracted attention to his person and to his ideas. The
Royal Society had awarded him in 1753 its Copley Medal
"on account of his curious experiments and observations
on electricity" and as "deserving well of the philosophical
world and of this learned body in particular." Two years
later they elected him a Fellow, waiving his fees. In 1756
he signed the obligation and thereafter was often at the
meetings and indeed served on the Council four different
years.
The discussions over Franklin's lightning rods are of
particular interest for they show how the Royal Society
works through its committees or through individual Fellows without itself as a Society taking a stand on a particular theory or claim. They also show how political affairs
can become intertwined with scientific ones. These discussions, in addition to the experiments used and the principles concerned, involved a theory that lightning rods
would serve to attract lightning and to increase rather
than to lessen the danger. Some argued that knobbed rods
were preferable to the sharply pointed ones which Franklin advocated. Meantime their use gradually spread.
In 1769 the authorities in charge of St. Paul's Cathedral
inquired of the Society about the best means of protecting
that building, for another church had recently been struck
by lightning and badly damaged. A committee of the Society, appointed by the Council and including Franklin,
made a recommendation that there should be complete
metallic communication between the cross at St. Paul's
summit and the great lead-roofed dome, with the waterpipes used as conductors to the ground. This was done.
Three years later, the government, disturbed by the
news of the destruction by lightning of some Italian powder magazines, sought ways of protecting its own storehouses of explosives. Again the Society was asked for its
opinion and a committee was appointed which again
included Franklin in its membership. Four of this committee recommended the use of pointed lightning rods,
but the fifth strongly protested that pointed ones were
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CONSERVATISM
likely to increase the quantity of electrical discharge, if
not actually to occasion it. He recommended blunted conductors as safer because they would neither increase nor
invite the electricity. The disagreement brought forth renewed discussion, and many papers on both sides of the
question appeared in the Philosophical Transactions.
Franklin wrote to a friend, "Here are some electricians
that recommend knobs instead of points on the upper
ends of the rods, from a supposition that points invite the
stroke. It is true that points draw electricity at greater distances in the gradual silent way; but knobs will draw at
the greatest distance a stroke."
The government adopted the pointed rods as recommended by the committee; but unfortunately in 1777
some magazines were struck and slightly injured and at
the same time a house that was protected by the rods was
also struck. Again the government asked the Society for
an opinion and again the committee selected, a completely new one, reported in favor of pointed conductors.
Thereupon the dissenting member of the other committee drew up a long report of his own experiments and
sent it in protest to the government. They in turn referred it to the Society. A committee having tested these
experiments and the conclusions drawn, reported against
them. The dissenting member then wrote the government
that the Society as a whole did not agree with its various
committees. The government at once asked for sanction
from the Society covering the previous committee reports.
The answer finally sent by the secretary stated "that the
Society has never since its first institution given an opinion
as a body at large, but constantly by Committees. And that
in the particular instance of the questions lately proposed
by the Board of Ordnance, the Society has no reason to be
dissatisfied with the report of its Committee."
In 1777 and 1778 when this matter was being thrashed
out, the American Revolution was already in progress and
Franklin was in Paris. Since he was an American, those
who supported pointed rods soon became identified with
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


the Americans and were considered disaffected subjects.
People took up the quarrel without considering or caring
about the scientific questions involved. Even King George
himself, so it is stated, for political reasons had the lightning rods on his palace changed from pointed to blunt
ones, and asked the president of the Royal Society to
change its resolutions supporting points. Sir John Pringle
replied, "Sire, I cannot reverse the laws and operations of
nature." Whether or not the King then suggested that he
had better resign, Sir John gave up the presidency that
November, to be succeeded in the office by Joseph Banks.
Franklin refused to take any share in the controversy on
the ground that he had said all that was necessary in a
paper to the first committee which had been published. He
did not wish to defend his scientific opinions but preferred
to let them take their chance. If they were right, truth and
experience would support them; if wrong they ought to
be refuted and rejected. "The King's changing his pointed
conductors for blunt ones is, therefore, a matter of small
importance to me. If I had a wish about it, it would be,
that he had rejected them altogether as ineffectual. For it
is only since he thought himself and family safe from the
thunder of Heaven, that he dared to use his own thunder
in destroying his innocent subjects." Weld quotes a contemporary jingle:
"While you, great George, for knowledge hunt,
And sharp conductors change for blunt,
The nation's out of joint:
Franklin a wiser course pursues,
And all your thunder useless views,
By keeping to the point."
Exploration
Politics and science make strange bedfellows indeed.
George III, however, apparently did not let this matter of lightning rods blunt his already evident interest in
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CONSERVATISM
scientific undertakings, nor turn him away from the activities of the Royal Society. In the very first year of his reign
the government had actively supported a scientific expedition proposed by the Royal Society. Halley in 1714 had
pointed out in Philosophical Transactions that the planet
Venus would make a transit across the sun in 1761 and had
urged that adequate preparation be made for observation
of this rare phenomenon. The Council accordingly asked
successfully for a government grant, since the funds of the
Society were totally inadequate to care for the expense of
the necessary expeditions. For the two authorized, the
Council held many meetings to select observers, draft instructions and provide instruments. But the weather was
bad at the island of St. Helena, and the other expedition
for various reasons could not reach Bencoolen in Sumatra
in time, so it stopped at the Cape of Good Hope in South
Africa. Both groups did secure valuable astronomical data.
As Venus was to make another transit in 1769 and not
again for a century, the Council asked the government for
further help including a much larger grant and transport
at sea as well. Observers were to go to the Pacific, to Hudson Bay and to Madras.
Whereupon a young and wealthy Fellow secured permission to go along at his own expense on the expedition
to the Pacific. Thus Joseph Banks with a group of assistants
accompanied Lieutenant Cook on the expedition of the
Endeavour during the years 1768 to 1771. Not only did
they observe the transit of Venus but they also explored
the coasts of Australia and learned much about it and the
islands nearby. This experience in exploration was not his
first, for Banks had already been to the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador on a navy ship with an officer
friend of his.
Immediately after the return of the Endeavour, Cook,
now a Captain, made ready for an exploration to the Antarctic. Again the Council was busy with instructions and
preparations, and Banks again asked to go along. This
173




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


time his party was too large to be accommodated on the
Admiralty ships, so permission was refused him.
Instead, he chartered a ship and went to Iceland. This
summer's expedition had a curious sequel many years
later. Banks had brought back many Icelandic books and
manuscripts as well as specimens, and thereafter had been
much interested in the fortunes of the island. During the
Napoleonic war when England seized the Danish fleet, the
Icelanders were cut off from their usual food supplies and
were suffering great hardship. No Danish ship could get
through the blockade to bring them supplies. It was
through Sir Joseph Banks, one of its members, that the
Board of Trade in 1808 was persuaded to grant licenses
for protection from the British fleet to the Danish ships
carrying relief to the island.1
Not content with the expeditions it had fostered to the
South Seas and the Antarctic, the Council of the Royal
Society turned to the Arctic regions, recommending an
exploration which the government undertook in 1773 with
its guidance and advice.
These were the years between the end of the Seven
Years War and the outbreak of the American Revolution.
England had become mistress of the seas and ruler over
vast realms that now lay open for development. Of course,
the government could now readily join with the sciencelovers, if for different reasons, to explore the oceans and
to uncover the resources of far distant lands. John Harrison's chronometers were proving their usefulness in solving the problem of longitude for the King's ships. Dr.
James Lind's treatise on scurvy (1753), and Stephen Hales'
studies on the application of science to hygiene, to the
questions of pure water, air and food-these, too, would
have direct bearing on the successful outcome of long voyages. Thus by their work as individuals and through their
Council, the Fellows of the Royal Society had an active
share in the growth of the colonial empire.
Exploration slowed down, however, if it did not entirely
Weld, II, 109-111.
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CONSERVATISM


stop, while England was involved in wars at the close of
the century,-the American and the French Revolutions
and the Napoleonic Wars. Later, after the Congress of
Vienna, the Royal Society through its Council again urged
support by the government for further exploration, this
time of the practicability of a North-West Passage north
of Greenland. The expedition did secure scientific information of value, even if it did not find such a passage.
The Council also supported plans for a North Polar expedition. And ever since, the Royal Society has continued
to further exploration.
Not long before the outbreak of the French Revolution
the Society requested a government grant to carry out a
triangulation from Greenwich to the French coast where
it would connect with the French triangulation and so
help to determine the difference in longitude between the
Paris observatory and the English one at Greenwich. The
theodolite made for this purpose in 1784 was also used in
1821 when the observations were re-checked at the request
of the Acaddemie des Sciences. Later the instrument on
loan from the Society was used by the government in its
ordnance survey.
George III and Science
In much of this work, in contrast to the common American view of his stodginess, George III took an active interest and on occasion supported the Council's recommendations and requests to the government. Immediately
after his accession in 1760 he had studied experimental
philosophy for a time, especially liking mechanical and
agricultural science, so much so that a name for him then
was "Farmer George." He personally supported Harrison
and his chronometers when there was a dispute between
him and the Board of Longitude over the chronometric
method of determining longitude in preference to stellar
observation. When William   Herschel discovered the
175




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
planet Uranus, winning the Copley Medal and a Fellowship thereby, the astronomer wanted the planet named
Georgium Sidus, both to date the time and place of its
discovery and to do honor to "the best of kings, who is a
liberal protector of every art and science" and of the discoverer himself. Herschel was welcomed at court that year
(1781) to exhibit the skies to the royal family through his
telescopes and, through Banks' intervention, was privately
appointed court astronomer with ~200 a year. The King
ordered Herschel to make telescopes for him which he
then gave away, he assisted Herschel in his remarkable
observations by large grants of funds, and even went himself to inspect the great telescope Herschel constructed.
During these same years it was the King's interest and
personal support that backed the government's offer to
house the Royal Society in rooms rent free. He created
its president, Banks, a baronet, and Banks in turn became
his unofficial adviser on science, being especially useful in
directing the collectors who were sent abroad in the interest of the royal gardens at Kew. The last years of
George's long life were shadowed by much illness. His son
as Prince Regent seemingly took less interest in science,
though as George IV he too became a Patron of the
Society.
Crane Court to Somerset House
After his return from Iceland, Banks had settled down
in London there to become a patron and promoter of
scientific activity —"a dilettante" of science-for the rest of
his long life. Elected a Fellow in 1766, twelve years later
Banks became president. Immediately, like Newton long
before him, he was confronted by the problem of housing
for the Society.
Two years earlier the government had offered to provide rooms in Somerset House, rent free, for the Royal
Society as well as the Antiquarian Society. Somerset House
had been the residence of Queen Charlotte, but other pro176




PLATE 14. Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society, 1703-1727
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal
Society)




PLATE 15
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal Society)


PLATE 16. The Meeting-Room of the Royal Society at Somerset House 1780-1857
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 194(, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




CONSERVATISM


vision was being made for her and her former home was
being torn down so that a new building could be built
"for the service of the public." At first the Council did
not consider adequate the provision suggested there for the
Society. But Crane Court was now too small for the greatly
increased membership. The new rooms would be convenient to the other society, they were in a good location
and there would be no rent. Consequently, the Council
made the move in 1780 and sold the Crane Court property
two years later. As the new space provided was somewhat
limited, it was at this time, in preparation for the move,
that the Council decided to offer the Society's collectionsthe development of the original "repository" of the early
days-to the British Museum to be added to the collections
of Sir Hans Sloane already there. This was "the considerable donation" for which the trustees expressed their
gratitude in 1781.
One wonders if the curious item that the Council in
1798 gave ~500 "as a voluntary contribution towards the
defense of the country at this critical period" 2 of Napoleon's rise to power and the success of his armies under
the Directory was linked not only with patriotism but also
with a sense of obligation to the government for the Society's freedom from the expense of housing. At any rate
the item reflects a vastly improved condition of the treasury as compared with the situation Secretary Hans Sloane
undertook to remedy a century before.
Sir Joseph Banks
The presidency of Sir Joseph Banks extended from 1778
until his death in 1820, but during the last dozen years of
this time he was in poor health. Gout in particular deprived him of the use of his legs; that did not hinder him
from being taken in his wheelchair to the various meetings with his accustomed regularity, or from being wheeled
2 Weld, II, 226.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
about among his guests. One who saw him in those days
recorded an impression of massive eye-brows and of an
imposing appearance made all the more impressive by his
silence with foreign guests. "Speaking no other language
than English, and carrying scientific knowledge little beyond the domain of natural science, he nevertheless looked
the governing power of the Royal Society and was such in
reality." 3 Just before his death he offered to resign but
the Council asked him to remain.
In public life Sir Joseph had an exceptional position
through his wealth, his independence of parliamentary
and public disputes, and his wide background of foreign
exploration. As president of the Society he was also chairman of the Board of Longitude, and of the Board of
Visitors for the Royal Observatory, and he was ex officio
a trustee of the British Museum. Often consulted by the
government, he exercised his influence literally far and
wide,-from his support of the African Society to his directions concerning the collections in Kew Gardens. Because of his own primary interest in botany, horticulture,
agriculture and the raising of live-stock, he probably was
not as appreciative of the workers in mathematics and the
physical sciences. But it is now thought that he did not
discriminate against them as "Peter Pindar," for instance,
had charged early in his administration. It is true, however, that when he first became president he had expressed
the intention of scrutinizing closely the certificates in support of candidates in order to ensure adequately qualified
Fellows; but he had let his good intentions go unfulfilled.
One historian of the Society interprets Sir Joseph's failure to strengthen the scientific aspects of the Society as
caused by his feeling that the Royal Society was a trust committed to his care, rather than a living institution to be
used for the promotion of natural knowledge in every way
possible. Stagnation was the result.
3 Sir Henry Holland, cited in Geikie, Annals of the Royal Society Club
(London, 1917) 237.


178




11


EXPANSION VERSUS
TRADITION
URING Newton's and Sloane's presidencies until
well into the eighteenth century, the Royal Society had kept in the forefront of scientific progress despite its difficulties. Under less distinguished presidents in the mid-century it had done useful work. But by
the latter part of the eighteenth century and in the early
nineteenth, the Society seemed to mark time while science
progressed more or less independently of its leadership.
London was no longer the sole center of wealth and of
intellectual activity; the new cities of the north and west
like Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, were gaining in
importance as the industrial revolution gathered strength.
From them now came new ideas, new wealth and new
vigor. The slow-moving, comfortable old Society under
Sir Joseph Banks had so failed to recognize the widening
spread and the gathering force of this scientific growth
that by 1830 a critic complained that "science was without a
head."
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


Science Outside the Universities
The dissenting academies were strong outside London
and some of the best of them, such as Warrington Academy, were at the height of their influence in the latter part
of the eighteenth century as centers of culture for their
immediate regions. Joseph Priestley, the Unitarian minister teaching "languages and belles lettres" at Warrington
was working away at his own chemical experiments which
resulted in the discovery of oxygen. Professors from these
academies and other enthusiasts began offering to the general public lectures in series or singly on "Natural Philosophy." Many books on that subject were published in
English during the century. Popular interest in science
was on the alert.
Men interested in science formed themselves into clubs
for reading and discussion. Perhaps the most famous was
the Lunar Society of Birmingham, founded in 1766 by
Charles Darwin's grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. It
met monthly on the Monday night nearest the full moon;
hence its name. Among its members were Priestley, Herschel the musician-astronomer, and Watt of steam-engine
fame.
In the meantime the old universities continued on their
way, largely indifferent to any except classical studies.
Cambridge University recognized mathematics as a major
subject when it established the Mathematical Tripos in
1747, but not for a hundred years more did it recognize
Natural Science in a similar fashion. The mere fact that
a university had a professor of chemistry or of experimental philosophy during this period did not necessarily
mean that the professor was a specialist. Richard Watson,
professor of chemistry at Cambridge, according to Miss
Turner, related that at the time of his appointment he
knew nothing of the subject; but by experimenting for
several hours daily in his laboratory he was soon able to
lecture to large and distinguished audiences. He was at
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EXPANSION versus TRADITION


the same time Regius professor of divinity, a bishop, and
rector of several parishes!
Anyone interested in scientific study had better set up
his own workshop or "physical cabinet" and struggle along
with his own problems. Certainly the universities had no
conception of serving as centers of research for many years
to come. Natural science and the study of botany in particular could be undertaken by individuals without too
elaborate equipment. This may in part explain the great
interest in natural specimens and their study which followed the pioneer studies of John Ray at the end of the
preceding century. The formation of collections like that
of Sir Hans Sloane aroused interest, as did the work of
those naturalists whom Addison, Steele and John Hill
gleefully caricatured. Even John Hill's own books, one
should remember, were said to have been a powerful influence in spreading a wider interest in botany.
Popular attention was also aroused by the experiments
in electricity which Benjamin Franklin's presence in England helped to dramatize. More and more, interest in scientific subjects was spreading from the "gentlemen of noble
bloud" of Sprat's day to the middle classes,-the country
doctors like Jenner, the German music-teacher, Herschel,
who became one of the world's foremost astronomers, and
the apothecary's apprentice from Cornwall, known later as
Sir Humphry Davy, president of the Royal Society.
The Mechanics Institutes
Education for the poor was restricted mainly to the
three R's. But Adam Smith spoke for a number of thoughtful people in his day when in The Wealth of Nations he
advocated education as a way of offsetting the deadening
monotony of routine machine work and of the division of
labor. Sometimes the workers themselves who helped individual scientists to make their laboratory equipment
181




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
showed such intelligent interest in scientific knowledge
that they too were invited to hear the lectures.
The leader in setting up a systematic education for the
workers was John Anderson, professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow. As early as 1760 he held evening classes
for them. George Birkbeck, professor of physics on the
fund left by Anderson in his will, welcomed to his classes
the artisans who helped him build his equipment. Soon
he had to organize separate lectures for them in another
building. This became known as Anderson's Institution.
It was the forerunner of the Mechanics Institutes that
played an important part in the education of the workingmen before public funds were made available for this
purpose following the extension of the franchise in the
middle of the nineteenth century.
These Institutes were formed in the towns by the men
themselves. The Society of Arts founded in 1754 helped
also, for its aims were to encourage the practical applications of science by books, by exhibits of specimens, and
finally in the next century by its system of examinations.
Similarly the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, established in 1827, issued penny booklets written
by some of the best authorities, so that a mechanic could
have something brief but substantial to read in his leisure
hours, at a price that he could afford. It is hard to realize
now that public libraries were not founded until the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Mechanics Institutes in various towns drew together in groups and pooled their resources, exchanging
lecturers as well as books. By 1850 there were more than
600 of these organizations and over 1oo,ooo members. As
a result, scientific knowledge was spreading far into sections of the population that before 18oo had had small
access to it.


