Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:02:43.298Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

K. Theodore Hoppen
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HUG 7RX.

Extract

The foundation of the Royal Society marks an important step in the institutionalization of seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. The society's existence and activities provided a focus for the exchange of opinions, while its meetings and publications became forums for scientific debate. Some writers, however, have claimed much more than this for the society and have seen its establishment as marking a real watershed between, on the one hand, intellectually ‘conservative elements’ and, on the other, a set of ‘definite philosophical principles … inspiring … progressive minds’. Others have gone still further and argued not only that the society's activities ‘enormously’ accelerated ‘the development of natural sciences’, but that these activities were the result of the ‘working out of a conscious, deliberately-conceived ideal’. But views which see a single, logically consistent conception of the nature of the scientific enterprise informing the work and outlook of the Royal Society and its members involve a serious oversimplification of the complexity of natural philosophy in the late seventeenth century. Despite some important work published in recent years, we are still far from achieving a satisfactory understanding of the complicated web of traditions, sources, and intellectual systems that provided both an inspirational dynamic for the work of natural philosophers such as those in the Royal Society and patterns of expression through which their preoccupations could be articulated. Thus the many studies which have been devoted to establishing connexions between the scientific movement and patterns of religious or political belief have been flawed from the start by unreal assumptions about the degree of intellectual coherence presented by the natural philosophy of the time. And until we can present a more three-dimensional picture of what the 'scientific movement’ was in fact all about, and until wider agreement has been reached as to satisfactory definitions of various types of socio-theological attitude and behaviour, such studies are no more than attempts to tie together two unknowns by means of a rope of sand.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

I should like to thank Professor H. F. Kearney and Professor P. M. Rattansi for their kindness in having read and commented upon an early draft of this study.

1 Jones, R. F., Ancients and moderns. A study of the rise of the scientific movement in seventeenth century England (2nd edn., Berkeley, 1965), pp. 183–4.Google Scholar

2 Purver, M.. The Royal Society: concept and creation (London, 1967), p. 239.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Rattansi, P. M.'s articles: ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan revolution’, Ambix, xi (1963), 2432CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Helmontian-Galenist controversy in Restoration England’, Ambix, xii (1964), 123Google Scholar; ‘The intellectual origins of the Royal Society’, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxiii (1968), 129–43Google Scholar; ‘The social interpretation of science in the seventeenth century’, in Mathias, P. (ed.), Science and society 1600–1900 (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 132Google Scholar; ‘Newton's alchemical studies’, in Debus, A. G. (ed.), Science, medicine and society in the Renaissance: essays to honor Walter Pagel (2 vols., London, 1972), ii. 167–82Google Scholar; ‘Some evaluations of reason in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century natural philosophy’, in Teich, M. and Young, R. M. (eds.), Changing perspectives in the history of science: essays in honour of Joseph Needham (London, 1973), pp. 148–66Google Scholar. (These last two Festschrifts contain other relevant articles.) See also Rattansi, P. M. and McGuire, J. E., ‘Newton and the “pipes of Pan”’, Notes and records, xxi (1966), 108–43Google Scholar; Skinner, Q., ‘Thomas Hobbes and the nature of the early Royal Society’, Historical journal, xii (1969), 217–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Debus, A. G., ‘Harvey and Fludd: the irrational factor in the rational science of the seventeenth century’, Journal of the history of biology, iii (1970), 81105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and an important series of articles by Webster, C., including ‘Henry Power's experimental philosophy’, Ambix, xv (1967), 150–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The origins of the Royal Society’ (an essay review of Purver's book cited in note 2 above), History of science, vi (1967), 106–28Google Scholar; ‘The College of Physicians: “Solomon's House” in Commonwealth England’, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xii (1967), 393412Google Scholar; ‘English medical reformers of the Puritan revolution: a background to the “Society of Chymical Physicians”’, Ambix, xiv (1967), 1641Google Scholar; ‘Richard Towneley (1629–1707), the Towneley group and seventeenth century science’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for 1966, cxviii (1967), 5176Google Scholar; ‘Henry More and Descartes: some new sources’, British journal for the history of science, iv (19681969), 359–77Google Scholar; the editorial matter in his edition Samuel Hartlib and the advancement of learning (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; ‘The authorship and significance of Macaria’, Past and present, no. 56 (1972), 3448.Google Scholar

