I thank the Librarian of the Royal Society of London for permission to quote from the John Herschel papers. Material from the J.E. Smith and William Swainson papers is quoted by courtesy of the Linnean Society of London. Arnold Thackray, Jeffrey Sturchio, Robert Bud and an anonymous referee contributed valuable criticism.

¹ For an historiographic examination of Davy biographies see Fullmer, J. Z., ‘Davy's biographers: notes on scientific biography’, Science, 20 01 1967, 155, 285–91CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Other major sources on Davy's life and works are: Paris, J. A., The life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols., London, 1831Google Scholar; Davy, John, Manoirs of the life of Humphry Davy, 2 vols., London, 1836Google Scholar; Hartley, H., Humphry Davy, London, 1966Google Scholar; Fullmer, J. Z., Sir Humphry Davy's published works, Cambridge, Mass., 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the recent collection of essays in Forgan, S. (ed.), Science and the sons of genius: studies on Humphry Davy, London, 1980.Google Scholar

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⁴ Stimson, Lyons, Todd and Fullmer all employ these unhelpful bifurcations. (It should be said, however, that despite our contrasting perspectives Fullmer and I agree on many of the details of Davy's Presidency). On the inadequacies of amateur/professional and scientific/ non-scientific dichotomies see, for example, Porter, R. S., ‘Gentlemen and geology: the emergence of a scientific career, 1660 1920’, The historical journal, 1978, 21, 809–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Reingold, N., ‘Definitions and speculations: the professionalization of science in America in the nineteenth century’, in Oleson, A. and Brown, S. C. (eds.), The pursuit of knowledge in the early American republic, Baltimore, 1976Google Scholar. Accounts which are informed by sensitivity to the complexities of the British scientific community in the early nineteenth century include Berman, M., Social change and scientific organisation: The Royal Institution, 1799–1844, Ithaca, 1978Google Scholar; Cannon, S. F., Science in culture: the early Victorian period, New York, 1978, pp. 137–200Google Scholar; Morrell, J. B. and Thackray, A., Gentlemen of science. Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford, 1981.Google Scholar

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²⁴ On Lambert see Renkema, H. W. and Ardagh, J., ‘Aylmer Bourke Lambert and his “Description of the Genus Pinus”’, Journal of the Linnean Society, botany, 1928–1931, 48 439–66Google Scholar. Raper is described in the list of the Horticultural society as of ‘13 Wimpole St. and Wendover Dean, Buckinghamshire’. He was FRS and FSA and at one time a member of the Royal Institution and the African Association. He was the author of An enguiry into the value of the ancient Greek and Roman coinage, London, 1772Google Scholar. On Morton, Lord (1761–1827) see The Complete Peerage, 12 vols, London, 1910–1959, ix, pp. 300–1.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Cannon, W. F., ‘Scientists and broad churchmen: an early Victorian intellectual network’, Journal of British studies, 1964, 4, 65–88CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Idem, ‘History in depth: the early Victorian period’, History of science, 1964, 4, 20–38Google Scholar; Cannon, S. F., Science in Culture: the early Victorian period, New York, 1978.Google Scholar

³⁷ Cannon, W. F., ‘John Herschel and the idea of science’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1961, 22, 215–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It has been pointed out to me that it may be misleading to treat the Cambridge Network as a homogeneous group. This is true. On the philosophical level much valuable work has been done in distinguishing differences in outlook within the group (See, for example, Wilson, D. B., ‘Herschel and Whewell's version of Newtonianism’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1974, 35, 79–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) The same is true of pedagogical matters at Cambridge as revealed by Becher, H. W., ‘William Whewell and Cambridge mathematics’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, 1980, 11, 1–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My own work (see op. cit. (5), chapter 5) reveals important disagreements between Babbage, Herschel and Whewell about Royal Society reform around 1830. Nevertheless, these divergences only became marked after the period covered in this paper—in part as a result of differing responses to the events of Davy's Presidency. Therefore I am justified in treating the Cambridge Network as having a broadly unified outlook on science and its social organization.

³⁸ See Rothblatt, S., ‘The student sub-culture and the examination System in early 19th century Oxbridge’, in Stone, L. (ed.), The university in society, 2 vols, Princeton, 1974, i, 247–303 (266–68).Google Scholar

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⁶⁴ The tendency of chemists to be generally conformist in their attitudes towards institutional innovation, and their lack of aspiration to disciplinary identity when compared with astronomers and geologists, is an interesting and, so far as I am aware, as yet unexplained phenomenon. The Chemical Society of London was not formed until the early 1840s. Part of the explanation for this surely lies in the extent to which the pursuit of chemistry was allied to medicine and the industrial arts. See Bud, R. F., ‘The origins and early years of the Chemical Society of London’, University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, 1980.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ The nascent reform group were uncertain about Davy's attitude toward the literary dimension of the Banksian Learned Empire. Thus, when Herschel learned of the intention of several literary Fellows of the Royal Society to form a Royal Society of Literature, he wrote to Babbage: ‘What the deuce is this new Royal Society—I thought at first it had been only a knot of dilettanti who had got the King's ear in a drunken frolic, and intended to establish something like the “Society of Arcadians” in Italy for the cultivation of pastoral poetry. But it seems now to have taken a serious turn. I hope Sir H. will not take it into his head to propose an incorporation?’ (Herschel, to Babbage, , 19 12, 1820, RSHP, 2.150).Google Scholar

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