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EXPANSION versus TRADITION


New Scientific Associations
While this interest in science was spreading among the
workers, science enthusiasts among the more well-to-do also
wanted to share their experiences and discuss their common interest. The formation of the specialized scientific
societies was the result. The first of these was the Linnean
Society, founded in 1778 with the blessing of Sir Joseph
Banks, and appropriately enough, housed after his death
for a time in his home in Soho Square. Upon the death of
the great Swedish naturalist, Carl Linne, the founder of
modern biological classification, his library and collections
had been offered for purchase to Sir Joseph. He did not
care to buy them, but a younger man, Dr. James Smith,
at breakfast with Sir Joseph, learned of this opportunity
and seized it for himself. Dr. Smith, helped by Sir Joseph,
founded the Linnean Society and ultimately turned over
to it the valuable treasures he had so unexpectedly purchased. The success of this new society was swift and was
'recognized in 1802 by a royal charter.
A few years later Count Rumford won Sir Joseph Banks'
support for his own idea, the Royal Institution. This was
organized at a meeting held in Sir Joseph's house and was
established in 1799, not as a rival to the Royal Society in
the promotion of natural knowledge, but as an aid to science through the diffusion of that knowledge and through
the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions
and improvements. It advocated by lectures and experiments the teaching of the application of science to the
common purposes of life. Reflecting the contemporary interest in the working-man's concern with science, Count
Rumford planned to have it serve as a training center for
young men in mechanics. These students were to be
boarded at the Institution for three or four months to
secure "a perfect knowledge of new and useful inventions
applicable to the common purposes of life."
Count Rumford himself gave lectures on heat and the
183




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
use of various fuels. Soon after Humphry Davy had joined
the Institution to direct the laboratory and to lecture in
chemistry, the Count returned to Munich and the work of
the Institution was put on a different footing. The training of young mechanics was abandoned entirely. Research
work was developed, while the public lectures became increasingly popular.
The Royal Institution and the Royal Society have been
closely associated from the very beginning, and many of
the Fellows were members of the other organization also.
Davy made the chemistry lectures fashionable. Michael
Faraday, his successor as director, carried out there his
momentous researches in electricity that made possible
the development of the whole vast electrical industry. At
the same time he built up the popular Friday evening lectures and instituted the famous Christmas talks which enchanted the children for whom he gave them. His simple
clarity and easy eloquence on science subjects have rarely
been equalled. His example has been followed by other
directors of the Institution, notably in recent times by Sir
William Bragg, Nobel prize-winner for researches in physics, and a lucid speaker.
Even among scientists today, these two organizations,
the Royal Institution and the Royal Society, are sometimes
confused, while among laymen there is limited knowledge
either of their separate histories or of their difference in
purpose. In fact, the lay public is apt to know the Institution best as it throngs the amphitheater to hear a clear
and often brilliant exposition of scientific work and to see
demonstrations performed and slides shown. For the Royal
Institution is a working center,-indeed, Weld said it had
been called "the workshop of the Royal Society"-while
the Royal Society is an association of scientists to further
research by advice and criticism, by assignment of funds
and award of medals, and by the recognition which election to its fellowship brings today to eminent scientists.
One is an institute, the other a society.
Sir Joseph Banks as president of the Royal Society had
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EXPANSION verSUS TRADITION


thrown his great influence into helping the Linnean Society and the Royal Institution get established. Then his
attitude to separate scientific groups changed. As these
developed, he was willing to welcome them if they would
be subsidiary parts of the Royal Society, but he strongly
opposed them as independent organizations. They, in turn,
considered that the Philosophical Transactions did not
have adequate space to publish all the research being done,
nor did they consider that subordination to the Society
would give them sufficient independence. In spite of Sir
Joseph's opposition, the Geological Society formed its own
organization in 1807, as did the Astronomical Society a
dozen years or so later. Others also were rapidly established.
Sir Joseph particularly opposed the formation of the
Astronomical Society, lest it rob the Royal Society of many
of its ablest members. A close friend and admirer of his,
Sir James Barrow, recorded that Sir Joseph had remarked
to him: "I see plainly that all these new-fangled associations will finally dismantle the Royal Society, and not
leave the old lady a rag to cover her." But, Sir James went
on, no harm was done as people became members of both
organizations.
In 1836, after listing twelve of the new organizations
"and above all the British Association," Granville wrote
of them as "shooting upwards into mighty trees, and interlacing their far spreading branches over the Royal Oak
planted by Charles and reared by Newton, (once the sovereign and sole occupier of the soil, but now stunted and
neglected,) to cast their blighting shadow over it, whereby
it shall perish, entombed before its death." One indication of the seriousness of this new development, he pointed
out, was that, since 18oo, for thirty years the Philosophical
Transactions had not published a single paper on botany,
and very few on zoology, geology and astronomy. The
Linnean Society was obviously absorbing the entire botanical branch of science, and the other new groups were
threatening to do the same for their respective branches.
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The Society's "Second Childhood"
Meanwhile, according to Granville, the Society slept
"its slumbers of conscious and secure importance," unaware of the new organizations' "luxuriancy of numbers
and structural organs, and power of production equaling
almost Australian vegetation." To avert this doom and
to help bring about wholesome reforms, Granville sought
to describe "things as they are" in the Society since 1800
and to indicate the reforms needed.
What were the evils of the situation that made Dr.
Granville anonymously charge in 1830 that science was
without a head? And Charles Babbage, the skilled mathematician of calculating-machine fame, declare that same
year that the Society was sinking into its second childhood, greatly regretted by its children, the separate scientific associations?
Sir Joseph Banks' Autocracy
Criticism concerning the Society had not ceased when
John Hill died. Early in Sir Joseph Banks' administration,
he had had to contend for his executive authority with the
jealousies of other officers of the Society and their supporters. When it became apparent that one of these men
was haughtily directing a personal attack on the president, hoping to succeed him in the presidency himself,
the Society, antagonized by the tone of the speeches,
strongly upheld Sir Joseph. Thus firmly established, Sir
Joseph's long tenure in office, combined with his powerful
personality, made the position one of such autocratic
power that after his death the Society struggled for years
before the abuses that arose were checked. Meantime Sir
Joseph's opponents had recourse to printed publication of
their grievances against him and the Society.
The quarrel arose in 1782 over the treatment accorded
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EXPANSION versus TRADITION
by the president and the Council to Dr. Hutton, the assistant to the secretaries in charge of foreign correspondence.
This was a position created early in the eighteenth century
to lighten the load of work upon the two secretaries. It
carried with it an honorarium of twenty pounds. The
duties involved writing such letters to foreigners as the
president and Council might direct; but as the assistant
himself, though a Fellow, was not necessarily a Councilor
he sometimes had to carry out instructions without having heard the matter discussed. Trouble often developed.
The situation was not finally remedied until the next century, when the position of third secretary in charge of
foreign correspondence was established to rank with the
other secretaries.
Dr. Hutton was a distinguished mathematician living at
Woolwich, some distance from  London. The Council
voted that the foreign secretary should reside in London.
Dr. Hutton a month or so later resigned. His friends
among the Fellows decided that he had been ill-treated,
and, indeed, perhaps the matter had been handled rather
summarily. The details are unimportant at this distance.
What developed out of the series of meetings which the
Society held that winter to discuss his case was the vote of
confidence in the president. As a result, not only was Sir
Joseph more firmly established in his own position, but
also his influence over the secretaries was strengthened.
One of them, a supporter of Dr. Hutton, was forced to
resign two years later.
This resignation came about in connection with the
publication of an anonymous pamphlet, An Authentic
Narrative of the Dissensions and Debates in the Royal
Society (1784) which was quite evidently the work of Dr.
Hutton's supporters. When Mr. Maty, still secretary, offered the pamphlet to the Society as a gift, Sir Joseph
refused to present the customary motion of thanks, saying
that he considered the work an insult to the Society for
it was full of misrepresentations. It was after this meeting
that Mr. Maty resigned. Sir Joseph then specifically asked
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
the Society to elect as secretary a man whom he favored,
as over against the candidate proposed by the dissidents.
Again Sir Joseph was overwhelmingly supported by the
election, and from then on his control over the Society and
the administration remained unshaken.
The anonymous pamphlet today makes interesting reading, more because of its tone than because of the long
speeches it contains. One gets an impression of the Society's meetings on Dr. Hutton's case as having been the
discussions of a club of notable men in London society,
expressing their disapproval of statements made not only
by cries of "Order," and "shame," but by "the clattering
of sticks" on the floor. (Can one not picture the goldheaded canes of the gouty old gentlemen?) References in
the speeches to the black-balling-rejection-of candidates
by the Council supposedly at the president's request made
to several of the secretaries and Councilors, brought even
stronger protests, "with accompaniment of sticks." The
opposition, debarred from airing their grievances in detail
at these meetings, printed much of what they had intended
to say in this pamphlet and promised more later.
This unfulfilled promise is worth quoting:
Shortly will be published,
A History of certain Exclusions from the Royal Society. In
which it is shewn, that neither Mathematicians, nor Country
Physicians, nor London Physicians, nor Army Agents, nor Practical Astronomers, nor Authors, nor Scholars by Profession of
any description, are proper persons to be made Fellows of the
Royal Society of London, instituted for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge.
As the result of that winter of many meetings over Dr.
Hutton's case, and in spite of the publication of this Authentic Account, Sir Joseph found himself in supreme control of the Society, to direct its affairs for more than a
generation as he thought fit. The anonymous pamphlet
admitted that the victory of the majority had been received by the president's friends in a moderate and hum188




EXPANSION versus TRADITION
ble manner, not as conquerors, and that the president was
said to have borne no resentment against those who had
been most active in impeaching his conduct. He would
try to be more cautious in the future, it reported, seeking
yet more information about the candidates and stating that
in future his Council would be not "a meer list of honorable names" as formerly, but "a Committee of Men of
Letters," that "his deportment to the officers of the Society
would be more liberal, and his treatment of the servants
more mild and just." (One must not forget that Sir Joseph
had been an explorer and a seafarer for years before he
settled down in London and that such experiences probably did not lessen any tendencies to exercise a somewhat
autocratic authority.)
Criticism continued. One of the more vocal of these
critics, a military surgeon and a satirical poet, John Wolcot, under the pseudonym of "Peter Pindar" published
Peter's Prophecy, or the President and Poet; or, An Important Epistle to Sir Joseph Banks, on the Approaching Election of a President of the Royal Society (1789). In this
dialogue the Poet warns Sir Joseph by name to beware
St. Andrews' Day for "Think what a host of enemies you
make!" Sir Joseph's hospitality-his house "a tavern in
Soho"-his friendship with the King, his dominance over
the elections to the Society, his own lack of scientific output,-all these and more are targets for the satirist's verses.
He makes Sir Joseph say:
"I've star-gazers enough;
I now look round for different kind of stuff:
Besides-untitled members are mere swine;
I wish for princes on my list to shine;
I'll have a company of stars and strings;
I'll have a proud society of kingsl...
Yes, yes, my friend, my tea and butter'd rolls
Have found an easy pass to people's souls:
My well-tim'd dinners (certain folks revere)
Have left this easy bosom nought to fear.
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
The turnpike road to people's hearts, I find,
Lies through their guts, or I mistake mankind;
Besides, while thus I boast my Sov'reign's smile,
Let raggamuffins rage, and rogues revile."
"Peter" mockingly warns him:
"With solemn, sentimental step, so slow,
I see you through the streets of London go,
With poring, studious, staring, earth-nail'd eye,
As heedless of the mob that bustles by;
This was a scheme of wisdom, let me say,
But lo, this trap for fame hath had its day;
And let me tell you, what I've urg'd before,
The restless Members look for something more."
Even Sir Humphry Davy, according to Barrow who was
Sir Joseph's friend, considered Sir Joseph "a courtier
at heart" who "made his house a circle too like a court."
He held that Sir Joseph had "not much reading, and no
profound information" and required that he be regarded
as patron. Also, he readily sanctioned "gross flattery." Barrow, on the other hand, held Sir Joseph as the standard
by which other presidents should be judged-and most of
his successors (by 1849) would be found wantingl
The Society's "Dotage"
The restless members, however, had to wait for a good
many years before Sir Joseph ceased to control the Society.
As a consequence the eighteenth century Society was carried over for some twenty years into the nineteenth. Laxity
marked its administration and stagnation its affairs as Sir
Joseph's ill-health and old age increased in a period of
change in the world of politics and of science. Ten years or
so after Sir Joseph's death, Granville, Babbage and the
other reformers of the eighteen-thirties feared that the
Society had fallen into its dotage perhaps never to recover.
Babbage went further than Granville, declaring that science itself in England was declining seriously, partly
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EXPANSION versus TRADITION
through its neglect by the universities and partly by that
system of education which means that "scientific knowledge today scarcely exists among the higher classes," as
discussions in parliament showed. Not only had the Royal
Society, he charged, failed to arouse the higher classes and
the universities, but it had also opposed the formation of
the scientific associations and failed to use election to
membership as a stimulus to distinctive achievement in
the field of science. Thereupon he devoted the remaining
three-quarters of his book to the misrule in the Society.
Both critics were Fellows, one a physician, the other a
mathematician and inventor, and both were writing from
knowledge gained since their respective elections in 1817
and in 1816. Granville backed up his assertions with more
facts and figures, for his history was a re-issue, revised and
amplified, of his Science Without a Head published in
the heat of the campaign of 1830 for the Society's president. Babbage's book was also part of that campaign, a
forthright, vigorous presentation of a too gloomy view
of British science. As an appendix he reprinted without
comment a report on a German association of scientists
that had held annual week-long conferences for a number
of years past. The formation that next year (1831) of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science holding similar conferences is attributed largely to the influence of Babbage's book. (Seventeen years later, the American Association for the Advancement of Science was established at the suggestion of the Association of American
Geologists and Naturalists.)
The picture of the Royal Society which both men presented has many elements in common. Granville described
it as "a mere club-like association of highly respectable,
well educated and very honorable men, with every kind
and no kind of scientific knowledge." To black-ball, or
reject, a candidate for membership was therefore to impart a stigma on the individual, mortifying to bear, and
having no reference to his scientific abilities. It might be
due to "private feelings, professional jealousies and politi191




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
cal rancor." Of the four men recently black-balled, one was
a physician and notable obstetrician, Granville claimed,
whose "religious tenets were supposed to be at variance
with those of high churchmen."
Babbage wrote of a candidate: "If he has the good fortune to be perfectly unknown by any literary or scientific
achievement, however small, he is quite sure of being
elected as a matter of course. If he has unfortunately written on any subject concerned with science, or is supposed
to be acquainted with any branch of it, members begin to
inquire what he has done to deserve the honour; and unless he has powerful friends, he has a fair chance of being
black-balled." In addition, membership in the Society was
a distinction "which has become insignificant from its unlimited extension."
By the Charters, control of the Society's affairs was
vested in the president and the Council. The Council had
twenty-one members, from among whom the officers were
selected. But Granville charged that the Society was in the
hands of a Venetian oligarchy, being ruled by a doge and
a Council of Ten, for that was the usual attendance at
Council meetings, and two-thirds of the Council's membership were well-known favorites of the president. The
Society elected ten members to the Council each year, but
those "purged" and those elected in their places were
really the nominees of the president, since the Council prepared the voting lists for the Fellows. And Babbage
claimed that the Council in its turn voted for whomever
the president named from a slip of paper in his pocket,
without previous notification or discussion.
Some men had been councilors for years at a time, and
all too few of them were scientists. Those scientists who
were elected found the meetings concerned with trifles,
the business handled mere routine, and their suggestions
disregarded. They soon gave up in disgust, or even refused to serve. In consequence, "the president's clique or
camarilla," a small minority of the Council, controlled the
Society. As Granville looked at the situation, "jobbing192




EXPANSION versus TRADITION
personal interest-patronage-political sympathy and antipathy-nepotism-jesuitism  and favoritism-" these have
always exerted their baneful interest and always will, despite Babbage's idealistic hopes to the contrary.
The president's powers in recent years had greatly increased through the power of patronage. The award of
medals and of lectureships in the control of the Council,
the appointment of salaried officers and assistants and of
delegates or representatives, the assignment of printing to
be done and of hospitality to be rendered all involved
money. Babbage charged that Sir Humphry's successor in
office had "grasped at despotic power." But neither he nor
Granville upheld the charges made by another Fellow, Sir
James South, whom Granville quotes as alleging malfeasance, though they did bring evidence of great laxity.
Proposals for Reform
Granville did not agree with Babbage that the Copley,
Rumford and Royal Medals had been unwisely allotted,
except possibly in the one case of Dr. Wollaston who had
kept secret his method of making platinum malleable, and
so grown rich while hindering the further advance of scientific discovery. But they both made it apparent that the
lectureships in some cases seemed to turn into small annuities to some worthy person, instead of being used for
the furtherance of science.
The Fairchild lectureship had been held for 26 years by
one clergyman. Was that annual sermon actually preached?
Who heard it and where was it given? Why should it not
be made a public occasion of importance that would
promote science and each year give recognition for distinguished achievement? Similarly, the three pounds of
the Croonian lectureship had gone to Sir Edward Home
as a kind of annual pension for twenty years, although
Sir Edward would have kept on with his distinguished
medical researches without that award.
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A Finance committee was much needed to oversee expenditures and to put down abuses. Most of all the Fellows needed to know more about the yearly accounts of
the Society than what the treasurer told them in the annual statement which presented only total receipts and
total expenditures. An active Finance committee could
perhaps limit the costs of printing, for were there not too
many copies of the president's annual address made, and
were not the expensively printed annual reports to the
Society from the Royal Astronomer later sold in bulk as
waste paper by the printer? Reforms suggested by an individual councilor met with no success for they were apt
to interfere with somebody's perquisite, like the waiter's
commission on each bottle of wine used as refreshments,
or the porter's tip from each Fellow to whose home he
delivered the voting lists. Therefore the Council had refused to have the lists distributed at a meeting previous
to the election.
Full publicity about these and other weaknesses could
result in restoration of vitality to the Society, but the crucial difficulty still remained. How could distinction be
restored to election to membership? The two critics disagreed on how this should be brought about. Babbage
wanted the elections held down till the Society numbered
400 instead of over 600. Granville thought such a limitation "ludicrous." He wanted to achieve the goal of a
distinguished membership by an elaborate system of voting
to fill vacancies as they arose in the classes of membership
he would have established.
In addition, Babbage held that the president should not
hold office for more than two years, to avoid the dominating effect of a powerful personality imposed on an organization over a period of years. Obviously he had not forgotten
Sir Joseph's power. Granville was more reserved, for he
was writing when a Royal Prince was president.
The Council of course should be more responsive to the
Fellows and less concerned with their own well-being.
Were there not several instances of too many offices, each
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EXPANSION versus TRADITION
with an honorarium, held by one man, and that man a
Councilor? It seems significant in this connection that
when the Donation Fund was set up shortly before this
dissension broke out, its founder who had been president
for the few months between Sir Joseph's death and the
next election, specifically declared the members of the
Council ineligible for the benefits of the Fund.
Granville agreed with Babbage that reforms within the
Society were long overdue, but he did not agree that the
Society was dying nor that science in England had passed
its heyday with Newton's death. Brilliant men like Dalton
who created the table of atomic weights, Sir Humphry
Davy, inventor of the miner's safety lamp and noted chemist, young Michael Faraday, Dr. Jenner, the father of vaccination against smallpox,-these and many more were
doing fine work. But neither of these two critics shows any
awareness of the rising interest in and knowledge of science that the Mechanics Institutes were fostering among
the workers. They were discussing science as it was in the
hands of the aristocracy. Social standing was an important
factor in their thinking for it affected membership as well
as office-holding in the Society.
The Society's Situation
To the reader it is apparent that the club-like organization of the eighteenth century was still being maintained.
But science was not at fault, nor was it declining. The Society was not due to die, though it seemed to be in its
dotage. It simply had failed to keep pace with changing
times and conditions. Once the encrustations of petty
privilege, of administrative laxity and official indifference
were swept away and the membership situation clarified,
the Society showed that far from being in its second childhood, it only then began to attain its full strength.
As a further comment on the Society's situation at this
time, one catches significant contemporary overtones in
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


the preamble to the rules of the British Association,-that
lusty rival whose rapid growth so alarmed Granville when
he saw 2000 assembled in Dublin in 1835 at its annual
conference. Its purposes were "to give a stronger impulse
and a more systematic direction of scientific enquiry; to
promote the intercourse of those who cultivate science in
different parts of the British Empire with one another and
with foreign philosophers; to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science and a removal of any
disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress."
Entrenched weaknesses are hard to remove or to offset.
The Society had to pass through a difficult period of reform, reaction and reform, accompanied by much dissension. But the liberal temper of the mid-nineteenth century
strengthened the reformers of the Society as well as the reformers of parliament and of affairs in England outside
the Society. The widening spread of scientific knowledge
among the people, combined with the forces of wealth and
invention released by the industrial revolution, had its
effect also. Between 1820 and 1850 the changes needed
were made.


