scholarly journals The officers of the Society (1662-1860)

1940 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-140 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Administrative Staff ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Routine Work ◽  
Current Business

A well-planned administration is indispensable for any new institution if it is to deal with its finances and membership, to record the communications received and to register correspondence with other bodies of like interests efficiently. With aims so wide in scope as the ‘Improvement of Natural Knowledge’ the amount of routine work was bound to be large even in the Society’s early days and to increase rapidly, but the provision of an adequate administrative staff to deal with it was for a good many years more than the Royal Society’s meagre resources could afford. Its officers as well as the salaried staff were overworked, and it was not until the early part of the eighteenth century that a satisfactory system had been gradually developed. For two centuries the Fellowship consisted for the greater part of men who had no scientific knowledge nor any real interest in the advancement of science so that for many years, in fact until after 1847, nearly two-thirds of the members of the Council belonged to this group. It was left for the most part to the officers, if they were scientific men, to see that the claims of science were not overlooked. In the Charters it is laid down that the President, the Treasurer and the two Secretaries are the Officers of the Society, and that they are to be elected by the Fellows at each Anniversary Meeting when the Council for the coming twelve-month is chosen. To them is entrusted the execution of the Society’s policy and such action as may be decided upon by the Council from time to time, or by the Fellows at their meetings. They had therefore to keep in close touch with the current business of the Society, to report upon it to the Council and to assist that body in arriving at their decisions. The Council might delegate to them power to deal with various matters, and occasions arose from time to time when they had to act to the best of their own judgment, reporting to the Council at its next meeting how such situations had been dealt with.

“The pleasure of receiving your favour”

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Valle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Central Concept

The article deals with correspondence in natural history in the eighteenth century between England and North America. The corpus discussed consists of correspondence between John Bartram and Peter Collinson, and between Alexander Garden and John Ellis. The approach used in the study is qualitative and rhetorical; the main point considered is how the letters construct scientific centre and periphery in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. A central concept is the “colonial exchange”, whereby “raw materials” from the colonies — in this case plant and animal specimens, along with proposed identifications and names — are exchanged for “finished products”, in this case codified scientific knowledge contained in publications.

Saints of Resistance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina H. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Study ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Chinese Migrants ◽  
Depth Analysis

Saints of Resistance is the first non-religious study focused on the dynamic life of saints and their devotees in the Spanish Philippines from the sixteenth through the early part of the eighteenth century. It offers an in-depth analysis of the origins and development of the beliefs and rituals surrounding some of the most popular saints in the Philippines during the period of early Spanish rule, namely, Santo Niño de Cebu, Our Lady of Caysasay, Our Lady of the Rosary La Naval, and Our Lady of Antipolo. This study recovers the voices of colonized Philippine subjects as well as those of Spaniards who, through veneration of miraculous saints, projected and relieved their grievances, anxieties, and histories of communal suffering. Based on critical readings of primary sources, it traces how individuals and their communities refashioned iconographic devotions to the Holy Child and to Mary by often introducing non-Catholic elements to their cults, derived from pre-Hispanic, animistic, or Chinese traditions. This book ultimately reveals how Philippine natives, Chinese migrants, and Spaniards reshaped the imported devotions as expressions of dissidence, resistance, and survival.

scholarly journals London 1600–1800: communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
JIM BENNETT ◽  
REBEKAH HIGGITT
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Culture ◽  
Collective Activity ◽  
Technical Culture ◽  
Knowledge And Practice ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

AbstractThis essay introduces a special issue of the BJHS on communities of natural knowledge and artificial practice in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London. In seeking to understand the rise of a learned and technical culture within a growing and changing city, our approach has been inclusive in terms of the activities, people and places we consider worth exploring but shaped by a sense of the importance of collective activity, training, storage of information and identity. London's knowledge culture was formed by the public, pragmatic and commercial spaces of the city rather than by the academy or the court. In this introduction, we outline the types of group and institution within our view and acknowledge the many locations that might be explored further. Above all, we introduce a particular vision of London's potential as a city of knowledge and practice, arising from its commercial and mercantile activity and fostered within its range of corporations, institutions and associations. This was recognized and promoted by contemporary authors, including natural and experimental philosophers, practical mathematicians, artisans and others, who sought to establish a place for and recognition of their individual and collective skills and knowledge within the metropolis.

