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

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
NOAH MOXHAM
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Knowledge Communities ◽  
Knowledge Community ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Internal Organization ◽  
Limited Power ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

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

scholarly journals Croonian Lecture:—The laws of muscular motion

1926 ◽  
Vol 100 (701) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Small Body ◽  
Local Motion ◽  
Annual Lecture ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Usual Manner ◽  
Christopher Wren ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

On November 28,1660, a small body of learned men “according to the usuall custom of most of them” met together at Gresham College in the city of London to hear a lecture by one of their number, Mr. (later Sir Christopher) Wren. “After the lecture was ended, they did, according to their usual manner, withdrawe for mutual converse. Where, amongst other matters that were discoursed of, something was offered about a designe of founding a Colledge for the promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning.” From this “converse,’’ thus recorded in its first Journal-book, arose later the Royal Society. The record adds “Mr. Croone, though absent” (and aged only27) “was named for Register.” Dr. William Croone, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, Doctor of Medicine of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and author of a book “ De Ratione Motus Musculorum ,” published in 1664, dying in 1684, left a plan for an annual lecture before the Royal Society, on muscular motion, but no provision for it in his will. His widow, who married again, Dame Mary Sadleir, by her will dated 1701, remedied that omission, and directed that one-fifth of the clear rent of the “King’s Head Tavern” should be vested in the Royal Society for “the Settling a Lecture for the Advancement of Natural Knowledge,” more specifically “A Lecture or Discourse of the Nature and Property of Local Motion, and the application of the Doctrine thereof to explicate the causes and reasons of the Phenomena : every such Lecture and Discourse to be accompanied always, and joined with an Experiment proper for it.” This last provision in Lady Sadleir’s will was interpreted by the Society as a means “ to prevent the Lecture from becoming the vehicle of unsubstantial theories .”

The origins and foundation of the Royal Society of London

1960 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
English Expression ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Royal Society Of London

Three hundred years ago, on Wednesday 28 November 1660, the Royal Society of London, although not then so entitled, was formally constituted at Gresham College in the City of London by ‘these persons following’, as the Journal Book of the Society records, namely, ‘The Lord Brouncker, Mr. Boyle, Mr. Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paul Neile, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Mr. Ball, Mr. Rooke, Mr. Wren, Mr. Hill’, and ‘according to the Manner in other Countryes, where there were voluntary associations of men into Academies for the advancement of various parts of learning, So they might doe something answerable here for the promoting of Experimentall Philosophy.’ By a First Charter, granted by King Charles II on 15 July 1662, the Society became the Royal Society, and by a Second, dated 22 April 1663, the Royal Society of London for improving Natural Knowledge. The movement that led to these events originated in the time of Queen Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts: it was the English expression of those scientific interests and activities that were developing generally in western Europe and we therefore turn to that wider scene.

Editorial. An Italian correspondence, an Italian earthquake and the homes of The Royal Society

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Terry Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
College Professors ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Christopher Wren ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
The Mansion ◽  
Italian Earthquake

Introduction to the January 2005 issue of Notes and Records with a reproduction of an engraving by Nehemiah Grew, date unknown. The engraving shows Gresham College, Bishopsgate, London, the mansion of Sir Thomas Gresham and the original home of The Royal Society from 1660–1710, except for a short period just after the Great Fire of London when the Society was at Arundel House. The Society was founded at Gresham College following a lecture by Christopher Wren, at that time Gresham Professor of Astronomy. The College was named after Sir Thomas Gresham, son of Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor of London (1537–38), who conceived the idea, brought to fruition by his son, of the Royal Exchange modelled on the Antwerp Bourse. Gresham College professors continue to give free public lectures in the City of London.

A ‘College’ for the Royal Society: The abortive plan of 1667 — 1668

1984 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-186 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

THE Royal Society did not possess premises of its own until 1710. For most of the first 50 years after its foundation in 1660, the Society met at Gresham College, the educational institution in the City of London founded in the late Elizabethan period by Sir Thomas Gresham. By the Restoration the college had little vitality but plenty of space, and the Royal Society worked out a mutually advantageous relationship with its professors: the Society held its meetings and housed its facilities at Gresham, while the college gained some reflected prestige and any interested professors were allowed free membership of the Society. The only gap in the Society’s sojourn at Gresham in these years occurred in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666, in which the Royal Exchange was destroyed. Gresham College was then commandeered for more urgent civic functions, and the Society, though not actually obliged to leave, felt it best to transfer its operations elsewhere. From the summer of 1667 the Society was instead given hospitality by Henry Howard, brother of the then Duke of Norfolk, at Arundel House in the Strand, the London house of the Howard family, returning to Gresham again only in 1673 (1).