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UNHAPPY YEARS
A THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY saw the
birth of modern science in England, the nineteenth saw science develop into many branches.
While Boyle had formerly complained about the scarcity
of scientists, now their number was swelling rapidly. The
causes for this notable expansion were many. Genius itself is latent in every generation. The industrial revolution provided the means for scientific study and the wealth
necessary to promote it. The scientists had available or
were developing a variety of tools of increased precision
from microscopes to slide-rules. They were using the experimental method ever more rigorously. They were overthrowing ancient and mistaken theories by fruitful hypotheses supported by discoveries that were startling at
times. Their cooperative activities in associations and societies led to increased publication of scientific books as
well as of journals. British science as a result made great
strides in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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"An Unhappy Period"
In the science of the seventeenth century the Royal Society, as we have seen, played a leading part, and a not
unimportant role in the eighteenth. At the beginning of
the nineteenth it was no longer a leader. In Sir William
Bragg's phrase, this was an "unhappy period" when internal dissensions, the unchecked growth in membership
and the formation of independent societies to take over
special sections of the Society's work, brought about denunciations of the Society's management and laments over
the contemporary decline of science. Yet public interest
and study were growing apace. What was needed in the
Royal Society was to have the leadership and the control
over its affairs shifted from the hands of the antiquarians,
statesmen, lawyers and patrons of science into the hands
of men of science themselves. Amateurs must give way to
scientists. Then the scientists could adapt the old Society
to the new age and shift it from dependence on its past
laurels to active participation in the work of the present
and the future.
There were three major stages in this transformation as
it was finally worked out. First, the scientists themselves
had to achieve the election of a scientist as president and
secure a majority of places on the Council for themselves.
Next, they had to learn the facts about the Society's administration, particularly its finances, in order to clear away
abuses. Lastly, they had to confine the membership to
genuine scientists and by limiting the number of Fellows
elected each year, make election to membership a high
privilege.
These readjustments were not made in a day. Nearly
thirty years elapsed before all the necessary measures were
taken, and still more years before the reforms could effect
the transformation of an eighteenth-century, club-like assembly of notables into a scientific association with importance, power and prestige in the twentieth century.
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UNHAPPY YEARS


Shifts in administrative procedure may not be dramatic in
themselves, but their consequences sometimes have dramatic results.
An account of these changes involves a certain amount
of reference to the scientific movements of the day, but
this can only be incidental. The history of scientific progress, especially after 18oo, belongs in the hands of the
specialists, for as the sciences became highly technical, they
developed their own vocabularies. Before this period a
layman could make shift to comprehend the language of
science; from now on the new ideas involved new terms
and new phrases that require a training in the science itself to be intelligible. One has only to compare the experiments reported by Dr. Wilkins in 1661 with those
described in any scientific journal today to appreciate this
difference. There is room, besides, for a thorough going
study of the scientific work of the Society, especially during
the hundred years since its reorganization, a study that will
also trace the effects of its activities and its influence upon
governmental and imperial policies at home and abroad. A
writer who is both historian and scientist would be best
qualified to handle so complex and highly specialized a subject in all its ramifications. What some of these ramifications are can only be suggested in these chapters.
The Age of Reform
The reorganization in the Royal Society needs to be
considered against the background of other movements in
the history of this period; for they were closely interwoven.
As we have noted before, the year in which Sir Joseph
Banks died saw also the death of his royal friend, George
III, after years of ill-health. The Prince Regent, now
George IV, though interested in the Society, was not so
marked a friend of science as his father had been; but he
too signed the Charter-book to become Royal Patron, and
he began the award of the Royal Medals.
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By 1820 the Napoleonic Wars had been over for five
years or so, and Napoleon was an exile on St. Helena. On
the continent the spirit of the French Revolution upheld
the forces of liberalism and reform in many fields as they
struggled against the reactionary opposition typified by
Metternich whose name marks this age. The uprisings of
182o, unsuccessful in general, were but the forerunners of
yet more serious upheavals to come and ultimately of the
revolutions of 1848 which toppled Metternich out of
power and changed the map of Europe. The Austrian's
downfall brought hope to the liberals everywhere only to
have that hope temporarily stifled by the return to power
of the reactionary forces seemingly as stable as ever.
England was spared the actual bloodshed which accompanied these events in many European countries. But she
too had her struggles between the reactionaries and the
liberals. Chief among the Tories was the old Duke of
Wellington, hero of the Napoleonic days. Among the liberals were men fired by the ideals of the revolutionaries
who had created the United States and had attacked autocracy while proclaiming the rights of man.
The humanitarianism of the late eighteenth century was
strengthened in the nineteenth not only by the successful
political revolutions in the New World and the Old, but
also by the religious revival of these years. The awakening
concern for the souls of the heathen in far distant lands
found expression in the foreign missionary movement as
well as in a renewed concern about the health of their
own souls. People today who casually quote "Though
every prospect pleases And only man is vile" probably do
not realize that those lines come from Reginald Heber's
hymn of this period. Its first verse with its mistaken geography is contemporary evidence of the interest taken in
Cook's and other explorers' expeditions and in the increasing knowledge of an expanding world with all its
attendant problems to consider:
From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strands,
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UNHAPPY YEARS
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand;
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain. (1819)
The Methodist revival had deepened religious idealism.
The eighteen-thirties now had, as one phase of religious
thought, the Oxford Movement and Newman's conversion
to Catholicism. Consciences of high-minded men and women were pricked by evil conditions in the prisons and in
the insane asylums, by the crying need for protection for
women and children toiling in factories created by the
Industrial Revolution, and by the horrors of human slavery and of the African slave-trade. Parliament, like the
Royal Society in those days, was still under the control of
the old guard-Tories. The spirit of a new age was behind
the Reform Law of 1832,-the first of a series of acts by
which the people of Britain gradually won control over
their legislature. The liberal spirit also found expression
in a succession of humanitarian reforms immediately after
the passage of that first Act, and was both background and
stimulus for similar changes in other aspects of men's
lives. This was especially true where science was concerned.
Even in the last decades of the eighteenth century liberal thinkers had been restive about the legal restrictions
placed upon the education and the activities of men who
were not members of the Church of England. In 1779
Protestant non-conformists had been allowed to teach
without restriction except in the universities and the
public schools like Eton. Annual acts of indemnity had
long safeguarded dissenters from infringement of the old
Test and Corporation Acts of Charles II's day. The repeal
of those acts came in 1828, to be followed the next year
by the Catholic Emancipation Act. Still, no one could matriculate at Oxford without first subscribing to the ThirtyNine Articles of the Church of England. At Cambridge,
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
the non-conformist could matriculate but he could not
hold a scholarship or a fellowship, nor could he receive a
university degree.
Consequently the "university" of London was founded
in 1828 on a non-sectarian basis. That called forth much
opposition on religious grounds and aroused the jealousy
of the universities and the medical associations, thus delaying the grant to it of power to award degrees. A few
years later King's College as its rival was established on
Anglican principles. Finally both University College and
King's were incorporated together as the University of
London and empowered to hold examinations and award
degrees.
Concerned by the state of affairs at the two old universities, parliament finally appointed commissions to study
them. Only by the Acts of 1854 and 1856, following these
reports, were matriculants freed from religious tests at
Oxford and admitted to degrees. The revitalizing of these
institutions in this period was marked by the adoption in
Cambridge in 1848 of the Tripos in Natural Science and
in Oxford two years later of the honor school in that subject. Then Oxford began the construction of its university
laboratories in the next few years, while the gift of the
Cavendish Laboratories to Cambridge in 1871 gave tremendous impetus to scientific work there. Until the 1850's,
however, scientific growth in England was almost entirely
apart from the universities as such.
Nonetheless, the sciences had been developing rapidly
during these decades of continued university indifference.
Lyell's Principles of Geology, first published in 183o, became the basis for prolonged discussions about the origins
and age of the earth. Laplace in France, a mathematicianastronomer, had proposed the nebular hypothesis to explain the origins of a universe that was being constantly
enlarged by observational astronomers, notably the Herschel family of father, son, and father's sister Caroline. The
discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846 as the result of
scientific calculations and predictions gave dramatic proof
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UNHAPPY YEARS
to people in general of the value of the scientific method.
Dalton and the other chemists were developing the modern science on Lavoisier's consolidation of the eighteenth
century discoveries of Cavendish, Priestley and their fellows. Count Rumford and the other physicists had finally
disproved the fallacious theory that heat was a substance,
and both chemistry and physics profited. Michael Faraday
in the eighteen-thirties performed his classic experiments
on the relation between electricity and magnetism, on dynamos and on electrolysis.
Invention kept pace with science. The steam-boat was
soon followed by the locomotive engine and the railroads.
The telegraph followed hard on the heels of the new work
in electricity. Medical science applied the discoveries of
the chemists in their own work and anaesthesia began its
beneficent career. When antisepsis and then asepsis followed in the wake of Pasteur's studies of bacteria in the
sixties, the profession of the surgeon as we know it today
at last became possible.
Since this is not a history of science and technology,
enough has been suggested, perhaps, to make clear that
science was flourishing in England in the nineteenth century well before the universities had modernized their
programs of study. Both they and the Royal Society
needed to arouse themselves from the torpor into which
the Society, at any rate, was sunk in the early part of this
period. Ferments were at work all around them. The Society at length responded and managed to revitalize itself
just before the two universities bestirred themselves. With
that renewal of vitality, all three have moved again to the
forefront of their respective fields.
Relations Between Science and Theology
Such advances in science and technology inevitably led
to discussions of theology and philosophy, just as those
of the seventeenth century had done. But this time they
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SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
became more widespread and far more critical as the century wore on and the impact of the new scientific thought
was more deeply realized. One indication of this rising
conflict in ideas is found in the will of the Earl of Bridgewater, drawn up in 1825 and put into effect after his death
four years later. A Fellow of the Royal Society himself
since 1808, the Earl left ~800ooo to the Society's president
for the author or authors who would publish books on the
general theme, "On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of
God, as manifested in the Creation," with illustrations
drawn from the entire world of nature and from ancient
and modern discoveries in art, science and literature. The
president took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and with the Bishop of London in selecting eight leading
thinkers, seven of them Fellows, to write books on divisions of this subject. The Bridgewater Treatises, four of
them by clergymen and four by physicians, were the
result.
One is reminded at once of the seventeenth century concern with revealed religion when the telescope and the
microscope were in their infancy, and of Boyle's provision
in his will for an annual sermon on this general theme.
Barrow, however, writing in 1849, reported that there was
much criticism because one man, instead of eight, had not
been asked to carry out the Earl's wishes. Also, the books
were published in far too costly a form to reach any but
the rich. "Never, I believe," he added, "were the intentions of a pious and benevolent testator more completely
frustrated."
The arguments of these Treatises as they sought to demonstrate the existence of design in nature from particular
examples by analogy, may be old-fashioned today. Indeed
they may be obsolete because of the scientific advances
since then; but they were notable, in spite of Barrow's
comments, in the intellectual life of their day. That the
struggle was severe between an earnest man's traditional
beliefs about the Book of Genesis and his newly acquired
geological knowledge, can be readily understood by any204




UNHAPPY YEARS
one who has read Edmond Gosse's account of his own
father's difficulties in these times. The intellectual and
theological upheaval created by the new geology was only
less in importance than that which arose in the sixties and
seventies out of the Darwinian theories in biology.
Because some of these new ideas were already at work
-the Geological Society, it will be recalled, had been
founded in 1807-some of his associates, as "Peter Pindar"
had claimed, thought Sir Joseph Banks had not sufficiently
recognized the mathematicians, physicists and chemists
and their increasing importance, when he considered the
candidates for membership in the Society. Perhaps with
this in mind, Sir Joseph had wanted Dr. William Wollaston, a noted chemist and physician, to succeed him in
office.
Reform of the Society: First Step
Dr. Wollaston had been secretary for fourteen years and
a councilor for seventeen. Unlike many of his colleagues,
he had contributed largely to the Philosophical Transactions, for, an unusually expert experimenter, he had discovered palladium and rhodium. Later on he had finally
learned how to make platinum malleable. But Wollaston
refused to serve as president except for the few months
till November. Then, probably because of his influence,
Sir Humphry Davy, another scientist, succeeded him in
the presidency and for the first time twelve scientists, a
majority, were elected to the Council.
Thus in 1820 came the first step toward reform. Thereafter the Council never had fewer scientist members, and
soon had many more. By the middle of the century they
numbered on the average eighteen out of twenty-one members, and this greater concern with science led to a marked
increase in the average attendance at the Council meetings.
Not only did the influence of Dr. Wollaston's brief
presidency help to bring scientists into prominence in the
205




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
government of the Society, but he also was the founder
of its Donation Fund for the subsidizing of scientific research. This had been one of the purposes of the founders
and early Fellows, as Sprat had stated,' a dream not to be
fulfilled for nearly two centuries. Just before his death,
in 1828, Dr. Wollaston gave ~2000 for this purpose. The
president added ~ 1ooo and other Fellows smaller sums, so
that this Donation Fund, as it came to be called, totaled
~3410. Its income was to be used liberally by the president and Council to promote some special research, to
reward those making such researches, or to promote in
some similar manner the interests of the Society in particular and of science in general. No restrictions as to nationality were made. Some fifty years later ~1ooo was
added to the capital sum.
Nevertheless, this first half of the nineteenth century
continued to be almost as barren of benefactions through
the Society to science as had the eighteenth. The tide was
turning, however. In the twentieth century the Society
would have nearly sixty different funds and grants with
thousands of pounds available annually for the furtherance of science.
Sir Humphry Davy
The election of Sir Humphry Davy to the presidency
in 1820 was a tribute to the inventor of the miners' safety
lamp, and also an interesting recognition of a man who,
with limited education and early opportunity, had made
himself outstanding in the London world of his day. Apprenticed after his father's death to a surgeon and apothecary when he was in his middle teens, he began experiments in chemistry in his bedroom with the simplest kind
of apparatus. His activities won him friends who succeeded in getting Davy transferred from Penzance in Cornwall to the "Pneumatic Institution" in Bristol as a laboratory assistant. From there he went to the newly established
1 Sprat, 77-79.
206




UNHAPPY YEARS
Royal Institution in London in 1801 as assistant lecturer
in chemistry and director of the laboratory, with living
accommodations in the building, in addition to his salary. From then on his scientific work developed rapidly
into work of distinction, and so also did his position in
public estimation. Elected a Fellow two years after his
arrival in London, he served on the Council for five years
before his marriage in 1812. In that year also he was
knighted by the Prince Regent.
Weld has recorded that Davy was so well known that a
letter from Italy reached him though the address read
simply "Siromfredevi, Londra." Unfortunately, Sir Humphry's "inordinate admiration of hereditary rank," developing in all probability out of his own inner sense of
social insecurity, may have handicapped him. He was also
quick, irritable and inclined to be flippant, and at the same
time supercilious and haughty in his manner. At any rate,
in spite of his punctual, constant attendance and his dignity in the chair, his popularity in the presidency rapidly
declined and he himself was unhappy over the government's use of the Society at need and its apparent disregard of the Society's interests in general. Ill-health also
grew upon him, causing him to seek relief in European
travel for nearly a year before his death ended his presidency of seven years.
In his will Sir Humphry left to the Society the valuable
silver service given him in recognition of his invention of
the safety lamp, with the request that the service be melted
down and the metal used to found a medal-the Davy
Medal-to be given annually for the most important discovery in chemistry made in Europe or "Anglo-America."
Sir Humphry's dream for the Society's future as stated
in his first presidential address 2 sounds like a recapitulation
in brief of Sir Francis Bacon's chart for the advancement
of learning two hundred years earlier. In contrast to Sir
Joseph Banks' attitude of opposition, Sir Humphry began
by welcoming the new scientific societies, because natural
2 Cited in Weld, II, 345-355.
207




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
science had far outgrown the capacities of one organization even to keep the records, let alone publish the research being done. He noted the recent developments and
the promise for the future in mathematics and astronomy
with their applications in exploration and geography; in
physics and chemistry with their studies in heat, light, optics and electricity; in studies of crystallization and in
animal and vegetable physiology. He concluded with a reference to the "sober and cautious method of inductive reasoning which is the germ of truth and of permanency in
all the sciences," with a hope that the Society would continue to show its zeal in all this work and with an offer
to help as "a private soldier" himself in the ranks of
science.
In 1825 Sir Humphry Davy received notice without
forewarning that King George IV wished to establish two
gold medals to be awarded annually, as the president and
Council should direct, as honorary premiums for the encouragement of scientific work. During the years since
they were first set up, while there have been many modifications in the regulations governing these awards, these
two Royal Medals have been given for the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge in its two major divisions, published originally in the
King's dominions within a set period of years. From 1826,
with rare exceptions, to the present day, these Royal Medjals have been annually awarded by the reigning sovereign
to the men recommended by the Council. The roll of the
recipients from Dalton on is indeed a proud one.
The government had not hesitated during these years
to call upon the Society for its advice and its services in
various ways. One problem presented for its consideration
concerned Sir Humphry himself as a chemist,-how best to
protect from corroding the copper sheathing used on the
navy ships. He worked many months on the problem, finally reporting on his proposals in an elaborate paper to
the Society. Almost immediately thereafter, his solution
was abandoned by the Admiralty, for while the copper by
2o8




PLATE 17. Charles II, Founder and Patron, by Lely
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal
Society)




PLATE 18. The Library in Burlington House, 1910
The portrait of Charles II hung above the fireplace. Some of Newton's instruments
were displayed on the middle table
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




UNHAPPY YEARS
his method did not corrode, it attracted such a growth of
shellfish, seaweed and so forth that the fouling seriously
impeded the ships. Sir Humphry was deeply mortified by
this decision on the heels of his important paper. His illhealth soon became serious.
The reorganization of the Society, begun in 1820 by
placing scientists in the presidency and in the majority on
the Council, was carried further almost immediately thereafter by a revision of the statutes. These had not been formally altered since just before Sir Joseph Banks became
president in the seventeen-seventies. Many changes had occurred since then, not least among them the shift in quarters from Crane Court to Somerset House, and the gift of
the collections to the British Museum. The revisions the
committee recommended and the Council adopted, raised
the weekly fee from 52 shillings a year to 80 shillings or
four pounds, and the admission fee to ten pounds. They
also ended at this time the old custom of having the candidate sign a bond for his payments.
The problem of membership the committee barely
touched, recommending only that the foreign members be
limited to fifty in any one year. To be sure, since the early
seventeen-sixties when the average number of these foreign members had totaled 161, they had been steadily decreasing till they numbered about forty in Sir Humphry's
time. But by limiting the number elected, the committee
hoped to increase the distinction of the election.
Unfortunately, at this time it was rather generally understood that any candidate proposed to the Society would
be duly elected;3 but the committee did nothing about
limiting the number of Fellows. Certainly, the steady and
rapid increase in their numbers lends credence to the view
that all who would could join. Incidentally, these increased
numbers were overcrowding the rooms assigned the Society in Somerset House, making necessary some additional
space there. This the government allotted in 1826.
Dissatisfaction with the membership situation increased
3 Lyons, 244-245
209