4 I use the term in a general sense (and for the purposes of this essay do not follow those writers who draw rigid distinctions between ‘Hermetism’—a narrowly-defined contemplative doctrine—and ‘hermeticism’—a broadly-based system of esoteric lore); but I agree with R. S. Westfall when he notes three related aspects of a conception of nature as lying at the heart of this tradition, namely, nature as active, nature as animate, and nature as ‘psychic’. See his ‘Newton and the Hermetic tradition’, in Debus, , Science, medicine and society, op. cit. (3), ii. 183–4.Google Scholar

5 Purver, , The Royal Society, op. cit. (2), p. 61.Google Scholar

6 Kearney, H. F., Science and change 1500–1700 (London, 1971), pp. 8895.Google Scholar

7 Rossi, P., Francis Bacon, from magic to science (London, 1968), especially pp. 135.Google Scholar

8 Yates, F. A., The Rosicrucian enlightenment (London, 1972), pp. 118–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Hall, A. R., ‘Science, technology and Utopia in the seventeenth century’, in Mathias, science and society, op. cit. (3), p. 45Google Scholar. Whiteside, D. T., in ‘Wren the mathematician’, in Hartley, H. (ed.), The Royal Society: its origins and founders (London, 1960), p. 107Google Scholar, calls Wren quite precisely ‘a skilled dabbler, an amateur’.

10 A lorig list is reprinted in Gunther, R. T., Early science in Orford (14 vols., Oxford, 19231945), ii 391–2Google Scholar, from Wren, C., Parentalia (London, 1750), pp. 198–9Google Scholar. A concern for mechanical inventions was one of the central preoccupations of the philosophical society meeting at Oxford in the 1650s; see Frank, R. G.. ‘John Aubrey F.R.S., John Lydall, and science at Common-wealth Oxford’, Notes and records, xxvii (1973), 208.Google Scholar

11 Ward, J., The lives of the professors of Gresham College (London, 1740), p. 109Google Scholar. For the ‘drummer’ arid the subsequent dream, see Aubrey, John, Three prose works, ed. Buchanan-Brown, J. (Fontwell, 1972), pp. 3940 and 428.Google Scholar

12 See Jones, H. W., ‘Sir Christopher Wren and natural philosophy. With a checklist of his scientific activities’, Notes and records, xiii (1958), 1937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Purvery, The Royal Society, op. cit. (a), pp. 2062.Google Scholar

14 Advancement of learning (2nd Book), in The works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, J., Ellis, R. L., and Heath, D. D. (14 vols., London, 18681890), iii. 362–3 and 330Google Scholar. See also Novum organum, Book Two, Section XXIX (Works, iv. 169Google Scholar): ‘We have to make a collection or particular natural history of all prodigies and monstrous births of nature; of everything in short that is in nature new, rare, and unusual’. And see Section XXXI (Works, iv. 170–3).Google Scholar

15 Turnbull, G. H., ‘Samuel Hartlib's influence on the early history of the Royal Society’, Notes and records, x (1953), 113–14Google Scholar. In 1655 Hartlib noted in his Ephemerides: ‘At Oxford Dr. Wallis with divers others began to collect Catalogos Materiar[um]’ and subsequently that in 1658 Robert Wood (later F.R.S.) ‘was appointed by the Club to make a Catalogue of matters for all Trades, Artificers, etc. in Oxf[ord] Library’.

16 Birch, T., The history of the Royal Society (4 vols., London, 17561757), i. 407Google Scholar. This included Ashmole, Beale, Charleton, Glisson, Henshaw, Hooke, Merret, Pell, Sprat, Wallis, and Wren. Birch's work prints with reasonable accuracy the society's minutes from its foundation to the end of 1687.