An Eighteenth Century Voyage

1956 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. C. H. Clissold
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Isle Of Wight ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
John Wilson ◽  
Interesting Account

A recently discovered ‘Navigational Notebook’ contains an interesting account of day-to-day navigation during the early part of the eighteenth century. The document was brought to light by Mr. J. R. Timms, a student at the School of Navigation of Southampton University, whose father discovered it in a bank at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, its depositor long deceased and no longer known or traceable. The date of the manuscript is uncertain but references to John Robertson's Elements of Navigation and Archibald Patoun's Epitome seem to place it after 1730. However the account of actual navigation is given in the journal of a voyage, in 1704, from the Lizard to Madeira, which is reproduced in the Notebook. It seems likely that the author, John Wilson, eventually came ashore as an instructor in navigation (and probably mathematics) and copied out the journal from one of his earlier voyages for the benefit of his pupils. Whether this is a later work by the John Wilson referred to in E. G. R. Taylor's The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England is not clear.

Mahometan/Muslim: The Chronotope of the Oriental Tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Maryam Wasif Khan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Geographic Origin ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Ancient Time ◽  
Antoine Galland ◽  
Oriental Tale ◽  
Literary Trend

This chapter argues that we read the literary trend for the oriental tale that overtook England in the early part of the eighteenth century as one that extended beyond the metropolis. An essential element of the oriental tale, whether Antoine Galland and Grub Street’s Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or Francois de la Croix’s Turkish Tales, is the chronotope of the Mahometan—the imagined counterpart of the Ottoman or Mughal Muslim kings—a that figure defies Enlightenment modalities of ancient time and geographic origin. A ubiquitous figure in the English oriental tale, the Mahometan is constructed as a homeless potentate, a traveling merchant, an itinerant dervish, and a wanderer.

Darkening Heavens and a New World

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Economy ◽  
New Churches ◽  
End Times ◽  
Climatic Disturbances

As the Western economy grew and industrialized, society came to rely less directly on agriculture and the vagaries of the seasons. This is illustrated by tracing a series of major climatic disturbances from the late eighteenth century onward and showing how those natural factors lost much of their impact. In the early part of that era, beginning in the 1780s, volcanic eruptions contributed to an alarming era of climate disruption, and the Tambora blast in particular (1815) sparked new churches and denominations teaching apocalyptic and millenarian doctrines, with dreams of the end times. But as we proceed deeper into the nineteenth century, much of Western humanity, at least, felt ever more detached from the direct impact of climate.

Some Factors in the Early Development of the Concepts of Power, Work and Energy

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. S. L. Cardwell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Newtonian Mechanics ◽  
End Products ◽  
Rational Mechanics ◽  
Work And Energy

Almost traditionally, it seems, accounts of the development of the concepts of work and energy have tended to describe them within the classical framework of Newtonian mechanics. They are seen as the end products of the celebrated vis-viva dispute in the eighteenth century: the outcome of a debate within the confines of the science of rational mechanics. I would like to suggest that this may be to take too narrow a view of the case. It is to project backwards our present specialist arrangement of scientific knowledge, our present divisions between the sciences, and to assume that past development was strictly guided by these divisions. And this is to make questionable historical and sociological assumptions.

Serbs, Magyars, and Staatsinteresse in Eighteenth Century Austria: A Study in the History of Habsburg Administration

1976 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
Permanent Residents

The Serbs occupied a unique position among the nations living in the Habsburg empire in the eighteenth century. They were the only Orthodox Christians who had full religious equality, and collectively they enjoyed the advantages of a privileged and autonomous group. Beginning in the early part of the eighteenth century, when it gradually became apparent that the Serbs would be integrated into the monarchy as permanent residents rather than as temporary refugees and allies, the special status of the Serbs posed difficult problems for the Habsburg government. The Magyar authorities, the central government offices in Vienna, and the Serbs themselves became involved in recurrent struggles within the bureaucracy as each faction continually maneuvered to gain advantages for its position.

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