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
and another committee for the Council undertook to consider the problem of adequate limitation. One of its members was the Mr. Babbage who became so concerned about
the Society's imminent end, as he foresaw it. This second
committee reported in 1827, recommending to the Council among other matters, that until the membership was
reduced to a limit of four hundred, only four new members annually should be elected. This report was referred
by the Council of that year to the next Council.
On this new Council under the presidency of the mathematician and geologist who had succeeded Davy, was Lord
Colchester, a lawyer of long experience and Lord Chief
Justice since 1816. He had been a Fellow since 1793 but
had never been active in the Society's work until he was
made a councilor at the new president's desire. They two,
even though the president had been on the committee
making the original report, succeeded in securing its rejection by this Council. The reformers had failed.
The Duke of Sussex and the Second Step
The president of the Society then arranged that his own
successor in office in 1830 should be the Duke of Sussex,
one of the sons of George III. Whereat the scientific Fellows in their indignation proposed John F: W. Herschel,
son of the great observer and himself a noted astronomer.
The Duke received eight more votes than the astronomer
out of a total of 230 votes cast from a membership of 659.
Again the reformers were defeated.
That year as part of this violently contested election,
beside Babbage's book on The Decline of Science, there
appeared Science Without a Head, published anonymously and re-issued a few years later in The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century, both by Dr. A. B. Granville, as well as a pamphlet by James South, an astronomer
and Fellow who had been on the original committee with
Babbage. Highly critical of the Society as these writers
210




UNHAPPY YEARS
were, as we have already seen, some of their suggestions
bore fruit in the measures taken by the Councils of the
next few years.
The Duke himself, though no scientist, was clear-headed
and forceful about administrative detail in his first two
years in office. As president he at once proposed an important change,-that the treasurer's report for the preceding year should be printed and circulated among the
Fellows as a regular practice. This was the first time that
any of them except the members of the Council had had
the opportunity to be so informed. Fortunately the treasurer elected that year was both a distinguished mathematician and a bank director. His reports, based on a full
study of the Society's administration, gave the reformers
later the material with which to work.
Reaction
Dr. Granville in his history of this period, written after
the fifth year of the Duke's presidency, claimed that the
new president had introduced many salutary reforms during his first year or so in office, but that since he had been
unable to attend the Council meetings thereafter with any
degree of regularity, conditions had become even worse
than before. He had not, for example, attended a single
meeting of the Council or of the Society that year, and
in the year before had been twice at the Society and only
five times at the Council. The good work of the first two
years of his administration was being buried under a renewal of the old difficulties. As Dr. Granville tactfully
expressed it: certain "exceptional selections among the
Councils, lead one to think, that our Royal President's
heart is equally assailable, with his predecessors, by the
kindly feelings of direct or indirect personal predilection,
-not always the best guides to a correct discrimination of
merit."
To be sure, desirable changes had been made in the
211




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


statutes, but perhaps not by the wisest method through
lack of consultation with the Fellows as a whole. The library, which until then was a disgrace in its chaotic condition and its inaccessibility, had at last been catalogued,
and made available to the Fellows many more hours in
the week than formerly. The Arundel MSS. had been
shifted to the British Museum and money had been spent
on securing modern scientific books and journals.
Not only by the publication of the treasurer's report
was there a marked improvement on the old system of
silence and mystery, but the minutes of the Council meetings were being printed as well, and the Proceedings had
been distributed regularly since 1830. Publication of the
abstracts filed with the detailed papers printed in the
Philosophical Transactions was another useful service,which, incidentally, has been continued ever since; after
1904, in two series: A. Mathematical and Physical Papers,
B. Biological Papers.
Unfortunately, however, the Duke's rare appearances
were reflected in the slim attendance of others at the Council meetings. Nevertheless Granville refused to believe, so
he said, "that His Royal Highness was governing, aided
by only one or two private advisers, or under the control
of a secret camarilla." But the present situation as he saw
it was more oligarchic and objectionable than it had been
before the Duke's election.
Whereas only seven new members had been elected in
1830, fifty new Fellows had been "made" in 1834, and
thirty-three the next year. Of the 158 Fellows admitted in
the past five years, only ten of them had contributed papers to the Transactions either before or after their election. As Dr. Granville remarked, the reader could draw
his own conclusions about their scientific qualifications
and about whether the situation regarding the selection of
members in the past few years had improved at all.
The analysis that Granville made of these 158 new Fellows is worth summarizing to demonstrate how far the
Society had yet to go before it lost its non-scientific char212




UNHAPPY YEARS
acter. These new Fellows included one bishop, nine noblemen, seven naval and seven army officers, fifteen clergymen, twelve "who are titled in the Law, learned in the
Law, or practising the Law," eighteen physicians, and
eight surgeons, and eighty other "Gentlemen" who do not
fall into any of the preceding classifications, among them
seven members of Parliament. One is inclined to underline Granville's query as to whether all these men were
truly "labourers in the vineyard" of science. In spite of
Granville's figures, another ten years had to pass before
this situation was corrected. In the meantime the membership continued to swell till in the 'forties it reached its
maximum size of 766.
One has to remember that the Duke was an elderly man
when he came to the presidency (he was born in 1773 and
died in 1843). Though he showed in his first anniversary
speech that he had accepted the office with every intention
Df using his high social position and his best efforts to further the work of the Society faithfully and efficiently as its
"organ" and "public voice," frankly admitting his own
lack of scientific knowledge, he was able to deal with the
situation for only a year or two. Then he found his sight
too poor, his health failing, and his financial resources too
straitened to cope with all the meetings and the entertainment expected of the president.4 He must have been disheartened too by the Council's disregard of some of the
reforms he had supported, and by the excellent treasurer's
disgusted resignation after five years of struggle. But the
Duke allowed his own name to stand for re-election and
so continued as president till 1838, although vice-presidents had to act for him.
Continuing Weaknesses
This also was one of the complaints of the reformers,that presidents were re-elected although for months at a
4 Lyons, 238, 256.
213




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
time they had not officiated because of ill-health or of absence abroad, or both. Such had been the case with Sir
Joseph Banks in his last years, with Sir Humphry Davy
and now with the Duke. Not for a hundred years more was
the president's term limited by statute; but after a time
four or five years became the customary term. Since 182o,
only two presidencies have been for as long as ten years.
From 1870 until the emergency of World War II, no president has served for longer than five years, and some, for
various reasons, have not been in office as long as that.
Thus one reform took effect through precedent rather
than by legislation. Finally in 1935 the Council set the
president's term at five years.
Another matter rightly troubling the reformers, Granville noted, at the time of the Duke's presidency was the
editing of the Philosophical Transactions. Since 1752 this
had been done under the direction of the Council through
its Committee on Papers with the officers and vice-presidents
as permanent members and with the secretaries in direct
charge. This committee was authorized to call upon specialists whenever necessary, but no paper had been so referred in the fifty years between 1780 and 1831. The quorum for the committee was only seven and some of these
men were not even scientists. Were the papers wisely
chosen or rejected? Furthermore, the number of papers
had greatly increased. Only 319 had been presented in the
seventeen-nineties; less than fifty years later the number
presented had more than doubled. In 1831 and 1832 consultation became the rule, only to lapse again. Permanent reform had to await a reorganized Society.
In this connection the Reverend William  Whewell
made some interesting comments when he was asked to
make suggestions about the founding of the British Association at York in 1831. Dr. Whewell had been made a
Fellow in 1820 at the age of twenty-six, a year after he had
published his Elementary Treatise on Mechanics. He had
been placed on the Council in the first year of the presidency of the Duke of Sussex, but he was too busy at that
214




UNHAPPY YEARS
time with his Bridgewater Treatise and his History of the
Inductive Sciences to accept the Duke's invitation to serve
on a committee to revise the Society's statutes. Ten years
later he became Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
In September, 1831, Dr. Whewell wrote suggesting that
the proposed British Association limit membership to
those "who have published written papers in the memoirs
of any learned society." "It would be desirable," he went
on, "in some way to avoid the crowd of lay members whose
names stand on the list of the Royal Society." Further, the
Committee on memoirs for the British Association should
"give public reports of their views. Neglect of this practice
appears to me to be a serious deficiency in the Royal Society." For the Royal Society's committee merely used in
the minutes "certain laconic formulae of expression," as
Granville charged, ordering a paper "postponed," "to be
printed," "to be placed in the archives," or "not to be
printed," without "one particle of reason or ground being
alleged, at the same time, for the recorded decision of the
committee." No wonder Whewell advocated written reports on each paper that the new British Association might
consider for publication.
Under the Duke's administration in the early eighteenthirties, the organization of the Society had been tightened
up in a number of respects; but unfortunately, the impetus for continuing these changes soon died down. The particular change of major importance and the permanent
achievement of this period was the publication of the Society's business and especially of its financial reports. This
was the second outstanding reform; hereafter the Fellows
at large and not just the Council had facts at their disposal.
The Final Major Reform
The leader of the third and final major reform was
Mr. R. W. Grove, the eminent mathematician and physicist, the inventor of the Grove battery and the holder of
215




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
a Royal Medal (1847). He was also a lawyer, and ultimately became Queen's Counsel and a judge. He was knighted
in 1871. Mr. Grove came on the Council five years after
he had been elected a Fellow in 1840, and at once joined
the reforming group. These men thought that a revision
of the ancient Charters would be necessary to change the
Society's character. As a member of the Charter Committee to study possible amendments, Mr. Grove was the one
who proposed instead an alteration of the existing method
of electing the Fellows. In other words, he had put his
finger on the root difficulty of the Society's troubles, a
difficulty that now could be solved since the Council after
1820 had had scientists in the majority, and since the treasurer's reports, published since 1830, provided the figures
with which to work.
The Charter Committee was not long in reporting to
the Council nor the Council long in setting up procedures
within the old Charters that accomplished the desired resuits in due time. These procedures were that the election
of new Fellows should be made only once a year, instead
of at any and every meeting, that the Council should
recommend to the Society the most eligible candidates, and
that such candidates should not exceed fifteen in number.
When these regulations were approved and distributed to
the Fellows early in 1847, the way was clear for the Royal
Society to develop into a scientific association. Mr.
Grove's suggestion worked.
Since a good deal has been said about the interweaving
of finances with the membership problem because of the
Society's dependence upon the members' fees, it should
be added here that the Charter Committee, before making
its recommendations, had studied the treasurer's figures
and had made tentative budgets to determine whether the
Society could afford the cut in income that would come
when new members each year were less than half the number elected in previous years. The ordinary Fellows would,
of course, decline in number as deaths and resignations
exceeded the number of admissions. Thus by natural at216




UNHAPPY YEARS
trition the number of non-scientific members would dwindle and, through the Council's selection of scientists as
new Fellows, they would not be replaced.
That is what has happened. By 1901 only three Fellows
remained who had been elected before 1848. Since 1875
the average number of ordinary Fellows in any five-year
period has been less than five hundred.
These restrictions in number, however, did not apply to
the special classifications of royal or noble Fellows. Nor in
theory, at least, were the Fellows debarred at any time
from electing whom they chose, as they were privileged
to do by the Charters. But as in so many other cases, orderly procedures once accepted with the weight of precedent and custom added, have become tantamount to legislative change without the onerous difficulties involved in
bringing about amendments to fundamental laws.
The Philosophical Club
Mr. William Grove did not relax his oversight of the
Society's well-being when once the Council had adopted
the Committee's recommendations. He and a group of
like-thinking Fellows organized a dining-club in 1847, the
"Philosophical Club" with forty-seven members in honor
of the year in which the reform was accomplished. Their
purpose was to watch over the Council's policies and to
stimulate it to develop the Society's major concerns. It is
said that many proposals arising out of their discussions
were later adopted by various Councils.
Some fifty or more years later, its work over, the Club
ended its separate existence (1901) by joining forces with
the ancient Royal Society Club. This in its turn had originated out of the custom some of the first Fellows had established of dining together in a tavern after the weekly
meetings. In 1743 this informal practice was made more
regular by the organization of what after 1795 was known
as the Royal Society Club. They had always entertained
217




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
guests freely at these dinners, so that these occasions were
notable both for their social aspect and for their discussions. In the nineteenth century the Club had become
wholly social. That was why the reforming Fellows had
felt the need of a new club for a specific purpose. After
their purposes had been accomplished, the forty-seven
members could merge themselves with the other, older
group.
Reform Within and Without the Society
When one observes the Society's stagnation in the early
days of the nineteenth century while British science itself
was making great strides, one is impressed by the coincidence in time between the Society's reorganization and
the great reform movements in politics and in social affairs
that came to a head in the thirties and forties. The Society
was indeed a part of the life of its times and could not
remain unaffected, unless it were to wither away, crowded
out by its own slack conservatism, by the rapid development of the specialized societies and by the new British
Association for the Advancement of Science. It too was
reinvigorated and re-modeled in those same decades, by
the scientist Fellows who found that the old organization
of the seventeenth century could be adapted successfully
to new ideas two hundred years later.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the "unhappy
period" of the Society's history had been brought to a
fortunate conclusion. Science in England was far from declining or from being without a head. In fact, the specialized sciences were developing so rapidly that new organizations were inevitably called into being to meet their
needs. The Royal Society as patrons and lovers of science
for two hundred years could no longer maintain the honorable position of leadership of its earlier years or serve
as a center for the country's scientific work without drastic
reorganization. But it had the strength and the vitality as
well as the leadership within its own membership to reor218




UNHAPPY YEARS


ganize itself and so to confound its critics. Then, once
more, backed by its long history and the prestige of its
past, it resumed its ancient position of leadership, this
time as an association of the most distinguished scientists
from all fields, to serve as a kind of general council and
spokesman for the common interests of all the more specialized groups. Its record of achievement during the
hundred years since 1847 amply refutes the false prophecies of its imminent end in the eighteen-thirties.


21i




13


NEW GR OWTH
HE MAJOR ADMINISTRATIVE changes accomplished between 1820 and 1847 made possible the
development of the Society into its present position of power and responsibility. But that development
was not achieved in a day, nor indeed for several decades.
Reorganization had to reach into many aspects of the Society's interests beside that of the selection of candidates
for membership. Other changes varied of course in their
importance, and most of them now, perhaps, are of interest
only to those intimately concerned with the administration of the Society's affairs. One or two, however, are
worth noting here, because by implication they provide
further evidence of the unfortunate conditions the Society
has had to overcome. One reform already mentioned indicated the neglect and disuse into which the Society's remarkable collection of books had fallen. Since 1831, all
that has been altered and an active Library Committee has
maintained supervision to assure the library's continued
growth.
220




NEW GROWTH


An irretrievable loss occurred sometime between 1800
and 183o, although the Society's attention was not called
to that fact until twenty-five years later. When the keeneyed old Dutchman, Leeuwenhoek, died in 1723, he left
his invaluable collection of high-powered microscope
lenses, like solitaire diamonds, to the Royal Society that
had welcomed his letters about his discoveries of little
"animalcules"-bacteria-and had made him    a foreign
member more than forty years earlier. Somehow unaccountably that collection of lenses had disappeared from
the Society's rooms. So also had the clock given to the
Society by Dr. Seth Ward early in the sixteen-sixties in
memory of a Gresham professor and fellow virtuoso, Laurence Rooke. Rooke, friend of the virtuosi and for many
years their host at Gresham College, had died before the
Society's formation, or he would have been one of the
foremost in it. It was his chair of geometry that the young
Christopher Wren had been brought from Oxford to
London to occupy just before the Restoration.
Although the Society regretted these losses and records
were set up of its other possessions, the officers waited yet
longer, until the twentieth century, to set up controls. Now
the records are regularly checked so that objects on temporary loan or stored away are not overlooked or forgotten.
To cope with its increased cares, the Council either
reactivated old regular or standing committees such as the
ones for finance and the library, or in the course of the
years set up new ones, in addition to the special committees used for particular problems. As some of these committees now did not have even one councilor as a member,
the Fellows in general gradually became more familiar
with and more active in the Society's business, in contrast
to that recent period in its history when Granville had
declared that the Society was ruled by a "Venetian oligarchy."


221




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


The Soirees
Not exactly the reform of an abuse, but still significant as an indication of a changed attitude, was the custom
of welcoming large numbers of guests, established in 1849
and continued ever since. In that year the Council decided
to invite people to an evening soiree or conversazione, as
they are still called, to mingle among the Fellows and to
observe displays about recent scientific work. In other
words, the growth of the separate scientific groups had become so important that the Council of the Royal Society felt
it necessary to modify its club-like atmosphere and to receive within its rooms a large number of invited guests.
It had awakened to the need for a wider and better understanding of the Society's purposes and activities.
Originally these soirees were at the personal expense of
the president in whose name the guests were invited. After
1871 they were made the responsibility of the Society.
These semi-social occasions evidently served a useful function for they still occur about twice a year. Usually about
five hundred guests are invited. They are formally received
by the president and his wife, the beautiful mace there on
a table beside them. Not only do the guests then have an
opportunity to meet the distinguished members and to
hear their explanations of the displays, but they can also
study the Society's many portrtaits of famous Fellows that
line the stairways as well as the rooms. They may see also
Charles II himself gazing down upon them from Lely's
large painting in the meeting-room. (Plate 17.)
Burlington House
In the early days of these soirees, the Society had to
borrow space for them from other organizations who were
its neighbors in Somerset House. This situation pointed
up the necessity for securing more room for the Society
22




NEW   GROWTH
itself, for its swollen ranks, still almost at their maximum
number, would not shrink to the desired five hundred or
less for forty years and more. Then came the immensely
successful Exhibition held in 1851 in Hyde Park, with its
emphasis on the part played by science in modern life. At
the suggestion of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort,
the profits from the Exhibition were used to purchase undeveloped land in South Kensington where it was proposed to establish a center for the scientific societies. They,
however, preferred a more central location. The Royal
Society, as spokesman for the group, secured government
consent for the use of Burlington House on Piccadilly. At
length the Society was again assuming its old position of
leadership.
In 1856 the Royal Society moved from Somerset House
to Burlington House, to be joined there by the Linnean
and the Chemical Societies, as well as the British Association. In 1873 the Society was finally established in its present rooms,-in a wing of the main House, facing the court
between the House itself and the street.
Funds From the Government
The improvements within the Society during the 'thirties and 'forties did not pass unobserved outside. As a result there came an expansion of its responsibilities as well
as of its activities along two lines,-first, through a marked
increase in the funds entrusted to it for the promotion of
research, and second, through the development of its relations with other scientific organizations, both national
and international.
The first welcome recognition by the government of the
Society's new growth came in an unexpected letter from
Lord John Russell to the president. In it he proposed a
government grant in aid of scientific investigation. A committee of the Society at once drew up a report recommending four uses for such a grant; to aid private individual
223




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


research, to help in the study of masses of accumulated
observations, to purchase new instruments for astronomical, meteorological and other observations, and, subordinately, to assist such other scientific investigations or purposes that might become desirable. The recommendations
were adopted and the ~0ooo granted in 1850 were followed by similar awards for the next five years.
Then the government decided that the special services
fund would not admit of such an annual grant, even
though the Society pointed out that it was an award for
the furtherance of science and not a subsidy to an organization. Thereafter the grant was included in the sums
voted annually by parliament, and as such was administered by the Society through a committee of Fellows and
the presidents of four other scientific groups.
Some twenty years later an experimental assignment of
~4000 annually for a five year period was set up as a "Government Fund" which could be used for personal allowances to those making the investigations. This Fund was
under the Science and Art Department of the government
and was administered by the same general committee of
the Society, enlarged, however, by the presidents of a number of other societies and academies. Also, sub-committees
were set up in charge of the mathematical and physical
sciences, biology, chemistry, and "general purposes."
Again the question arose whether this Fund was an
award to the Royal Society or a grant for the furthering of
science. The Society wanted it made very clear that it was
for the latter purpose. The statement for Parliament's
consideration as finally adopted was "Royal Society. Grant
for Scientific Investigation undertaken with the sanction
of a Committee appointed for the purpose." The original
grant of ~0ooo was no longer to be awarded; but ~4000
was thereafter annually appropriated to be used primarily
for investigations but also, if necessary, for personal allowances. Various matters in connection with this annual
grant were adjusted from time to time, but until the twen224