17 Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), i. 367Google Scholar. One might also note the society's interest in drawing up lists of queries to be sent to persons in remote parts of the world. Good examples are those sent to Sir Philberto Vernatti in Batavia, which included ‘What grounds there may be for the relation, concerning Horns taking Root, and growing about Goa?’, which were printed in Sprat, T., The history of the Royal Society (London, 1667), pp. 158–72Google Scholar, and those drawn up to be sent to Hungary, which, among other things, asked ‘Whether the iron that is said to be turned into copper by the vitriolate springs at Chemnitz … do after that transmutation or precipitation contain a pretty deal of gold?’, printed in Philosophical transactions, ii (1667), 467–9.Google Scholar

18 Oldenburg, to Boyle, , 24 12 1667Google Scholar, in , A. R. and Hall, M. B. (eds.), The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (9 vols. to date, Madison, 1965–in progress), iv. 78Google Scholar. Nor was Oldenburg unconscious of the society's amour propre, for a month later he told Boyle that the council was thinking of scrutinizing papers for ‘fear of lodging unknownly Ballets and Boufonries, in these scoffing times’ (ibid., p. 121).

19 Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), i. 53, 271, 300, and 393.Google Scholar

20 To Boyle; see Oldenburg correspondence, op. cit. (18), iv. 123.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., iv. 125, and v. 14–17.

22 Novum organum, Book One, Sections LXI and CXXII (Works, iv. 62–3 and 108–9Google Scholar). In 1649 Petty argued for the importance of establishing principles which could explain phenomena ‘soe easily, as that a meane capacity may be able to foretell the effects of nature before they happen’. Quoted in Webster, , ‘Henry More and Descartes’, op. cit. (3), pp. 367–8.Google Scholar

23 Webster, C., ‘English medical reformers’, op. cit. (3), pp. 2930.Google Scholar

24 O'Brien, J. J., ‘Samuel Hartlib's influence on Robert Boyle's scientific development’, Annals of science, xxi (1965), 264.Google Scholar

25 See Beale, 's pamphlet (published by Hartlib), Herefordshire orchards, a pattern for all England (London, 1657)Google Scholar. At the Royal Society's meeting of 14 January 1662–3, a committee which included Boyle, Merret, Oldenburg, Goddard, Henshaw, and Moray recommended that ‘the propagating of cider-fruit’ was a business that ‘should be recommended to all the members of the society’ (Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. [16], i. 176–7Google Scholar). See also Oldenburg correspondence, op. cit. [18], i. 479–83Google Scholar, and Turnbull, , op. cit. (15), p. 117Google Scholar. For Scale's continuing concern after joining the society, see Oldenburg correspondence, i. 314–20, 479–83Google Scholar; ii. 3–12, 348–52.

26 Beale, to Boyle, , 7 05 1666Google Scholar, in The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. Birch, T. (5 vols., London, 1744), v. 478Google Scholar. Petty even boasted to Aubrey that he had read little since the age of twenty-five, for ‘had he read much, as some men have, he had not known so much as he does, nor should he have made such discoveries and improvements’; quoted in Houghton, W. E., ‘The history of trades: its relation to seventeenth-century thought’, Journal of the history of ideas, ii (1941), 58–9.Google Scholar

27 Maddison, R. E. W., The life of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1969), p. 114.Google Scholar

28 Boyle, , Works, op. cit. (26), i. 17.Google Scholar

29 Some considerations touching the usefulnesse of experimental naturall philosophy (Oxford, 1663Google Scholar), Second Part, First Section, p. 3.

30 Boyle, , Works (1772 edn.), i. 302–3Google Scholar, quoted in Burtt, E. A., The metaphysical foundations of modern physical science (London, 1925), p. 182.Google Scholar

31 I recognize that the early Transactions were the responsibility of the society's secretary not of the society as a whole, but, as the preface to volume xiv (1684) puts it, ‘Although the writing of these Transactions, is not to be looked upon as the Business of the Royal Society: Yet, in regard they are a Specimen of many things which lie before them; contain a great variety of useful matter … the said society may not seem now to condemn a work, they have formerly encouraged’.