Robert Hooke's work as surveyor for the City of London in the aftermath of the Great Fire. Part one: Robert Hooke's first surveys for the City of London

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. R. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Reasonable Estimate ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

It is known that Robert Hooke was one of the Surveyors appointed after the Great Fire to assist the City in its urgent task of rebuilding, but until now only a very general understanding of the extent of his work and the time he spent on it has been gained. By examining contemporary manuscripts from the City of London's records it is now possible to make a reasonable estimate of the time he spent on the first major activities he was called upon to undertake amidst the ruins: the staking out of widened streets; and the staking out, measurement and certification of foundations of private buildings. Evidence that he staked out and certified nearly 3000 foundations between March 1667 when rebuilding began and 1672 when he started his diary is discussed and presented against a general background of the three organisations for which he worked: the Royal Society, Gresham College and the City.

Self-Scrutiny and the Study of Nature: Robert Hooke's Diary as Natural History

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
After Hours ◽  
College Now ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

Robert Hooke's intellectual life was steadfastly dedicated to the pursuit of natural philosophy and the formulation of an appropriate method for studying nature, His daily life, however, was seemingly fragmented—an energetic rush in and around the city of London, with him acting now as curator (and later secretary) of the Royal Society, now as Cutlerian Lecturer in the History of Nature and Art, now as Geometry Professor at Gresham College, now as architect and surveyor of postfire London, and forever as a member of a number of intersecting social, intellectual, and professional circles that made up London's coffeehouse culture. Such a range of activities was perhaps wider than that of many of his contemporaries, though other diarists, most notably Samuel Pepys, recorded similarly crammed lives. Yet despite the apparently unsystematic nature of his daily round he was, also like Pepys, a methodical man who hated to waste time, and for long periods he kept a diary that helped him account for how he spent it.I argue here that his diary keeping was an integral part of his scientific vision reflecting the epistemological and methodological practices that guided him as a student of nature. The diary should be read, I propose, not as an “after-hours” incidental activity removed from his professional and intellectual life; both its form and its content suggest that he chose to record a self that was as subject to scientific scrutiny as the rest of nature and that he thought that such a record could be applied to producing, in the end, a fully objective “history” with himself as the datum.

scholarly journals William Hume-Rothery, 1899-1968

1969 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 109-139 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The North ◽  
University College ◽  
University College London ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Member Of Parliament

William Hume-Rothery was born on 15 May 1899. His hyphenated surname reflects his immediate ancestry; his grandfather, William Rothery, was a clergyman of advanced views, who married Mary Hume, an authoress, with whom he shared an interest in poetry. Mary was the daughter of Joseph Hume, who died in 1855. He was a Member of Parliament, of radical persuasions, a Freeman of the City of London, one of the founders of University College London, and was concerned in the development of the British Museum. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was one of the movers of the 1832 Reform Bill. There is evidence that he was economyminded, particularly in relation to the Privy Purse, which did not particularly commend him to his Sovereign. William and his wife, who took the name Hume-Rothery, lived for some time in the North of England, but eventually, at about the time of William’s resignation from the Ministry, moved south to Cheltenham. Their son, Joseph Hume Hume-Rothery (our William Hume-Rothery’s father) was born in 1866, and lived at Cheltenham until his own marriage to Ellen Maria Carter. Joseph never went to school; he was educated by tutors, and it is a tribute both to him and to them that he took First-class Honours in Physics at London University (1886), became a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was 16th Wrangler in 1890. He then read Law and was called to the Bar in 1893. After his marriage, Joseph and his wife moved to Worcester Park, Surrey, and it was here that William Hume-Rothery was born. Finding his work as a patents lawyer somewhat uncongenial, Joseph and his family returned to Cheltenham, where their son William, with two young sisters, spent most of his childhood

scholarly journals Obituary notices of fellows deceased

1912 ◽  
Vol 86 (591) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
London School ◽  
Past President ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
School Records

By the death of Sir William Huggins on May 13, 1910, the Royal Society lost a past President and one of its oldest and most distinguished Fellows. He was one of the earliest to apply the spectroscope to the analysis of the light of the stars. From the importance and diversity of the discoveries which he made and the methods which he originated, he may with justice be called the founder of Astrophysics. It was his good fortune to assist in and follow the progress of this branch of knowledge for nearly half a century. William Huggins was born in London on February 7, 1824, his father being in business in the City. He was entered at the City of London School in the first term of 1837, and stayed there till Christmas, 1843. In the School records it is stated that he gave the German Declamation in praise of the founder, John Carpenter, on Friday, July 28, 1843. After leaving school he continues his studies under private tutors, paying attention to classics, modern languages, and Hebrew. After a few years in business he was able to retire and devote his life to scientific pursuits.

scholarly journals Robert Hooke as a Surveyor and Architect

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-55 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
The Subject ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The work that Robert Hooke performed for the Royal Society over a period of forty years is well known. His many inventions and experiments have been the subject of numerous papers and there are few standard scientific works which do not record some aspect of his achievements, The fact that he was surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire is also recorded, but it is not generally appreciated that he was an architect of no mean ability.

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