NEW   GROWTH
tieth century brought increases in the amounts granted, no
fundamental changes were made.
The government was not subsidizing the Society except
by housing it rent-free as it had done since 1780. By these
grants, however, it recognized the Society's leadership by
making it the administrator of government aid to science
and to scientists. The advice of the representatives from
the other learned bodies was specifically limited to the selection of the persons to be aided, the amounts to be granted
and the terms of the grants. To cover its expenses for this
work, the Society at first received only small sums each year.
When the annual grant was increased to ~ 7000 in 1936, the
amount paid the Society for expenses was ~350.
Funds From Private Sources
Funds came to the Society, also, for other than direct
aid for scientific research. For example, one of the reforming Fellows, perhaps moved by the humanitarian spirit of
the age, proposed in 1859 that a Scientific Relief Fund
should be set up to aid scientists and their families where
necessary. This proposal with the backing of the Philosophical Club received the support of the Council and
then of the Society and was set up at once with gifts totaling more than ~3000. The fund has grown rapidly
since, so that the committee in charge has an annual income of more than ~800 with which to give aid. Other
provision in similar fashion has been made for a variety
of purposes that range from a pension fund for the staff
of the Society to a fund to provide scientific books in
braille for the blind. By 1940 there were twenty-four of
these special funds, including those for lectures. They
totaled ~109,941.
Endowments for the award of medals as prizes, begun
with the Copley Fund in the early eighteenth century were
continued with the Rumford Medal just before 18oo. In
the nineteenth century these awards rapidly increased in
225




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
number. First came the Davy Medal, and then the two
Royal ones. Four more followed in fairly quick succession.
Finally the Council resolved in 19oo not to accept any
more funds for such purposes. It was neither to the advantage of the Society nor in the interests of the advancement of natural knowledge to add to the number of the
awards already provided for.
More important, and most markedly so in recent years,
has been the growth of the financial resources entrusted to
the Society to administer for the encouragement of scientific work. This swelling tide of funds is indeed a tribute to the recognition given science today and to the respect in which the Society's judgments are held. Dr.
Wollaston's legacy of the Donation Fund in 1829 has
proved to be the forerunner of many more thousands of
pounds that have come to the Society from private sources,
especially as the nineteenth century drew to a close, and
as the twentieth century illustrated the importance of
science in the modern world.
When Sir Henry Lyons, treasurer of the Society for ten
years, ended his term of office in 1939, he recorded that
the Society had a General Purposes Fund of ~ 116,556 and
twenty-seven Research Funds whose capital value was
~555,828. In addition, it had ~94,180 in income from
various research funds that had not yet been used and was
temporarily invested. The outstanding fact about these
large amounts for the promotion of research was that they
represented, he said, a tenfold increase in twenty years'
time.
It is indeed a strikingly different situation now from
the one that confronted the Council in 1674. For in that
year arrears were so serious and members so few at the
Society's meetings that the Council was hard pressed to
find ways to finance "entertaining" experiments that
would attract the members again and renew their interest
in the work.
Nor have all the funds at the disposal of the Society
today been mentioned. In addition, since the first grant of
226




NEW GROWTH


~ ooo was made by the government in 1850 to be used by
the Society for the encouragement of research, thousands
more have been assigned. Parliament now places under
the Society's supervision and administration annual grants
not only for scientific investigations but also for publications and for international research associations and scientific congresses.
Though in his History he did not specifically say so, one
realizes by the dates Sir Henry Lyons gives that it was
only as recently as during his term of office as treasurer,
that the administration of the Society's finances was modernized. One of the longstanding difficulties recently
cleared away was the transfer, completed in 1939, of
Bishop Wilkins' legacy invested in fee-farm rents in 1674,
-a story that has already been told. Another was the writing off as uncollectible the heavy debt accumulated during
the publication of the Catalogue of Scientific Papers, about
which more later.
The power released by these sums is far more important
than a mere enumeration of them. The record, however,
does illustrate clearly the contrast between the Society's
position after it had shaped itself into an organization
capable of carrying out its original purpose, and its position in the early years when it was solely dependent upon
the weekly shillings reluctantly paid by its members. What
has been done with some of these funds in the past fifty
years can be read in the titles and the size of some of the
Society's publications. For example, among others it has
issued a series of reports by its Malaria Commission, and
by its Commissions on Sleeping Sickness and on Mediterranean Fever. It has published five quarto volumes on the
work of the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901-4. Some
other reports published have been studies made by individual scientists like that by J. C. Beattie of a magnetic
survey of South Africa and one on The Sub-Mechanics of
the Universe by 0. Reynolds. The policy of publication
that the Society began in the seventeenth century has been
continued in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
227




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
subjects named also give a hint of the wide range of the
Society's interests.
Cooperation, National and International
The second characteristic of the reorganized Society's
activities is the rapid and marked development of its leadership in relation to other scientific organizations at home
and abroad. Increasingly these others have called upon the
Society to take over responsibility, to give advice or to
provide the spear-head for a generally desired action.
Thus, even a hundred years ago, it had represented other
organizations besides itself when it sought permission of
the government to be quartered in Burlington House
rather than at South Kensington. Later on, the British
Association transferred to the Society its responsibility for
the Kew Observatory and, later still, proposed that the
Society join with the Association in securing government
support for the organization of the National Physical
Laboratory. As a result, the Laboratory was opened at
Bushy House in Teddington in 1902 with ultimate control placed with the president and Council of the Society.
Associated with their representatives on the governing
board, were representatives selected by the leading technical institutions of the country. With the rapid growth of
the Laboratory's work and with the formation of the government's own Department of Science and Industry,
responsibility for the National Laboratory was later transferred to the government, while the Society's representatives continue to serve both on its board and its executive
committee.
The Society was also called upon to share in the direction of education when the reformers of the mid-nineteenth century reached into the two old universities, and
when the so-called public schools accepted the "modern"
subjects of science, modern history and modern languages
as part of their programs. Since 1868 the Society has had its
228




NEW GROWTH


representatives on the governing boards of some of the
important schools. Nine of them now, including Eton,
Winchester and Westminster, have one of their directors
or trustees selected by the Council. In addition, the Society has a voice in the election of eight of the professors
of science at Oxford and of one at Cambridge. Its representatives chosen by the Council, or the president ex
officio, are on the boards of more than thirty other institutions, councils, funds and committees ranging from the
Hunterian Museum and the Royal Veterinary College to the
Science Abstracts Committee.
Still more specifically, between 1900 and 1939, the Council has subsidized from its various funds the work of lo
students, fellows and professors for periods ranging from
one to many years. Included in the list of scientists aided
in this way are some foreigners who have been privileged
to do their research with British help.
The Society in promoting natural knowledge in many
ways now works through education by subsidies to individuals as well as to institutions, through oversight of training
as well as through the investigation of specific problems.
Furthermore, it recognizes that science knows no political
boundaries.
International cooperation in the scientific field was a
rapid and logical development in the nineteenth century,
especially in the latter part. Count von Humboldt, the explorer and geographer, had succeeded early in the century
in securing government support from a number of countries for a series of meteorological stations throughout the
globe. The Duke of Sussex, as president, had given his
support to the Count's proposal that stations be set up in
the British possessions also. This first notable instance of
international governmental cooperation for science on a
wide scale was quickly followed by many others in which
the Society shared with advice and with the selection of
delegates. Whether the problem was one of a common
standard for weights and measures, the coordination of
geodetic measures that particularly concerned the delimi229




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
tation of the frontiers of newly formed states in Europe, or
problems of gravitational observations, the Council did
its part in securing governmental support and in recommending delegates.
The Catalogue of Scientific Papers
A major undertaking which concerned the Society for
nearly three quarters of a century began as a friendly service undertaken at the request of a fellow association. It
developed into an international enterprise with wide
ramifications. This was the Catalogue of Scientific Papers
that had appeared in the journals issued since 1800 by
the various scientific bodies in Europe and America. First
suggested by an American in 1855 for the mathematical
and physical science publications only, the British Association adopted the idea and asked for the Society's cooperation. The Society undertook the task, enlarging the
Catalogue to include all the sciences. Intended at first to
be in manuscript form only, by 1864 the Catalogue was
thought worth printing. Government help was secured,
and from 1866 to 1872, there appeared the volumes covering the years from 1800 to 1863. Supplementary volumes
were issued twice later, which brought the Catalogue
through 1883.
No wonder that with its own activities, with this Catalogue work and with the steady decline in membership
and so of fees, the Society was financially troubled for
some years in the 'seventies. The funds received at this
time from the sale of the Acton lands came at a particularly opportune moment; for as unrestricted capital, the
income proved most useful in helping meet expenses.
The Catalogue needed to be continued. By this time,
however, it had far outgrown the resources of the Society
while it had become of great international value. The Society led the way, therefore, through a series of conferences and meetings, to the formation of an Interna230




NEW GROWTH


tional Convention and Council for an International Catalogue. The Society offered its financial backing for the first
five years from 1900, serving as the publisher, until the
various cooperating national bodies could repay these advances. The agreements, twice renewed and expanded, ran
through the first year of the War of 1914-18.
In 1916 the work was suspended until after the war.
When the question of its resumption was considered in the
light of the Society's heavy expense and labor and the
failure of supporting associations to repay the loans advanced, or of subscribers to pay their considerable arrears,
the International Council through its executive committee in 1922 decided to end the project. The treasurer of
the Royal Society acted as receiver to close out the accounts. Few of the debts were paid. In consequence in
1935 the Society wrote off about ~ 14,000 of the indebtedness as lost. Part of the trouble had arisen from the mistaken impression abroad that the Society was spending
government funds, not its own private resources, and that
the government would make good the losses! Similar societies and academies on the continent were of course
governmentally supported and were not private organizations as is the Royal Society.
The International Research Council
There was other cooperation with the academies in foreign lands. Shortly before 9loo, the Royal Society accepted
an invitation to attend a meeting of representatives from
the scientific associations of a number of German cities.
The Council, however, emphasized to its delegates that the
Society's adherence to any plan would depend upon its
being a true international assembly with representatives
from other countries. The German group thereupon consulted the Academy of Science in Berlin, while the Royal
Society sounded out the academies in Paris, St. Petersburg,
Rome and Washington. The first International Association
231




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


of Academies met in Paris in 1900. But some of these
learned societies had two sections, one scientific, the other
literary. Others, like the Royal Society, were limited to the
one interest, science, and could only belong to that one
section and have but the one voice there. Since there was
at that time no general academy in Great Britain, some
proposed that the Society develop such a division of its
own. Prolonged discussion followed with the Society finally deciding not to spread its interests to include the
humanities.
Later on in 1901, some of the participants in that discussion, with others, organized the British Academy for the
Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological
Studies, which received a royal charter the next year.
Again, one of the proposals in the minds of the first Fellows for the Society more than two hundred years earlier
had shown its far-reaching vitality, even though it was now
set aside as definitely beyond the Society's field of interest
and activity. The Royal Society welcomed the formation
of the British Academy, securing its recognition in the International Association of Academies, as well as providing
it with a meeting-place in its own rooms for more than
twenty-five years, until the government made separate provision.
The International Association of Academies had to
come to a close with the first World War, though various
countries tried during those war years to keep some of its
projects alive. With the end of the war arose the question
of resumption. One difficulty in the original organization
was that in some countries there had been more than one
academy, and in Germany there were five academies. Consequently, matters under discussion in the International
Association had taken on an undesirable political aspect.
When the war was over, representatives from the French
and the American Academies, meeting first with the Royal
Society and then in Paris, summoned in Brussels in 1919
a conference for delegates from the Academies in all the
232




NEW GROWTH
Allied countries. A committee meanwhile prepared a draft
constitution for these delegates to consider.
The first General Assembly of the International Research Council was thus convened. Under it were organized at that meeting various International Unions,-for astronomy, for chemistry, and so on,-with others to be
formed at the next triennial meeting of the International
Council. Units of payment from one to eight, according
to their respective populations, were to be subscribed by
each participating country. The various Unions were to
have autonomy in their own affairs under the International Council. In 1922 the neutral countries of the war
years were invited to join, and other Unions were approved. Three years later, an invitation to the Central
Powers to join was proposed and defeated under conditions that made the issue seem political. The Royal Society, dissatisfied, demanded a special General Assembly
the next year to reconsider the matter. At this session the
invitation was approved and extended, but it was not
accepted.
The eight Unions finally organized under the International Council have carried on their work with varying degrees of regularity and of success. One, the Union
of Mathematics, held two or three congresses, then disbanded in 1932. Another, the Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, split into seven sections which became practically
independent associations. To avoid any political coloring,
the original agreement had been that there would be no
permanent bureau set up in any country. But Paris, Strasbourg and Naples have each had one for a geological
field,-geodesy, seismology and volcanology respectivelyand have aroused some criticism on political grounds. The
Unions of Chemistry and of Astronomy, on the other
hand, have been very active and successful. Through the
various congresses held under the auspices of the individual Unions, scientists from many countries have come together and have done much valuable work.
233




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


The Pilgrim Trust Lecture
In 1937, Sir William Bragg in his presidential address
to the annual meeting of the Royal Society announced
plans for another form of international cooperation. Offi,
cers of the Society and of the National Academy of Sci,
ences in Washington had suggested that each organization should invite a distinguished scientist from the other
group to give a lecture before it in alternate years. The
Pilgrim Trust in England had agreed to provide 250
guineas a year for six years as a test period in the hope that
the Pilgrim Trust Lecture might ultimately become a permanent activity of the two groups. Sir William stated that
the object of the Lecture would be the progress of science,
not the honoring of scientists. He hoped that the Lectures
would not be mere summaries of past work nor general
discussions of scientific advances, but a transfer from one
side of the Atlantic to the other of new ideas which had
already begun to be fruitful and which promised wide
expansion in the future. Natural knowledge, he went on,
pays least attention to the divisions of men; "there is only
one Nature for us to know. No greater gift could be made
by one people to another than an illuminating idea; it
would deserve a people's welcome."
At the invitation of the Royal Society, Dr. Irving Langmuir of the Research Laboratories of the General Electric Company in Schenectady gave the first Pilgrim Trust
Lecture in December, 1938 before the Society in the amphitheater of the Royal Institution. His subject was Molecular Films. The editors of Nature held that it amply fulfilled Sir William's statement of the Lecture's purpose, and
added: "Thus the first link in another chain binding together the peoples of Great Britain and the United States
has been well forged." They considered such international
contacts of vital importance in those days of strife and
world unrest and held that every effort should be made
to promote active cooperation between science workers.
234




NEW GROWTH


The second Lecture, given before the National Academy
in Washington, in April, 1939, was by Sir William Bragg
himself at the invitation of the Academy. He spoke on
History in the Archives of the Royal Society. He brought
out the connections between the Society and America during the past centuries and indicated how the archives also
illustrate the continuous endeavors of a body of scientists
to be of help to their fellow men. He held that it is the
obligation of science to make sure that what is found is
understood, and that mated with it is the understanding
of what science is doing and can do which a good education provides. Thus scientists and the general public work
together for the common good. With characteristic idealism, he concluded that the spirit in which knowledge is
sought is more important than the knowledge itself.
Again a World War interrupted such international cooperation and fraternization. Whether the Lectures will
be resumed and how far the International Council and the
Unions may progress in the years immediately following
this war remain to be seen. Hunger at home, inflated currencies and high costs, added to the political use of scientific discoveries like the chaining of atomic energy, do not
encourage international exchanges by scientists. Even so,
the summer of 1947 saw the meeting of a number of international associations or of their councils, all seeking to
close the gaps in their common work and in their relationships caused by six years of global warfare. Every
such meeting should draw tighter the web of mutual understanding and respect among the men and women who
now find themselves inhabitants of a world that hourly
grows more interdependent.


235




14


THE ROYAL SOCIETY
IN RECENT YEARS
M_       ORE THAN a hundred years have elapsed since
the Society began its transformation. From a
club-like organization of important people interested in science, of whom only one in three was himself
a scientist, it has grown into an association of the leading
British scientists. In its membership now, only a handful
of the distinguished men are not scientists themselves.
They are there because in some way they have been of
important service to science.
The change came by evolution rather than by revolution and took a good many years to become fully effective.
As late as 1860 there were 330 Fellows who were scientists
and 300 who were not. Also, in 1860, 117 of that group of
330 scientist Fellows were physicians and surgeons, an
overwhelming proportion of medical men which had been
characteristic of the Society's membership from the first.
The growth of the Society's work and the rapid develop236




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS


ment of the newer fields of science have since then strikingly modified that situation. In 1940 the physicists and
the chemists formed the two largest single groups, 86 and
79 respectively, while the Fellows working primarily in
medicine numbered only 28. However, there were 94
working in fields closely related to medicine, such as physiology, pharmacology and bacteriology. It is clear that the
two-hundred year old predominance of medical men has
long since ended and the scientists in newer fields have increased proportionately.
By 1875 the decline in the number of Fellows, since the
limited annual elections failed to replace those who had
resigned or died, had brought the Society's membership
down below 5oo and there, between 400 and 500, it has
stayed. At the same time the average age at admission to
membership has slowly but steadily risen from about 40 in
1810 to a median age some years ago of about 47. The
men elected nowadays have already achieved distinction,
and are not the unknown young men at whom Steele, John
Hill and the dissidents of 1784 jeered.
Since 1874, when the privilege was ended, peers are no
longer admitted in a special class, nor, since 1902, are privy
councilors. But at that later time, provision was made for
the election of men "who had rendered conspicuous service to the cause of science or are such that their election
would be of signal benefit to the Society." No more than
two such elections may be made in any one year, and if two
are made, then the following year none may be elected.
In 1940 there were ten such specially elected members,
while all the rest were scientists.
Among the distinguished members elected within the
last seventy-five years have been such notable figures as
Gladstone and Disraeli, Asquith and Baldwin, Ramsay
MacDonald, Churchill and Smuts, John D. Rockefeller and
Lord Nuffield,-the last two as businessmen whose philanthropies have notably furthered the medical and physical
sciences. The election of Princess Elizabeth early in the
summer of 1947 is a reminder that the privileged election
237




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
of "the blood royal" was not rescinded when an end was
made to that of the peers; but it also is a symbol of the
present situation in regard to women as Fellows.
Women as Fellows
The question of the eligibility of women as members
was raised in the first years of the present century and was
answered in the negative. One of the benefits of the parliamentary legislation passed in behalf of women after
the first World War was to remove this legal ineligibility,
-but no elections ensued. Finally, at the close of the second World War, in 1945, the Council included on its approved list of candidates the names of two women:
Kathleen Lonsdale (London) a physicist at the Royal Institution, for her "outstanding contributions to the investigation of the crystalline structure of organic compounds
by means of X-ray analysis," and Marjory Stephenson
(Cambridge) a member of the staff of the Medical Research Council, "for her biochemical researches upon the
metabolism of bacteria, which, with those of her pupils
during twenty-five years, have included work upon hydrogenase, lactic dehydrogenase and adaptive enzymes."
(Shades of Samuel Pepys and his fears about the Duchess
of Newcastle!)
Sir Henry Dale, president of the Society during those
war years, reported in his annual address that autumn,
that as many as ten per cent of the Fellows had opposed
the election of women when a clarification of the statutes
had been sought by postal vote; nevertheless, these women
were elected. Dr. Agnes Arber, the distinguished botanist
and historian of science received the same honor the next
year, and three more women were elected in 1947. To
these six women Fellows now is added a seventh, for Princess Elizabeth, heiress to the British throne, has signed the
Charter-book as did James, Duke of York, as heir to
Charles II.
238