32 See the list in Fulton, J. F., A bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle (2nd edn., Oxford, 1961), pp. 139–40.Google Scholar

33 Experiments & observations physicae (London, 1691)Google Scholar, ‘Strange reports’ (separately paginated), pp. 119Google Scholar. These swallows had long interested the society: see Oldenburg correspondence, op. cit. (18), iii. 77–8, 255, 261–2Google Scholar; also Philosophical transactions, i (1666), 344–51Google Scholar. Boyle himself had reported on them to the society in 1664 (Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. [16], i. 369).Google Scholar

34 Experimenta, op. cit. (33), p. 28.Google Scholar

35 See Maddison, , Life of Boyle, op. cit. (27), pp. 147–57.Google Scholar

36 See Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), vi. 159–61, 283Google Scholar; also Evelyn, J.'s Sylva … to which is annexed Pomona (2nd edn., London, 1670Google Scholar), Pomona, pp. 66–7. Hooke was much stimulated towards such pursuits by reading Wilkins, John's Mathematical magick (1648Google Scholar), of which Wilkins himself had given him a copy; see ‘Espinasse, M., Robert Hooke (London, 1956), p. 46.Google Scholar

37 See The mathematical and philosophical works of the Right Rev. John Wilkins (2nd edn., 2 vols., London, 1802), ii. 8996Google Scholar (from Mathematical magick). For the continuation of similar interests by Wilkins, once a member of the Society, see Stimson, D., ‘Dr. Wilkins and the Royal Society’, Journal of modern history, iii (1931), 554–7.Google Scholar

38 See Hoppen, K. T., The common scientist in the seventeenth century: a study of the Dublin Philosophical Society 1683–1708 (London, 1970), pp. 1718, 114, 143–4.Google Scholar

39 See The diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, E. S. (6 vols., Oxford, 1955), iii. 475Google Scholar; also Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), i. 342Google Scholar, and ii. 150.

40 Printed in Sprat, , Royal Society, op. cit. (17), pp. 193–9.Google Scholar

41 Houghton, W. E., ‘The history of trades’, op. cit. (26), pp. 4957.Google Scholar

42 Yule, G. U., ‘John Wallis’, Notes and records, ii (1939), 77–8Google Scholar. See also Halley, to Wallis, , 13 11 1686Google Scholar: ‘The child you mention to have seen with 6 fingers on a hand & as many toes on each foot, is a great curiosity’; Correspondence and papers of Edmond Halley, ed. Mac-Pike, E. F. (Oxford, 1932), p. 70Google Scholar. This letter also refers to the Royal Society's interest in ‘a little man less than a pygmie’.

43 Jones, H. W., ‘Sir Christopher Wren’, op. cit. (12), p. 34.Google Scholar

44 Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), vol. ixGoogle Scholar, introduction by Franklin, K. J., pp. xviiixix.Google Scholar

45 Philosophical transactions, viii (1673), no. 92.Google Scholar

46 Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), iv. 18 and 26.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., iv. 41.

48 Grew, N., Museum Regalis Societatis. Or a catalogue & description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society (London, 1681)Google Scholar, Preface.

49 Ibid., pp. 1–4, 6–9, 81.

50 Ibid., pp. 363–4, 371, 373, 378, 375.

51 Magalotti to Cosimo III, 25 April 1669, quoted in Weld, C. R., A history of the Royal Society (2 vols., London, 1848), i. 219.Google Scholar

52 See the reprint of the catalogue originally published as Musaeum Tradescantianum (London, 1656)Google Scholar, in Allan, M., The Tradescants (London, 1964), pp. 247312.Google Scholar

53 See the list of contents printed in Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), iii. 260–3Google Scholar. By 1709 (ibid., pp. 264–74) it included the teat of a witch, a moor's ear, and a unicorn's horn.

54 Purver, , The Royal Society, op. cit. (a), p. 238.Google Scholar

55 See, for example, Hall, A. R., ‘Science, technology and Utopia’, op. cit. (9), p. 43Google Scholar, and Purver, , The Royal Society, op. cit. (2), pp. 238–9.Google Scholar

56 Some considerations touching the usefulnesse of experimental naturall philosophy (Oxford, 1663), Second part, p. 227Google Scholar; also p. 231.