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS


Various Changes
In his address in 1945, Sir Henry Dale expressed his own
satisfaction at having been instrumental, when secretary
of the Society, in securing an increase in 1931 in the number of Fellows to be elected-from the long-standing fifteen
to seventeen, and then, six years later, to twenty. As none
of the forebodings aroused by these increases had materialized, he was happy to see the number for 1946 and thereafter increased to twenty-five. He foresaw no loss of prestige
but a gain in vigor. Also, though this Sir Henry did not
mention, the number of scientists in these days has mightily increased, and the size of the Royal Society could well
be permitted to reach just over, rather than just under
500 members. For comparative purposes it is interesting to
observe that the membership of the British Association, in
spite of the strains of the war and post-war years, in 1947
numbered about 4000.
Marked as has been the progress of the Royal Society,
once it was reorganized, the Fellows still on occasion become restive under the regulations that give the Council
with the officers great power. As recently as in 1933 ninetyone Fellows made a series of proposals that have extended
the active participation of the Fellows in its business.
Some of the recommendations the Council accepted in
1935, others it refused, and the Society as a whole at its
annual meeting that year upheld the decisions of the
Council. These were, among others, to make statutory the
custom that the president should hold office for not more
than five years, that the tenure of the treasurer and of the
secretaries should be limited to ten years, and that of the
foreign secretary to five; that the outgoing Council should
continue to nominate the incoming officers to the Society
for election; and that the list of candidates recommended
by the Council for election to that body would continue
to be limited to the number of the vacancies to be filled.
239




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
The ancient Charters remain unaltered and the Society,
adapting itself within their limitations, advances without
losing step with its past.
One interesting consequence of a valuable change in
procedures is reflected in material ways. The flow of important papers, some of them exceedingly abstruse, had
tripled in number by the end of the nineteenth century.
The problem was how to handle them in ways most useful
to the Fellows, especially as some of these papers were so
specialized as to appeal only to a few. Gradually, in recent
years, instead of having a series of them read, some of these
perhaps "by title" only, the custom has developed of having
an important subject discussed in a long session. These
discussions may begin in the morning and carry on
through the afternoon. The old benches in the assemblyroom were too uncomfortable for such prolonged use, so
in 1939 the room was re-equipped. (See Plates 19 and 20.)
Again, the Society in holding discussions for long hours
has returned to the original practice of its first years.
Similarly, an early practice abandoned almost at once,
then renewed early in the nineteenth century to be again
abandoned, was resumed late in that century and has been
continued ever since. This was the custom of appointing
committees for the individual sciences and their special
interests. There had been eight of these set up in 1665.
In 1838, eight again were appointed, which were reduced
to seven the following year as meteorology was combined
with physics; but these ceased in 1849 when they were not
reappointed. Finally in 1896 the Council set up sectional
committees which have been continued ever since. It is
through these sections that the conference discussions,
noted earlier, are arranged, for the members of the sections of course have a specialized knowledge in common,
and can best cooperate in worthwhile discussions which
might bore a listener from a different field. Again the practice of the first days has proved useful in this modern age,
making one suppose that either the seventeenth century
240




PLATE 19. The Meeting Room in Burlington House, as it was in 1912
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 1940, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




I/ HIo


PLATE 20. The Meeting Room in Burlington House, 1939
The room has been stripped of its pictures for the war period
(From The Record of the Royal Society, London, 194o, by courtesy of the Royal Society)




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS


and the twentieth had much in common, or that the Original Fellows were more than two centuries ahead of their
times!
A Central Scientific Center?
One of the subjects discussed for several years by the
members of the Philosophical Club after it was organized
in 1847 was the possibility of a common meeting-place for
the "major" scientific associations, combined with the advantages of a central library. The fact that Somerset House
would soon be no longer available for the societies and
was too crowded anyway, gave relevance to their deliberations. Apparently, the proposals were dropped after the
suggested site in South Kensington seemed undesirable
and the Royal Society moved into Burlington House.
The question came up again nearly fifty years ago when
the Royal Society was finding itself cramped for space in
its rooms along the side of Burlington House court. It had
no large room for meetings and no room for expansion;
nor did the other scientific societies also housed on one
or the other side of the court. Besides, they all missed the
advantage of a central library. Efforts at that time to secure
more space failed, and the Royal Society is still in the same
quarters.
Now with the rebuilding of London following World
War II, Sir Henry Dale, the Society's president during
those war years, has revived the old dream of a centrally
located center for all the major scientific associations.
When he spoke of it in 1945, the Physicists had no home
at all, the Chemists with nearly 5000 members had limited
accommodations. If one adds to these only the "major"
groups like the Geologists, the Astronomers, and the Linnean Society, one begins to have some conception of the
magnitude of the idea, and also of its potentialities. Maybe, before the Royal Society reaches its three hundredth
anniversary in 1962, this dream will be on the way to becoming an actuality. For to Sir Henry, the Royal Society
241




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


together with the others grown from and around it, forms
"a scientific organism which is a national and imperial
heritage. Here are the roots of the spreading tree of science
and technology."
The War Years
Immediately before the outbreak of World War II, the
officers of the Society had seen the storm arising and had
made preparations accordingly. By July, 1939, the valuable
portraits had been taken down and placed in safekeeping
and the archives with the Charter-book and the journalbooks had been crated and sent off to Wales, there to stay
till all danger was over. The mace was to follow as soon
as a meeting later in the month was over. Headquarters
for the Society itself were to be in Cambridge for the duration. However, this move put into effect in September,
1939, lasted only for a few months. In March, 1940, the
Society's headquarters was re-established at Burlington
House, there to stay throughout the war undeterred by
bombs or fire.
In 1945, after the war's end, Sir Henry spoke prophetically of some of the post-war problems which he two years
later as head of the British Association was to emphasize.
There was need, for example, to organize for peace-time
uses the wartime developments in flying, in photography,
in voyages, as well as to follow up clues hinted at in the
study of blood. Perhaps through the United Nations, "a
world community in science" would arise, as indeed it
must if civilization is to survive. Wartime secrecy and political barriers must no longer prevent the return of the
free and frank interchange of scientific ideas which had
characterized the period before 1914. In those days science
was truly indivisible and knew no national boundaries.
Was Sir Henry thinking as he spoke of what the Royal
Society itself had already done in a notable instance to further such cooperation? In 1934 the eminent Russian physicist, Dr. Peter Kapitza, could not return from a scientific
242




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS
congress in the USSR to continue with his research professorship and his work as director of the Royal Society Mond
Laboratory at Cambridge. He had been working in Cambridge since 1921. His associates at the Laboratory were
unwilling to undertake the experimental work he had
planned and prepared for if he could do it himself. To
make that possible, since he was not permitted to leave
his homeland, the equipment, some of which he had designed, was sold to the Russian government for his use,
along with duplicates of apparatus that could not be spared.
Thus Dr. Kapitza could have in Moscow the identical
equipment that had been developed for his work in Cambridge. The advancement of fundamental research by a
great scientist was more important than political barriers.
In 1947, Sir Henry had less to say about "a world community" but more about the freedom necessary for fundamental research and about its greater importance over
applied science and technology. Again he emphasized the
value of national and international cooperation for the
future of science as well as the value of science itself to
help bring about such cooperation. Once more he pleaded
for the release of science from all the entanglements imposed in the war years.
The Fostering of Science
How science may be fostered when actively and wisely
directed may perhaps be better understood if at this point
a summary is made of what has been previously indicated
at various places in these pages. An adequate appraisal
of the scientific work conducted by the Royal Society during the past fifty years or so is beyond the competence of
the author and indeed outside the domain of this book.
It may not be amiss, nonetheless, to attempt an answer to
the question: "What does the Royal Society do?"
Scientific work is not done by the Society acting as a
unit but by its commissions and committees, or by indi243




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
viduals, to whom questions are referred and problems assigned. Financial aid for living expenses as well as for
apparatus may be granted, and help given in publishing
the results secured. Advice and criticism are available
either through private consultation with the eminent
specialists who are the Fellows today, or through public
discussion of papers presented in the conferences which
the various sectional committees organize. The usefulness
of these papers is further increased by their publication
iigthe Society's journals.
^. Since the Society is concerned with the whole realm
of "natural" knowledge and not with one section of it, as,
for example, with astronomy alone or medical science, it
acts as a spokesman and a rallying center for the various
scientific organizations in national and in international
connections. Also, through the research funds placed at its
disposal especially in recent years, it is able to sponsor
and direct scientific undertakings on a broader scale than
would otherwise be possible.hus, it has administered for
the government grants-in-'a  for the publication of scientific papers that had accumulated in the hands of various
societies during the years of the first World War. It has
undertaken at government request investigation of volcanic phenomena in the West Indies and particularly on
the island of Montserrat in the Leeward group. At the desire of the Colonial Office, long-continued studies in various parts of the Empire have been made of malaria, of
sleeping-sickness, of Malta fever and of the causes of cattle
disease. Other medical research has been done in North
China, in British Guiana and in Assam. An anonymous
fund for medical research received in 1924-25 made most
of these expeditions possible. Indeed, the income from
this fund for five years was devoted to the study of malaria
both in India and in England.
Since 1923 the Society has maintained from one to seven
research professorships for men whose work has proved
outstanding. For example, among these research professors are Dr. Archibald V. Hill, winner of the Nobel prize
244




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS


in 1922 in physiology and medicine, Sir Geoffrey I. Taylor, expert in meteorology, aeronautics, mathematics and
engineering, who won the Royal Medal in 1933 and the
Copley Medal in 1944, and Sir Owen W. Richardson, the
physicist who won a Nobel award in 1928 and a Royal
Medal two years later. Similarly, the fellowships and "studentships" the Society grants have enabled such men as
Lancelot Hogben, Regius Professor of Natural History
(1937-41) at the University of Aberdeen, to lay the foundations for their later achievements. The number of these
fellows and students has greatly increased since 1919 as
the funds entrusted to the Society have grown. Such opportunities for individuals of exceptional promise mean
much in later years through their teaching as well as
through their own distinguished accomplishments.
In addition to freeing the individual scientist financially
to develop some promising idea, the Society has also provided the place and the equipment for such study. It was
a leader in establishing at Bushey House the laboratory
that later became the National Physics Laboratory. It
brought both the man and the equipment together when
it built and equipped at Cambridge the Royal Society
Mond Laboratory to further the experiments of Dr. Kapitza, already one of its research professors. Thus it aided
his work in intense magnetic fields and at the same time
provided an up-to-date laboratory for the study of magnetic and other effects at the lowest possible temperatures.
The university provided the site and the running expenses. The Laboratory was opened in 1933 with the name
Mond in memory of the Fellow whose bequest to the
Society had financed the project. In this way the Society
hoped to further fundamental research with the minimum
of bureaucratic controls and the maximum of freedom for
the investigator.
Throughout these years the Society has regularly issued
the Philosophical Transactions and the two series of its
Proceedings. Its occasional publications have ranged from
various catalogs and its own Record to reports by its com245




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
missions and committees on subjects as diverse as grain
pests and Antarctic expeditions. It has published monographs like the one on horny sponges and it has issued
The Scientific Work of the late Spencer Pickering, F.R.S.
(1927).
A Fellow after the first World War recorded that the
services of the Society to the government were very great
during those years. It is safe to assume that similar and
even greater service was rendered during the second War.
For in the interim between the two Wars, relations between the Society and the government had been steadily
growing closer as the Society gained in strength and as it
developed its main function, the furtherance of science.
In this age such interdependence seems inevitable. The
Society's position outside party politics would seem to be
one of its sources of strength in its dealings with governmental agencies. For always, be it noted, the Society continues as an independent, private organization with its
housing alone provided by the state in recognition of its
public usefulness.
Three Hundred Years
The Royal Society may well be proud of its long history. During the centuries it has grown from an assembly
of important men interested in the study of nature in all
its aspects-amateurs of science-into an organization of
distinguished scientists preeminent in their respective
fields. That growth was not steady. Indeed, in the critical
years toward the close of the seventeenth century, in the
trivialities of the mid-eighteenth and in the stagnation of
the early nineteenth, there was question whether the Society
would rise above its difficulties. Finances were an everpresent problem; but even more serious was the nonscientific character of its membership. Until the scientists
gained control of its administration in the nineteenth century and made election to membership selective and a privi246




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS
lege hard to achieve, the Society could not devote itself with
full vigor to its central purpose, the advancement of natural
knowledge.
The ways by which this purpose have been furthered
have been many and varied. Some, like the encouragement
of scientific publications, date back to its earliest days, as
does also the study by its committees of questions propounded by the sovereigns or the government. Indeed,
more and more during and since the latter part of the
nineteenth century the Society has become the channel of
communication between the government and the leading
men in the different fields of scientific work. Periods of
war have served to widen and strengthen the Society's
usefulness in this respect. As a private organization it can
make its suggestions and recommendations without publicity and without interference from red tape. For the
same reasons those receiving them can do so without loss
of official dignity. And the government is benefited by
access to the best advice available on matters requiring
specialized scientific knowledge.
Specifically, the Society has made proposals for institutions, expeditions and explorations needing government
support, from the establishment of the Royal Observatory
to that of the National Physical Laboratory, from geodetic
surveys to Captain Cook's voyages and those undertaken
by explorers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Recently, it has subsidized individual students and professors and has granted funds for the tools of research and
for the detailed study of important problems. It has fostered the growth of related but independent organizations
and has stimulated national and international cooperation
through its own activities on the Catalogue and through
delegates as well as advice. It has rewarded achievement by
medals and by money, whether that achievement were by
its own Fellows, by outsiders or by foreigners. It has welcomed foreigners to its fellowship and has maintained its
correspondence with scientists abroad from the earliest
247




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


days. It has, in recent years especially, extended its efforts
to develop and strengthen international cooperation and
friendship among the workers in science everywhere. This
international cross-fertilization of scientific ideas which the
Society has always fostered is now being increasingly recognized as scholars study the files of its correspondence accumulated for centuries.
All this it has done as a private organization under
Royal Charter, paying its own expenses as best it could
until the end of the eighteenth century. Since then it has
been housed by the government, but it still is privately
supported. The thousands of pounds it has disbursed
since 1850 for the furtherance of scientific research have
come from funds entrusted to it for that purpose both by
the government and by individuals,-substantial evidence
of its present high position.
The Society's contributions of its collections and of the
Arundel Library to the British Museum were major aids
to that institution's growth, and as trustees of the Museum
the Society's presidents have served now for two hundred
years. Its Fellows, whether in their capacity as officers of
the Society or as its representatives, have served on governing boards of institutions from schools to laboratories
and observatories. And scholars from far and near have
found its library a mine of treasure.
Evidence of the Society's high standing also lies in the
recognition won by its officers. Sir Henry Dale's immediate
predecessor in office was Sir William Bragg, Nobel prizewinner in physics. Sir Henry himself was elected head of
the British Association after the close of World War II
had released him from the presidency he had held throughout those years. The present incumbent is Sir Robert Robinson, recipient of the Nobel award in 1947 for his work
in organic chemistry,-a worthy successor to that other
chemist-president, Sir Humphry Davy, more than a hundred years ago. Such men, like the others who have been
elected P.R.S. since the reform of the Society went into
248




THE ROYAL SOCIETY IN RECENT YEARS
full effect, are in their own scientific distinction representative of the leadership now characteristic of the Society's membership.
The Future
In a few years more the Royal Society will have attained
its three hundredth anniversary. No man can foresee the
state of the world in 1962. Science and invention have so
shrunk the distances on this earth while expanding the
universe, and have so speeded up time itself that where,
some hundred and more years ago, a battle was fought
and won in complete ignorance that the treaty of peace
ending the war was about to be signed, now listeners have
heard described on the opposite side of the globe the surrender of the enemy as the formalities proceeded. Although time and space have been telescoped and marvels
hardly dreamed of a century or two ago have been made
daily commonplaces, man himself with his emotions, his
prejudices, his superstitions even, has not kept pace with
these advances. Here lies the enigma of the future.
Here also is the great opportunity for the Royal Society
and its kindred associations, not alone in Britain but in
all lands. As they extend the boundaries of knowledge and
its uses, they are becoming more and more aware that they
must have a responsible share in man's education and
self-knowledge so that he may use wisely the powers science has placed in his hands. "The truth shall make you
free"; but how shall man use this freedom?
From its origins in the seventeenth century to the present day, the Royal Society has attracted many of the best
trained and ablest minds among the leaders of the world
of which it has been a part. The Society has grown through
a precocious infancy and a weak and uncertain adolescence. Then in the early nineteenth century it gathered
its forces together, sharpened its purposes and during the
century following, grew into the full vigor of its maturing
powers. The amateurs of the early days have become the
249




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS


leading scientists of today. With this transformation have
come increased respect for and trust in the Fellows, and also
the funds necessary for their work. Their leadership is recognized, their advice sought. Already as a Society they have
accomplished much. Their responsibility and their opportunity in the years to come are great.


250




BIBLIOGRAPHY
AND
SOURCES
This book is based primarily on the following:
A. MAJOR REFERENCES
The Record of the Royal Society (4th edit., London, 1940). This official publication includes an historical summary, chronological lists
of officers, Fellows, medallists, publications, benefactions, recipients
of grants, etc., as well as an alphabetical list of Fellows and tables of
membership averages.                     (Quoted as Record)
Lyons, H. The Royal Society, 1660-I940, a History of its Administration under its Charters (Cambridge, 1944). Important especially
for financial history. A Fellow since 1906, Sir Henry Lyons was
treasurer of the Society for ten years preceding World War II.
(Quoted as Lyons)
Weld, C. R. A History of the Royal Society (2 vols., London, 1848).
Of great value especially for the years immediately preceding 1830
when it ends. Weld was assistant secretary and librarian of the Society for eighteen years. He has included many documents and much
anecdotal material, carefully checked. Lists and tables in the appendices.                                 (Quoted as Weld)
B. MAJOR SOURCES
Birch, T. The History of the Royal Society (4 vols., London, 1746). A
transcription of the minutes of the Society and its Council from the
251




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
first days through December, 1687. All references to the minutes are
to these volumes.                         (Quoted as Birch)
Sprat, T. The History of the Royal Society (2nd edit., London, 1702).
First published in 1667, this is the official account of the Society's
first few years, of its philosophy and the arguments for and against it.
(Quoted as Sprat)
GENERAL REFERENCES
The Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of American Biography
Taylor, F. S., The March of Mind, A Short History of Science (New
York, 1939).
Chapter 1
Johnson, F. R. and Larkey, S. V., Thomas Digges, the Copernican system, and the idea of the infinity of the universe in 1576. Huntington
Library Bulletin, No. 5 (April, 1934), 69-117.
Chapter 2
SOURCES
Advice of W. P[etty] to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the Advancement of
some Particular Parts of Learning (London, 1648) in Harleian Miscellany (London, 1810), vol. VI, 1-14.
Bacon, F. New Atlantis in Works of Francis Bacon, edit. by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath (Boston, n.d.), vol. V, 398-413.
Boyle, R. Works, edit. by T. Birch (5 vols., London, 1744), V, 258, 263,
397-399.
Cowley, A. A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental
Philosophy (London, 1661), preface, conclusion.
Gilbert, H. Queene Elizabethes achademy. Early English Text Society, edit. by F. J. Furnivall, extra series, no. viii (London, 1869),
1-12.
252




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AUTHORITIES
Bellot, H., John Evelyn, 1620-1706. Contemporary Review, vol. 114
(August, 1918), 201-207.
Dircks, H. A Biographical Memoir of Samuel Hartlib, Milton's
Familiar Friend (London, 1865), 16-19, 52.
Fulton, J. F., The rise of the experimental method; Bacon and the
Royal Society of London. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine
(March, 1931), 308.
Houghton, W. E., The history of trades: its relation to seventeenthcentury thought. Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. II, no. 1
(January, 1941), 41-48.
Keynes, G., John Evelyn as a bibliophil. Library, ser. 4, vol. XII (September, 1931), 175-199.
Masson, D. Life of Milton (London, 1873), vol. III, 193-231.
Spedding, J. Life and Times of Francis Bacon (Boston, 1878), vol.
II, 619-620.
Stimson, D., Hartlib, Haak and Oldenburg, Intelligencers. Isis, no. 84,
vol. XXXI, 2 (April, 1940), 309-326.
For discussion of Comenius' visit to England: Young, R. F. Comenius
in England... (Oxford, 1932); Stimson, D., Comenius and the
'invisible college,' Isis, no. 66, vol. XXIII, 2 (September, 1935), 377 -388; A. C. S., Notes on the foundation and history of the Royal
Society. Notes and Records of the Royal Society, No. 1 (April, 1938),
32-36; and supra, footnote, p. 37.
Chapter 3
SOURCES
Aubrey, J. Brief Lives... edit. by A. Clark (2 vols., Oxford, 1898),
I, 300; II, 299.
Wallis, J. Defence of the Royal Society (London, 1678).
"Dr. Wallis's account of some passages of his own life," January 29,
1696/7, Works of Thomas Hearne (London, 1810), vol. III, cxl-clxiv.
(These two accounts are combined in the Record, 4-6.)
Ward, John. Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London,
1740).
253




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Wilkins, J. Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1693), 8o.
—. Mathematical Magick (2nd ed., London, 1680), Bk. 2, chapters
2, 4, 5.
AUTHORITIES
Allen, P., Medical education in 17th century England. Jour. of the
Hist. of Med. and Allied Sci., vol. I, no. i (January, 1946), 115-143.
Houghton, W. E., The English virtuoso in the seventeenth century.
Jour. of the Hist. of Ideas, vol. III, nos. 1 and 2 (January and April,
1942), 51-73, 190-219.
—. Gresham College; precursor of the Royal Society. Jour. of the
Hist. of Ideas, vol. I, no. 4 (October, 1940), 413-438.
Stimson, D., Puritanism and the "new philosophy" in 17th century
England. Bull. of the Institute of the Hist. of Med., vol. III, no. 5
(May, 1935), 321-334.
On Puritanism and science, see also, Merton, R. K., Science, technology
and society in 17th century England. Osiris, vol. IV, pt. 2 (1938),
and Jones, R. F. Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis, 1936).
Chapter 4
SOURCES
"Ballad of Gresham Colledge," British Museum: Add. MS. 34,217,
fos. 30v-31r; Sloane MS. 1,326, fos. 116-12ov and 363, fos. 38-41. See
also Stimson, D. 'Ballad of Gresham Colledge.' Isis, vol. XVIII, 1,
no. 52 (July, 1932), 103-117; and supra, p. 65, note 3.
Boyle, R. Works, ed. by T. Birch (5 vols., London, 1744), I, 5, 20; V,
320, 334, 364, 375, 392.
Evelyn, J. Diary and Correspondence, ed. by W. Bray (London, 1818).
Pepys, S. Diary, ed. by H. B. Wheatley (9 vols., London, 1926).
The Philosophical Society, ed. by R. T. Gunther. Early Science in
Oxford, vol. IV (London, 1925).
Pope, W. Life of... Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury (London, 1697),
27.
Wren, Parentalia (London, 1750), 247, 254.
254




BIBLIOGRAPHY         AND   SOURCES
A-U THORITIES
Browne, C. A., Scientific notes from the books and letters of John
Winthrop, Jr. (1606-1676). Isis, no. 36, vol. XI (December, 1928),
325-346.
D'Israeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors (2 vols., London, n.d.),
II, 341 n.
Stimson, D., Hartlib, Haak and Oldenburg: Intelligencers. Isis, no. 84,
vol. XXXI, 2 (April, 1940), 309-326.
-—. Dr. Wilkins and the Royal Society. Jour. of Mod. Hist., vol. III,
no. 4 (December, 1931), 539-563.
Wells, J. Oxford and its Colleges (12th ed., London, 1923), 262.
For the story of the mace, see Weld, I, 152-165.
Chapter 5
SOURCES
Behn, A. Works, ed. by M. Summers (London, 1915), III, 388, 390-497.
Butler, S. Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose (London, 1759), 1-56.
Glanvill, J. Vanity of Dogmatizing (London, 1661).
J. G. [Joseph Glanvill], A further Discovery of Mr. Stubbe in a Brief
Reply to his last pamphlet against Jos. Glanvill (London, 1671),
27-28.
Neal, D. History of the Puritans, ed. by Toulmin (London, 1822),
III, 393n.
Royal Society MSS., Classified Papers, IV (1), no. 17; also transcribed
in Birch, I, 36.
Shadwell, T. Works (London, 1720), I, 341, 344 ff.
Sorbiere, S. Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre oA sont touches
plusieurs choses, qui regardent l'estat des sciences et de la religion,
et autres matieres curieuses (Paris, 1664), 79-92.
Sprat, T. Observations on Mons. de Sorbiere's Voyage into England
(London, 1665), 235, 237, 242.
Stubbe, H. Campanella Revised, or an Enquiry into the History of the
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-. The Plus Ultra Reduced to a Non Plus... (London, 1670),
40-41, 153.
Wood, A. Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. by P. Bliss (London, 1817), III,
1067, 1070-1071.
Wotton, W. Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (2nd
ed., London, 1697), 419.
AUTHORITIES
Lloyd, C., Shadwell and the virtuosi. Pub. Mod. Lang Assoc., vol. XLIV
(December, 1930), 472n, 494.
MacCarthy, B. G. Women Writers, Their Contribution to the English
Novel, 1621-1744 (Cork University, 1944), 81-82, 91, 120.
Mussr, R. and Krantz, J. C., Jr., The friendship of Robert Boyle and
Christopher Wren. Bull. of the Hist. of Medicine, VIII, no. 8
(October, 1939), 972-973.
Pearson, N., The virtuosi. Nineteenth Century, vol. LXVI (November,
1909), 859.
Sonnichsen, C. L. The Life and Works of Thomas Sprat (1931), an unpublished dissertation, Harvard University. The author graciously
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Stimson, D., Christopher Wren, F. R. S. Scientific Monthly, vol. LIII
(October, 1941), 360-367.
Chapter 6
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Grew, N. Musaeum Regalis Societatis (London, 1681), 388.
Royal Society MSS. "Miscell.: Papers of Councils, Committees, etc."
Sources listed under chapters 4 and 5.
AUTHORITIES
Armitage, A., Our first Astronomer Royal... Science Progress no.
135 (July 1946), 5o6-515.
Gosse, E. History of Eighteenth Century Literature, i660-I780 (London, 1889), 75-76.
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More, L. T. Isaac Newton, a Biography. (New York, 1934), 154, 156,
252, 510-518.
Stimson, D., Dr. Wilkins and the Royal Society. Jour. of Mod. Hist.
III, no. 4 (December, 1931), 562-3n.
Wheatley, H. B. The Early History of the Royal Society. The Sette
of Odde Volumes, No. 35 (London, 1905).
Chapter 7
SOURCES
The Spectator, ed. by G. A. Aitken (6 vols., London, n.d.) vol. I.
The Tatler, ed. by G. A. Aitken (4 vols., n.p., n.d.)
Swift, J. Gulliver's Travels, ed. by T. Scott, in Swift's Prose Works,
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Craig, J. Newton at the Mint (Cambridge, 1946).
More, L. T. Isaac Newton, a Biography (New York, 1934).
Whiteley, J. H. Wesley's England: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Social and Cultural Conditions (London, 1945).
On Gulliver's Travels: Nicolson, M. and Mohler, N., Scientific background of Swift's 'Voyage to Laputa.' Annals of Science, II, no. 3
(July, 1937), 301-334; Gould, S. J., Gulliver and the moons of Mars.
Jour. of the Hist. of Ideas, VI (January, 1945), 91; Case, A. E.
Four Essays on Gulliver's Travels (Princeton, 1945), 89-91.
On the later history of Gresham College: An Encyclopedia of London
(New York, c. 1937), 353; London and its Environs ed. by Muirhead,
Findlay and Muirhead (4th ed. London, 1935) 260; "Sir Thomas
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Chapter 8
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Hill, J. A Review of the Works of the Royal Society... (London,
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257




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Wren. Parentalia (London, 1750).
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Bonno, G., Hans Sloane et les relations intellectuelles Franco-Anglaises
au dix-huitieme sicle (d'apres des documents inedits). Romanic
Review XXXIV, no. i (February, 1943), 40-49.
D'Israeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, ed. by his son (2 vols.
London, n.d.) II, 364-374 and notes.
Emery, C., 'Sir' John Hill versus the Royal Society. Isis, vol. XXXIV
(summer, 1942) 16-2o.
Chapter 9
For this summary of the election procedures and for the election of
colonial Fellows, full use has been made of the carefully documented article by Raymond P. Stearns, "Colonial Fellows of the
Royal Society of London, 1661-1788," The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, vol. III, no. 2 (April, 1946), 208-268.
On American Fellows, see Heindel, R. Heathcote, Americans and
the Royal Society, 1783-1937. Science, n.s. 87 (March 25, 1938),
267-272.
Both articles have been supplemented by Weld's History as far as it
goes, by the Record, Lyons, and articles in the Dictionary of National Biography and the Dictionary of American Biography.
Silliman's and Dana's claims to scientific eminence are based on the
biography by Fulton, J. F. and Thomson, E. H. Benjamin Silliman,
Pathfinder in American Science (New York, 1947), 54-56, 243-247.
See also Tredinnick, F. A., Jr. Cotton Mather, Puritan Scientist, A
Study of his Curiosa Americana. Unpublished M. A. thesis, Columbia University, June, 1947. The Curiosa are Mather's letters to the
Royal Society.
Chapter lo
SOURCE
Granville, A. B. The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1836).
258




BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES
AUTHORITIES
Dale, H., The Royal Society and its Homes. Nature, vol. 152 (December 4, 1943), 649.
Fulton, J. F., The Warrington Academy (1757-1786) and its influence
upon medicine and science. Bull. of the Hist. of Med. vol. I, no.
2 (February, 1933), 54-56, 59.
Garrison, F. H., Medicine in the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian. Bull.
of the Hist. of Med. vol. II (October, 1934), 501.
Geikie, A. Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917).
Parker, I. Dissenting Academies in England (Cambridge, 1914), 46 -122.
Turner, D. M. History of Science Teaching in England (London,
1927), 40-86.
Whiteley, J. H. Wesley's England (London, 1945), 33, 43, 44.
For the story about Franklin's lightning rods, see Weld, II, 93-103.
Chapter Iz
SOURCES
An Authentic Account of the Dissensions and Debates in the Royal
Society (London, 1784).
Babbage, C. Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and
on Some of its Causes. (London, 1830.)
Barrow, Sir J. Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society
Club. (London, 1849), 10, 33, 36, 40.
Granville, A. B. The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1836).
"Peter Pindar" [John Wolcot], Peter's Prophecy; or, the President and
Poet; or, an Important Epistle to Sir Jos. Banks, on the Approaching Election of a President of the Royal Society. (Dublin, 1789.)
AUTHORITIES
Bragg, W., History in the archives of the Royal Society. Science, n.s.
89 (May 19, 1939), 445-453.
Geikie, A. Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917).
259




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Turner, D. M., History of Science Teaching in England (London,
1927).
Woodward, E. L. The Age of Reform, I8I5-7o. (Oxford History of
England, 1938), 471-473, 490.
Chapter 12
SOURCES
Anon. Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society: A Popular Biography
with an Historical Introduction and Sequel. (London, 1844.)
Babbage, C. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, A Fragment (Philadelphia, 1841).
Barrow, Sir J. Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society
Club. (London, 1849), 51, 88, 92, 94, 106-7.
[Gosse, E.] Father and Son, Biographical Recollections (New York,
1907), chapter 5.
Granville, A. B. The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1836).
Hooker, J. D. Address of the President delivered at the Anniversary
Meeting of the Royal Society (London, 1875), 6.
AUTHORITIES
Bonney, T. G. Annals of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society
(London, 1919).
Bragg, W., History in the archives of the Royal Society. Science, n.s. 89
(May 19, 1939), 449.
Geikie, A. Annals of the Royal Society Club (London, 1917).
Todhunter, I. William Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge: An Account of his Writings with Selections from his Literary and Scientific Correspondence (2 vols. London, 1876), II,
129, 135.
Turner, D. M. History of Science Teaching in England (London,
1927).
Woodward, E. L. The Age of Reform, 1815-70. (Oxford History of
England, 1938.)
260




BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES


Chapter 13
The facts and figures in this chapter have been taken mainly from
the lists of benefactions, of recipients of awards and similar evidence in the Record, supplemented by the treasurer's intimate
knowledge of the Society's affairs during the nearly forty years of
his membership in the Society as given in Lyons.
Bragg, W., Presidential address, Nov. 3o, 1937. Proceedings of the
Royal Society, Series B. vol. 124, pp. 383-4.
--     History in the archives of the Royal Society. (Pilgrim Trust
Lecture, April 24, 1939.) Science, n.s. vol. 89 (May 19, 1939), 445 -453 -Dale, H., The Royal Society and its homes. Nature, vol. 152 (Dec. 4,
1943), 649-651.
The Pilgrim Trust Lecture. Nature, vol. 142 (December 17, 1938),
p. 1068.
Chapter i4
For this chapter the Record and Lyons have been supplemented by
personal observation (July, 1939) and by the following:
Bonney, T. G. Annals of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society
(London, 1919), 27ff., 95.
Dale, H., Address at the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society,
Nov. 30, 1945, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B. vol. 133
(Feb. 12, 1946), 123-139.
-- The Royal Society and its homes, Nature, vol. 152 (December
4, 1943), 649-651.
Election of Statesmen as Fellows of the Royal Society. Science, n.s.
vol. 71 (June 27, 1930), 656.
Lists of Candidates: Science, n.s. vol. 1ol (April 13, 1945) 372-373;
Nature, vol. 157 (March 23, 1946), 363; vol. 159 (March 29, 1947),
429.
(Princess Elizabeth), Baltimore Sun, July 4, 1947.
(Waldemar Kaempffert's report on the 1947 meeting of the British
Association) New York Times, August 28, 1947.
For Dr. Kapitza, see Sir Ernest Rutherford, Address at the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society, Dec. 1, 1930, Proceedings of the
261




SCIENTISTS AND AMATEURS
Royal Society, Series A, no. 813 (January i, 1931), 249-254; Sir F.
Gowland Hopkins, Address at the Anniversary meeting... Nov.
3o, 1935, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A, no. 879 (January i, 1936), 258; Nature, vol. 135 (May 4, 1935), 755, and vol. 136
(November 23, 1935), 825.


262




INDEX


Academie des Sciences, 64, 175
Academies, dissenting, 166-8, 18o
Acton lands 136-7, 230
Addison, Joseph, 127-30, 163, 18i
Advancement of Learning, 12, 14
Aggassiz, Louis, 158
Agriculture, 15, 106, 131, 175, 178
Amateurs (science-lovers), 27; organized, 30, 44-5; foreign, 32; activities, 23 et seq., 96, 246; personnel, 34, 56, 148, 198; importance,
36, 115, 218-19, 249-50; influence on
style, 108-11; proportion to scientists, 137, 157, 237-8; see also
Virtuosi
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, 156
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 191
American Philosophical Society, 157
Anderson, John, 182; Anderson's Institution, 182
Anne, Queen, 52, 113, 118, 120, 134
Antiquarians, 117, 140; Society of,
140, 176
"Atlantis," 15, 16
Arber, Agnes, 238
Aristotle, 1 et seq., 40, 75-6
Arundel House, 47, 103
Asquith, Henry H., 237
Association of American Geologists
and Naturalists 191,
Astronomy: workers in, 29, 111-14,
137, 180, 188; theories and obser

vations, 37-8, 40-1, 43, 74, 202 et
seq.; Winthrop, 55-6; satires on,
58, 94, 127, 132; organizations, 185,
233, 241; see also Telescopes
Aubrey, John, 41, 63-4
Audubon, James, 158
Babbage, Charles, 186, 190-5, 21o
Bache, Alexander, 158-9
Bacon, Francis, 2, 10-14 et seq., 36,
42, 60, 71, 75, 88, 207
Baldwin, Stanley, 237
Ball, William, 102
Ballad of Gresham College, 56-63,
138
Banks, Joseph, 116-17, 140, 157 et
seq., 172; explorations, 173-4, 189;
Iceland, 174; patron of science,
176; P.R.S., 177-8, 209; attitude to
scientific societies, 183, 207; autocratic rule, 186-90, 194; criticism
of, 189-90, 205, 214
Barometer, 42, 44, 8o, 90, 91, 127, 138
Barrow, Isaac, 54, 167
Barrow, James, 185, 190, 204
"Battle of the books," 76, 95
Beaumont, William, 159
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 91, 94, 95
Birch, Thomas, 140, 167
Bohr, Niels, 139
Botany and biology: medical botany,
1o, 32, 40, 155; gardens, 19-20,
62; classification, 111; collections,


263




INDEX


133-4, 145, 154, 176, 178; satires on,
128-31, 142; popular interest in,
181; organizations, 183, 224, 241;
see also Microscope
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 158, 159
Bowdoin, James, 156, 158
Boyle, Robert: friends of, 15-16, 20-1,
77, 131; "invisible college," 37 and
37n, 38-9, 52, 54; work, 43-4, 55,
59, 80 et seq.; at Oxford, 47-8, 76,
88; and Oldenburg, 65 et seq., 73,
go; refused presidency, 98-9; death,
126; notes scarcity of scientists,
197; and theology, 204
Boylston, Zabdiel, 153-4
Bragg, William, 139, 184, 198; P.R.S.,
234-5, 248
Battle, Thomas, 153; William, 153
Bridgewater, Earl of, 204
Bridgewater Treatises, 204-5, 215
Briggs, Henry, 29, 167
British Academy, 232
British Association for the Advancement of Science, 185, 218, 239, 248;
formation, 191; preamble of constitution, 195-6; relations with
Royal Society, 223, 228, 230
British Museum, 103, 135, 177-8, 209,
248
Brouncker, Lord, 78; first P.R.S., 13,
101
Bruno, Giordano, 2
Buffon, Georges, Comte de, 125, 136
Burlington House, 228, 241, 242
Burnet, William, 153
Butler, Samuel, 91-2, 127
Byrd, William, 152-3
Calendar, reform of, 169
Cambridge University, 9, 28, 29, 39,
54, 58, 97, 113, 120, 167, 180-1,
201-2, 229, 243
Carbery, John, Earl of, 99-101
Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 227,
230-1, 247
Cavendish, Henry, 203
Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge,
202
Charles II, 50, 73, 121, 201; Founder
and Patron, 6, 47, 52 et seq., 64,