57 Ibid., p. 239.

58 King, L. S., The road to medical enlightenment 1650–1695 (London, 1970), pp. 80–4.Google Scholar

59 Dobbs, B. J., ‘Studies in the natural philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby’, Ambix, xviii (1971), 513.Google Scholar

60 Wilkinson, R. S., ‘The Hartlib papers and seventeenth-century chemistry, Part Two’, Ambix, xvii (1970), 96.Google Scholar

61 O'Brien, J. J., ‘Samuel Hartlib's influence on Robert Boyle's scientific development’, Annals of science, xxi (1965), 513Google Scholar; also 270.

62 The origine of formes and qualities according to the corpuscular philosophy (Oxford, 1666), p. 387.Google Scholar

63 For this episode, see Maddison, , Life of Boyle, op. cit. (27), pp. 166–76.Google Scholar

64 Fulton, J. F., in A bibliography of … Boyle, op. cit. (32), p. 92Google Scholar, says ‘there can be no doubt about its authorship’.

65 Boyle, to Glanvill, , 18 09 1677Google Scholar, in Boyle, , Works, op. cit. (26), v. 244Google Scholar. See also The diary of Robert Hooke … 1672–1680, Robinson, H. W. and Adams, W. (London, 1935)Google Scholar, entry for 17 February 1674–5.

66 Robert Boyle on natural philosophy, ed. Hall, M. B. (Bloomington, 1966), p. 41.Google Scholar

67 Thorndike, L., A history of magic and experimental science (8 vols., New York, 19291958), viii. 180–1.Google Scholar

68 , E. and Berkeley, D. S. (eds.), The Reverend John Clayton: a parson with a scientific mind: his scientific writings (Charlottesville, 1965), p. 19.Google Scholar

69 Newton, to Oldenburg, , 26 04 1676Google Scholar, The correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. Turnbull, H. W. and Scott, J. F. (5 vols. to date, Cambridge, 1959–in progress), ii. 2.Google Scholar

70 Manuel, F. E., A portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge Mass., 1968), p. 183.Google Scholar

71 See Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), i. 22–3.Google Scholar

72 Turnbull, G. H., ‘Peter Staehl, the first public teacher of chemistry at Oxford’, Annals of science, ix (1953), 265–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, from which much of the subsequent information is taken.

73 The life and times of Anthony Wood, ed. Clark, A. (5 vols., Oxford, 18911900), i. 472–3Google Scholar. However, this claim is not substantiated by any other source.

74 Dewhurst, K., John Locke (1632–1703) physician and philosopher (London, 1963), p. 19Google Scholar. At this time Locke's theoretical concept of disease was largely that of Helmont's alien archeus imposing itself on the ferments and archei of a healthy system (ibid., p. 28). For a discussion of Le Fèvre, see Part II of the present essay.

75 Laslett, J. and Harrison, J., The library of John Locks (2nd edn., Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar. According to Laslett and Harrison's classification, Locke owned 66 books on alchemy, 38 on chemistry (presumably ‘non-alchemical’), 4 on magic, 11 on astrology, and one on witchcraft.

76 This whole question is discussed by Rattansi, P. M. and McGuire, J. E. in ‘Newton and “the pipes of Pan”’, op. cit. (3), pp. 108–43.Google Scholar

77 Rattansi, P. M., ‘Newton's alchemical studies’, op. cit. (3), ii. 174Google Scholar. On this whole question it is useful to consult Taylor, F. S., ‘An alchemical work of Sir Isaac Newton’, Ambix, v (1953), 5984Google Scholar, in which Taylor insists that ‘even a preliminary perusal of Newton's alchemical papers will leave no doubt in any mind familiar with alchemical literature, that Newton was in the fullest sense an alchemist’ (p. 63); also Westfall, , ‘Newton and the Hermetic tradition’, op. cit. (4), ii. 183–98Google Scholar, where it is argued that the ‘Hermetic elements of Newton's thought were not in the end antithetical to the scientific enterprise … by wedding the two traditions, the hermetic and the mechanical, to each other he established the family line that claims as its direct descendant the very science that sneers today uncomprehendingly at the occult ideas associated with hermetic philosophy’ (p. 195); and Boas, M. and Hall, A. R., who, in ‘Newton's chemical experiments’, Archives Internationales d'histoire des sciences, xi (1958), 113–52Google Scholar, present a contrary and, I feel, in the end unconvincing view when they try to divorce Newton entirely from the concerns of ‘an adept or an esoteric alchemist’ and see his chemical work as consisting entirely of what they call ‘genuine metallurgical and chemical operations’ (p. 148).