121, 185; scientific interests, 32,
80-i, 111-12; virtuoso, 36; anecdotes, 53, 80; visit to Royal Society,
78-9; Chelsea College gift, 104; portrait, 222
Chelsea College, 65, 104
Chemistry: interest in, 16, 32, 54, 55,
74; satirized, 92; professors of, 159,
i8o-1, 184; leaders in, 195, 203,
205-9, 237, 248; organizations, 224,
233, 241
Churchill, Winston, 237
Clocks and watches, 43, 44, 138,
174-5
Colbert, 64
Colchester, Lord, 210
Collections, see Royal Society: Activities; Museums; British Museum
Comenius, Amos, 14, 15, 18
Cook, James, 139, 173-4, 201, 247
Copernicus, Nicholas, 1, 4, 1o, 38,
40-1, 43
Copley Medal, 138-9, 156, 170, 176,
193, 225
Council of Royal Society, 54, 78, 83,
104, 123, 187, 21o, 221; powers of,
148-9, 177, 192-3, 216, 239; scientist members, 147-9, 205
Cowley, Abraham, 18, 21-3, 71; Ode
to the Royal Society, 21
Crane Court House, 121-5, 127, 131,
176-7
Cromwell, Oliver, 19, 39, 45, 53;
Richard, 50; Robina, wife of John
Wilkins, 50
Dale, Henry, P.R.S., 238-9, 241-2, 248
Dalton, John, 195, 203, 208
Dana, James Dwight, 159
Darwin, Charles, 18o; Erasmus, 180
Davy, Humphry, 162, 184, 19o, 195;
P.R.S., 181, 206-9, 248
Davy Medal, 207, 226
De Fabrica Humani Corporis, 41
De Revolutionibus, 41
Descartes, Rend, 35, 42, 44
Description of the Famous Kingdom
of Macaria, 15
Diderot, Denis, 163
Digby, Kenelm, 32, 6


264




INDEX


Digges, Leonard, 2; Thomas, 2
Disraeli, Benjamin, 237
D'Israeli, Isaac, 143-4
Dissenters, 165-7
Dryden, John, 1oo
Dudley, Paul, 153
Education: criticism of, 9, 23-4; for
youths, 27, adults, 27-30, 124,
workers, 181-2, 183-4; medical, lo,
28; plans for: Gilbert's, 9-1o, Comenius', 14, Hartlib's, 15, Petty's,
17, Cowley's, 21-3; science in,
165-8, 182, 202; share of Royal
Society in, 228-9, 248
Einstein, Albert, 139
"Elephant in the Moon," 91
Elizabeth, Princess, 237-8
"Emperor in the Moon," 94
England, conditions in time of: Elizabeth, 1-2, 31; early Stuarts, 3-4,
30-1; Cromwell, 3, 45, William and
Mary, loo-1, Hanoverians, 118-20,
161-4, 200-1, 218; Victoria, 161,
223; see also Industrial Revolution
English style 75, io8-11
Ent, George, 37, 38, 54, 78
Europe, conditions in: 17th century,
31-2, 118-19; 18th century, 162-3,
165; i9th century, 200
Evelyn, John: designed frontispiece,
13; activities, 18-21, 51, 61, 8o, 98;
proposed society, 20-1; at Wadham
College, 49; at Oxford, 77; named
Royal Society, 52; suggested motto,
64; visited Oldenburg, 67; scorned
critics, 89; recorded Ball's gift,
102; secured Arundel Library, 103;
suggested English studies, 109-10;
death, 126; Diary, 19; Fumifugium,
62; Sylva, 107
Faraday, Michael, 184, 195, 203
Fellows of Royal Society: Original or
Charter, 54 et seq., 98, 152, 241;
"gentlemen," 56, 115, 139-40, 212 -13; American colonial, 55, 99, 125,
149, 151-7; Americans as foreign

ers, 158-60; foreign members, 114,
125, 132, 136, 148, 156-8, i6o, 209;
limitation of numbers, 98, 198,
209-10, 237-9; election procedures,
148-51, 216-17; criticisms of, 188-9,
194, 212-13; qualifications, 191-2,
209, 236-8; participation, 221, 239;
women, 237-8; moder non-scientists, 237
Flamsteed, John, 43, 107, 111-13, 121,
132, 137
Foster, Samuel, 38, 47
Franklin, Benjamin, 125, 139, 155,
156; on lightning rods, 169-72, 181
Galen, Claudius, 4, 34-5
Galileo, Galilei, 5, lo, 35, 40 et seq.
Garden, Alexander, 155
Geodetic survey, 102, io6, 247
Geological Society, 185, 205
Geology, 159, 185, 202, 210, 233, 241,
243
George III, 172, 175-6, 199, 210
George IV, 199, 208
Gilbert, Humphrey, 9, 23, 26
Gilbert, William, o1, 42, 43, 44
"Gimcrack, Sir Nicholas," 92-94, 95,
101, 128-30
Gladstone, William, 237
Glanvill, Joseph, 57, 81, 88-9
Glisson, Francis, 55
Goddard, Jonathan, 37 et seq., 79
Gosse, Edmond, 109, 205
Granville, Augustus B., 162, 185-6,
190-5, 210-14
Gray, Asa, 159
Gresham, Thomas, 26, 27, 121, 124
Gresham College, 26, 28-30 et seq.,
57-8, 74-5, 103, 114, 126, 167, 221;
move from and later history,
121-4; confusion with Royal Society, 132
Greshamites, 3o; men of Gresham, 95
Grew, Nehemiah, 65, 103, 107, 111,
131
Grove, William R., 215-16
Gulliver's Travels, 130-2
Haak, Theodore, 31-2, 38-9, 54
Hales, Stephen, 137, 139, 174


2i5




INDEX


Halley, Edmond: importance as astronomer, 42, 43, 44, 132, 137, 173;
and Newton, 97, io8, 113; editor,
100
Harrison, John, 138, 174, 175
Hartlib, Samuel, 14-16, 24, 31, 32,
65
Harvard University, 153, 158
Harvey, William, 4, 41, 42-4
Herschel, John F. W., 202; candidate
for P.R.S., 162, 210
Herschel, William, 139, 175-6, 18o,
202; Caroline, 203
Hill, John, 140-6, 169, i8i, 186, 237
History of the Royal Society, 13-14,
36, 70-3 et seq., 109, 126
Hooke, Robert, 42, 44, 55, 72, 106,
13'; curator, 43 et seq.; editor, 69,
107; microscopic work, 76-7, 78,
81, satirized, 92; opposition to
Newton, 117, to move, 121-2;
death, 117, 126
Hosack, David, 158
Howard, Charles, 61; Henry, 103
Humboldt, Alexander von, 229
Hunter, John, 139, 168; William, 168
Hutton, Charles, 187-8
Industrial Revolution, 164, 196, 197,
201
Instruments, scientific, 12, 35-6 et
seq., 78, 138, 158, 164, 168, 175, 183,
197; see also Barometer; Magnet;
Microscope; Telescope; Clocks
and Watches; Logarithms, Tables
of
Intelligencers, 15, 32, 65, 69
International Association of Academies, 231-3
International  Research   Council,
231-3, 235
International Unions, 232-3, 235
"Invisible College," 5, 26, 32, 37-44
et seq., 105
James II, 81, 120, 238
Jenner, Edward, 168, 181, 195
Journal des Savans, 66


Kapitza, Peter, 242-3, 245
Kepler, Johann, 42, 43, 44
Kew Gardens, 145, 176, 178; observatory in, 228
King, William, 143
King's College, London, 202
Langmuir, Irving, 234
Laplace, Pierre, 202
Lectureships, see Royal Society: Activities
Lee, Arthur, 155
Leeuwenhoek, Antonj van, 129, 221
Leibnitz, Gottfried, 44
Leverett, John, 153
Libraries, public, 182; of Royal Society, q.v.: Activities
Lightning rods, 168-72
Lind, James, 137, 174
Linn6, Carl, 183
Linnean Society, 183, 185, 223, 241
Livius, Peter, 155-6
Lloyd, Claude, 93
Logarithms, Tables of, 29, 44
Lonsdale, Kathleen, 238
Lucasian professorship, Cambridge,
167
Lunar Society, Birmingham, 180
Lyell, Charles, 203
Lyons, Henry, 106, 137, 157, 227
Macclesfield, Lord, P.R.S., 168-9
Macdonald, Ramsay, 237
Magnet (loadstone), 33, 43, 49, 59,
82-3
Malpighi, Marcello, 41, 107
Manchester College, Oxford, 167
Mathematical Magick, 35
Mathematics: professors of, 29, 97,
167; problems in, 35 et seq., 63,
208; Archimedes, 48; satirized, 92,
131-2; mathematicians, number of,
137, 178, 205; Tripos, 180; Union
of, 233
Mather, Cotton, 141, 150, 152-3
Maty, Paul H., 187-9
Maupertuis, Pierre L. M. de, 125,
136


266




INDEX


Mechanics Institutes, 181-2, 195
Medicine: doctors of, o0, 37 et seq.,
153 et seq., 168, 245; training in,
28; work in, 84-6, 137, 227, 244;
satirized, 92, 129, 188, 192; numbers, 213, 236-7
Mercers Company, 27, 29, 105, 121-3
Merrit, Christopher, 37, 39
Meteorology, 12, 138, 229, 240, 245
Methodists, 120, 201
Metternich, Age of, 200
Micrographia, 76-7, 81, 92, 107
Microscope, 33-4, 43, 76-7, 82, 129,
221
Mitchell, John, 154
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 137
Montesquieu, Charles de, 125, 136,
163
Moray, Robert, 52-3, 60, 63, 73-4, 97,
112
Morgan, John, 155
Morris, Robert, 154-5
Mortimer, Cromwell, 144
Moulin, Pierre, 32; Louis and Peter,
32
Museums, 20, 26-7, 33, lo0; see also
British Museum; Royal Society:
Activities: collections
National Physical Laboratory, 228,
245, 247
Neile, William, 49, 54
New Atlantis, 12-14
Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of,
82-4, 238
Newton, Isaac: pre-eminence, 6, 42,
44, 185; scientific work, 43, 107-8;
activities, 97, 163; and Sloane, 103,
123, 126, 132; P.R.S., 113-17, 120 -32, 138, 179; knighted, 120; death,
126
Novum Organum, 11-12, 14
Nuffield, Viscount, 237
Observations, 74-5, 103
Oldenburg, Henry: foreigner, 31; relations with Boyle, 54, 73; secretary and editor, 65-9, 102, 107, 135;
in prison, 67-8, 70, 90; death, 98


Oglethorpe, James, 154
"On the Royal Society," 91-2
Opticks, 117
Organon, 12
Oxford Philosophical Society, 5,
46-8, 54, 105, 167
Oxford University, 9, 28, 29, 39, 45,
54, 58, 76-7, 113, 167-8, 201, 229
Pascal, Blaise, 42, 44
Pasteur, Louis, 203
Pavlov, Ivan, 139
Pembroke, Earl of: P.R.S., 1oo-1
Penn, William, 99, 152
Pepys, Samuel: diary, 67, 80; Duchess's visit, 82-3, 238; P.R.S., 98-1oo;
death, 126
Petty, William: book, 16-18, 24; at
Oxford, 46 et seq.; Fellow, 54, 55,
60, 64, 72, io6; knighted, 121
Philosophical Club, 217-18, 241
Philosophical Collections, see Philosophical Transactions
Philosophical Transactions: origins,
65-9; satires on, go et seq., 131,
140-4; suspension of, 1oo, 107-8,
135; supervision of, 114, 144, 169;
papers in, 137, 146, 171, 185, 205,
212 et seq.; Advertisement, 144;
importance of, 146, 245
Physics: subjects, 35 et seq., 169 et
seq., 181, 183-4, 208, 214; leaders
in, 203 et seq., 215-16, 237, 238,
241-2, 245, 248; organizations in,
224, 240-1; see also Mathematics
Pierce, Benjamin, 158, 159
Pilgrim Trust Lecture, 234-5
"Pindar, Peter," 178, 189-90, 205
Pope, Walter, 49, 54
Priestley, Joseph, 139, i66, 180, 203
Principia, 97, 107-8
Pringle, John, 172
Ptolemy, Claudius, 1, 40
Puritans, 34-5, 39, 71, 73, 165, 168
Raleigh, Walter, 4, 9
Ray, John, 107-8, 111, 133, i8i
Reason, Age of, 163


267




INDEX


Rdaumur, Ren6 de, 125, 136
Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, 95-6
Reforms, humanitarian, 200-2
Relation, 73
Review of the Works of the Royal
Society, 141
Rittenhouse, David, 1i58
Robie, Thomas, 153
Robinson, Robert: P.R.S., 248
Rockefeller, John D., 237
Rooke, Lawrence, 47, 48, 72, 221
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 163
Royal Astronomical Society, 113,
185, 241
Royal Institution, 159, 183-5, 207,
234
Royal Medals, 193, 199, 208, 216, 226
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 74,
111-14, 169, 247
Royal Society:
Purpose
5-6, 89, 107, 184, 218-19, 243-7
Organization
name, 6, 52, 63; benefactor, 33;
founders, 34, 40, 54; motto, 35 and
35n., 63, 64; charters, 52-4, 63, 76,
192, 216-17, 240; charter-book, 52,
74, 120, 199; journal book, 50-2, 97,
140, 150; Royal Patrons, 52-4, 120,
176, 199; mace, 53-4, 63, 222; date
of founding, 53, 249; annual meeting, 63-4; membership, 51-2, 97-8,
101-2, 132, 137, 147-51, 188 et seq.,
212-13, 217, 236-8, see also Fellows;
curators, 65; Council, q.v.; presidents: loo-1, 140, 168-9; powers,
193; term of office, 194, 213-14, 239;
contested election, 210; distinction
of, 248-9; present, 248; secretaries,
65, 68, 135-6, 143-4, 187-9, 239;
treasurers, 102, 194, 211, 213, 216,
227, 239; statutes, revision of, 148 -51, 209, 216, 239; finances, 64-5, 70,
o10-6, 136-7, 148-9, 177, 198, 216 -17, 223 et seq., 248; meeting places:
Gresham College, Arundel House,
Crane Court House, Somerset
House, Burlington House, q.v.;
central location, 223, 241-2; com

mittees: policy, 106, 170-1, 221,
243-4; on Papers, 69, 144, 169, 214 -15; on sensitive plants, 80; on
Correspondence, 106-7; "georgical," 1o6; on English tongue, og9 -11; on Finance, 194, 221; onl Charters, 216; on Library, 220; regular
and special, 221; sectional, 240-1
Activities
Summarized, 243-6; methods, 25,
144, 170-1; collections, 33-4, 89-9o,
102-3, 107, 114, 123, 129; Winthrop
gift, 154; gift to British Museum,
177, 209, 248; visitors, 73-5, 78 et
seq., 125, 222; experiments, 78 et
seq.; Library, 103, 114, 123, 137,
212, 220, 248; publications, 107-8,
114, 212, 227-8, 245-6, 247, Philosophical Transactions, q.v., Proceedings, 212, 245, Record, 245;
expeditions sponsored, 159, 173-5,
227, 247; relations with government, 114, 138, 173-5, 208-9, 223-5,
244, 246-7; international relations,
229-35, 247-8; special funds: lectureships, 193, 234-5, Donation,
195, 206, 226, Scientific Relief, 225,
Research, 226-7, 245, medals, 225-6,
247, government grants, 223-5,
247, other, 206, 223, 225; support
of scientists, 244-5, 247; Royal Society Mond Laboratory, 243, 245
Royal Society Club, 217-18
Rumford, Count, see Thompson,
Benjamin
Rumford Medal, 156, 193, 225
"Salomon's House," 12-13, 20, 22
Savilian professorships, Oxford, 29,
48, 167
Scarbrough (Scarburgh), Charles, 37,
39, 84
Science and theology, 203-5
Science Without a Head, 191, 210
Scientific method, 11, 13, 24, 72-3,
79, 197, 202-3
Scientists (men of science): contrasted
with amateurs, q.v., 36, 96, 198,
246-50; in 17th century, 55-6, 69;


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INDEX


in igth century, 218-19; numbers,
96, 115, 137, 236-7, 239; American,
158-60
Shadwell, Thomas, 91, 92-4, 127, 130
Silliman, Benjamin, 159
Sloane, Hans, loi, 133, 155, i61;
collections, 103, 134-5, 145, 177;
P.R.S., 104, 116-17, 132, 136-8, 139,
168, 179; secretary, 114, 123, 135-6;
vice-president, 126
Smallpox, 137, 162, 168
Smith, Adam, 181
Smith, James, 183
Smithsonian Institution, 159
Smuts, Jan C., 237
Society of Arts, 182
Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, 182
Soirdes, 222
Somerset House, 125, 209, 222-3
Sorbiere, Samuel, 73-5
South, James, 193, 210
South, Robert, 77, 89
Spectator, 127-30
Sprat, Thomas, 48, 54, 70-6; History,
13, 18, 36, 56, 88, 206; influence of
Cowley, 21, 71; and Sorbiere, 73-5;
satirists, 81, 90-1; style, 109, 126
Steele, Richard, 127-8, 14C, 163, 181,
237
Stephenson, Marjorie, 238
Stubbs, Henry, 81, 86-9, 95, 105
Sussex, Royal Duke of, P.R.S., 162,
210-15, 229
Swift, Jonathan, 126, 130-2, 143
Sydenham, Thomas, 88 and 88n
Syllogistic reasoning, 11, 71
Tatler, 127, 141
Telescope, 2, 32, 38, 40, 56, 58, 9o,
91, 138, 176
Tennent, John, 155
Thermometers, 44, 49, 138
Thompson, Benjamin, Count Rumford, 156, 183-4, 203
Torricelli, 42, 44
Trades, histories of, 17-18, 25, 60-1
Trinity College, Cambridge, 47, 50,
167, 215


Uniformity, 4ct of, 165-6
Universities, 4, 9, 28-9, 87, 165-8,
18o-1, 201-3; see also Education;
Oxford University; Cambridge
University
University College, 202; University
of London, 202
Vanity of Dogmatizing, 57, 8i
Vaughan, Lord, see Carbery, Earl of
Vesalius, Andreas, 41
Virtuosi: in 17th century, 27, 48, 50,
71, 92, 107; as collectors, 33-6; outstanding men, 43, 6o, 88; first Fellows, 71, 75, 87-90; satires on, 87
et seq.; see also Amateurs
"Virtuoso," 92-4
Volta, Alessandro, 139
Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 125, 163
Wadham College, Oxford, 45 et seq.,
73, 76, 88, 167
Waller, Richard, ioo, 135, 150
Wallis, John, 2,, 37-8, 40, 45, 46-7,
54, 77
Ward, Seth, 29, 46, 48, 54, 55, 76,
97, 221
Warrington Academy, 166-7, 18o
Watson, Richard, 180-i
Watt, James, 180
Wealth of Nations, The, i81
Weld, Charles R., 53, 122, 137
Whewell, William, 215-16
Wilkins, John: collector and virtuoso, 33-6, 49, 55; "invisible college," 37-9; Wadham College, 45
et seq.; Fellow, 50-1, 54; secretary,
65; scientific activities, 58, 78-80,
83, 85-6, 106-7, 199; death, 97, 199;
legacy, 105-6, 227; influence on
style and classification, 109-11; collected works, 126
William and Mary, 52, 120
Willis, Thomas, 84
Willughby, Francis, 55, 107, 1o8
Winthrop, John, governor of Connecticut, 55-6, 152, 156; John,
grandson, 154


269




INDEX


Winthrop, John, Harvard professor,
155
Wits, 57, 72 et seq., 89-96, 114-15
Wolcot, John, see "Pindar, Peter"
Wollaston, William, 193, 205-6
Wood, Anthony, 86, 87
Wotton, William, 95-6
Wren, Christopher: genius, 42, 55,
72; friend of Sprat, 48; on Oldenburg, 66-7; Gresham professor, 50,


221; at Oxford, 167; Fellow, 54;
researches, 76-7, 78, 84-6, 138;
P.R.S., 99, ioi, 149; architect, 77,
85-6, 1, 122; knighthood, 120-1;
death, 126
Wren, Matthew, 54
Yale, Elihu, 153; College, 153, 159
York, James, Duke of, see James II
Young, Edward, 134


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