78 Rattansi, and McGuire, , ‘Newton and the “pipes of Pan”’, op. cit. (3), pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

79 Some considerations touching the usefulnesse of experimental naturall philosophy (Oxford, 1663), pp. 1011.Google Scholar

80 Quoted in Yates, F. A., Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition (London, 1964), pp. 430–1Google Scholar. Cudworth was a great admirer of Boyle, whose ‘pieces of natural history’ he thought ‘unconfutable’; see Jones, , Ancients and moderns, op. cit. (1), p. 315.Google Scholar

81 Newton to Aston, Francis, 23 02 16841685Google Scholar, in Newton, , Correspondence, op. cit. (69), ii. 415.Google Scholar

82 Philosophicall poems (Cambridge, 1647), p. 357Google Scholar, ‘Notes upon psychozoia’: Canto ii, 23.

83 Enthusiasmus triumphatus (London, 1656Google Scholar), reprinted in A collection of several philosophical writings (London, 1662), p. 33.Google Scholar

84 From the General Preface to A collection of several philosophical writings, pp. xvixviiGoogle Scholar. More shared his philo-semitism with Hartlib, who also forwarded More's letters to Descartes.

85 Yates, , Giordano Bruno, op. cit. (80), pp. 423–7.Google Scholar

86 More, to Boyle, , 4 12 [1665]Google Scholar, in Boyle, , Works, op. cit. (26), v. 551.Google Scholar

87 See Stubbe, 's The plus ultra reduced to a non plus (London, 1670), p. 173Google Scholar, and the letter which More contributed to riposte, Joseph Glanvill's, A praefatory answer to Mr Henry Stubbe (London, 1671), pp. 154–8Google Scholar. As a result, Stubbe ‘rayled’ at More in Oxford coffee-houses; see More, to Conway, Lady, 14 03 1670–1Google Scholar, in Conway letters, ed. Nicolson, M. H. (London, 1930), p. 327.Google Scholar

88 The immortality of the soul (London, 1659), pp. 90ff.Google Scholar

89 This is the concluding line of his An antidote against atheisme (London, 1653)Google Scholar, some of the chapter headings for Book Three of which include ‘The moving of a sieve by a chance … A magical cure of an horse … A story of a sudden wind that had like to have thrown down the gallows at the hanging of two witches’.

90 Rattansi, P. M., ‘Some evaluations of reason’, op. cit. (3), pp. 158–9.Google Scholar

91 For an account of their relationship, see Cope, J. I., Joseph Glanvill: Anglican apologist (St Louis, 1956), pp. 87103.Google Scholar

92 Philosophical transactions, ii (1667), no. 28Google Scholar; ii (1668), no. 39; iv (1669), no. 49.

93 Plus ultra, pp. 90–1.Google Scholar

94 From A blow at modern sadducism (1668)Google Scholar, quoted in Prior, M. E., ‘Joseph Glanvill, witch- craft and seventeenth-century science’, Modern philology, xxx (1932), 182Google Scholar. Glanvill could justify himself by referring to Bacon's recommendation that witch cases be recorded in connexion with his proposed natural ‘History of marvels’; see Advancement of learning (2nd Book), in Works, op. cit. (14), iii. 331.Google Scholar

95 Quoted in Prior, M. E., ‘Joseph Glanvill’, op. cit. (94), p. 185Google Scholar. Thus Glanvill was also attracted by Digby's mechanical explanation of the operation of weapon salve; see Scepsis scientifica (London, 1665), pp. 151–2.Google Scholar

96 Boyle, to Glanvill, , 10 02 16771678Google Scholar, in Boyle, , Works, op. cit. (26), v. 245Google Scholar. Boyle had contributed a letter of support to the English translation of Perreaud, F.'s The devill of Mascon. Or, a true relation of the chiefe things which an uncleane spirit did, and said at Mascon in Burgundy (Oxford, 1658)Google Scholar, which letter continued to appear in the later editions of 1658, 1659, 1669, and 1679.

97 Reprinted with a valuable introduction in Debus, A. G. (ed.), Science and education in the seventeenth century: the Webster-Ward debate (London, 1970).Google Scholar

98 Displaying of supposed witchcraft (London, 1677), pp. 267–8.Google Scholar

99 Plus ultra (1668), op. cit. (93), p. 12.Google Scholar

100 Displaying of supposed witchcraft, op. cit. (98), pp. 268–9.Google Scholar

101 Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), iii. 192.Google Scholar

102 I owe this point to Professor Rattansi.

103 See More, 's letter prefaced (pp. 157Google Scholar) to Saducisnms (2nd edn., London, 1682).Google Scholar

104 Ibid., p. 10. Andrew Paschall, rector of Chedzoy in Somerset, also supplied case-histories (pp. 281–8). In 1670 he and Glanvill were involved in plans for ‘the carrying on a philosophical correspondence, already begun in the county of Somerset, upon incouragement given from the Royal Society’; see Oldenburg correspondence, op. cit. (18), vi. 141–2 and 155Google Scholar. In 1681–2 Paschall corresponded with Robert Hooke, largely about alchemical matters; see ‘Espinasse, M., Robert Hooke, op. cit. (36), p. 119.Google Scholar

105 See Lhuyd, Edward to Lister, , 28 04 1691Google Scholar, in Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), xiv. 139Google Scholar. Lister was one of the leading antagonists of Hooke's view. Beaumont had probably moved to this view under Hooke, 's influence, for he had earlier thought fossils the product of some ‘seminal root … which in the first generation of things made all plants, and I may say animals, rise up in their distinct species’; Philosophical transactions, xi (1676), no. 129.Google Scholar

106 See, for example, Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), iii. 313Google Scholar; and Philosophical transactions, xi (1676), no. 129Google Scholar; xiii (1683), no. 150; xv (1685), no. 167; Philosophical collections, nos. 1 (1679) and 2 (1681).

107 See Hooke's Diary 1688–93 in Gunther, , Early science in Oxford, op. cit. (10), vol. xGoogle Scholar. Also the entries in the main Diary, op. cit. (65), for 16 11 1676Google Scholar; 21, 25, 28, 30 August and 4 September 1679; and throughout October and November 1680.

108 Powell, A., John Aubrey and his friends (London, 1948), pp. 248 and 285Google Scholar. Both Petty and Pell were also F.R.S. Aubrey's work ‘On education’ reflects the interests of this group of educational reformers.

109 Aubrey, , Three prose works, op. cit. (11), p. xvii.Google Scholar

110 Ibid., p. xviii. See also Frank, , ‘John Aubrey’, op. cit. (10), pp. 193217.Google Scholar

111 From his Miscellanies published in 1696, op. cit. (109), p. 428.Google Scholar

112 Ibid., p. xxxiv. In Chorea gigantum … restored to the Danes (London, 1663Google Scholar), Charleton claimed that the plain stones laid across the tops of the columns were for a ‘convenient and firm footing for such [Danish] persons of honourable condition, who were principally to give their votes at the election of the king’; against which Aubrey noted ‘’Tis a monstrous height for the grandees to stand: they had need to be very sober, and have good heads: not vertiginous' (Powell, , Aubrey, op. cit. [108], p. 107).Google Scholar

113 Emery, F. V., ‘English regional studies from Aubrey to Defoe’, Geographical journal, cxxiv (1958), 315–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114 Aubrey, , op. cit. (11), p. xix.Google Scholar

115 See the list in Powell, , Aubrey, op. cit. (108), pp. 295303.Google Scholar

116 Aubrey's papers to the Royal Society are printed in Buchanan-Brown, , op. cit. (109), pp. 311–63Google Scholar. Aubrey was also appointed a member of the society's Georgical Committee in March 1664; see Birch, , Royal Society, op. cit. (16), i. 406–7.Google Scholar