The debt of engineering to Fellows of the Royal Society

1961 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-140
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Jules Verne ◽  
Economic Statistics ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
Hooke’S Joint

King Charles II, the founder and patron of the Royal Society, in its second charter of 1663, bade the Fellows apply their studies ‘to the advantage of the human race’. Encouraged by the presence of Moray and Bruce, both with industrial and business interests, and of William Petty, the founder of economic statistics, Charles was no doubt hoping for some practical results from their work. When he teased them ‘for spending time in weighing only air,’ he may well have had a material motive in his mind. Invention and Experiment In their early meetings they often discussed industrial problems, and they had committees on Mechanical Inventions and on Histories of Trade. In Robert Hooke their Curator of Experiments, they had one of the most prolific investigators and inventors of all time, remembered today as the founder of meteorology, for Hooke’s Law, for his universal or Hooke’s joint, the first dividing engine, the spiral gear, and the balance spring of watches. The interest of the Fellows in astronomy was due in no small part to their concern with the problems of navigation. John Wilkins, the Jules Verne of his generation, who presided at the founding meeting, wrote about the possibility of journeys to the moon and in his Mathematical Magick he discussed the flying Chariot’ and ‘an Ark for submarine Navigations’. So there was justification for the King’s optimism.

Η διαμόρφωση της έννοιας της δύναμης στη φυσική φιλοσοφία στην Αγγλία στα μέσα του 17ου αιώνα

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ειρήνη Γκουνταρούλη
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
Thomas Sprat

Στη διατριβή αυτή μελετάται η διαμόρφωση της έννοιας της δύναμης στον αγγλικό φιλοσοφικό λόγο στα μέσα του 17ου αιώνα. Εν ολίγοις, η μελέτη εστιάζει το ενδιαφέρον στη σημασία της διερεύνησης τόσο του ιστορικού και του διανοητικού πλαισίου όσο και των εννοιολογικών συνθηκών της περιόδου. Μίας περιόδου όπου στο επίκεντρο του αγγλικού φιλοσοφικού λόγου έρχεται η συζήτηση σχετικά με το ποια είναι η κατάλληλη φιλοσοφική γλώσσα για να περιγράψει τη φύση. Βασικό σημείο της μελέτης αυτής, είναι η σφοδρή αντίθεση για το ζήτημα της κατάλληλης φιλοσοφικής γλώσσας, η οποία αναπτύσσεται μεταξύ του Thomas Hobbes και του John Wilkins, πρώιμου μέλους της Βασιλικής Εταιρείας. Η μελέτη αντλεί τα μεθοδολογικά και θεωρητικά της εργαλεία από το πεδίο της εννοιολογικής ιστορίας (ή ιστορίας των εννοιών). Υπό αυτό το πρίσμα, η έννοια της δύναμης μελετάται με βάση τα σχετικά σημασιολογικά πεδία τα οποία εντοπίζονται στα γλωσσικά περικείμενα αφενός του Hobbes και αφετέρου των πέντε μελών της πρώιμης Βασιλικής Εταιρείας, δηλαδή, του Wilkins, του Robert Hooke, του Robert Boyle, του Thomas Sprat και του Joseph Glanvill. Με άλλα λόγια, στη μελέτη αυτή η έννοια της δύναμης δεν προσεγγίζεται απλώς ως μία συμπύκνωση μαθηματικών σχέσεων και φυσικών φιλοσοφικών τεχνικών, αλλά ως η συμπύκνωση ενός πλήθους ιστορικών, διανοητικών και σημασιολογικών σχέσεων οι οποίες εντοπίζονται σε συγκεκριμένα γλωσσικά περικείμενα. Η μελέτη λαμβάνει υπόψη της την πληθώρα των ιστοριογραφικών ρευμάτων οι οποίες σχετίζονται με την νευτώνεια έννοια της δύναμης που δρα από απόσταση. Ωστόσο, πηγαίνει πέρα από αυτές εστιάζοντας στις υπο-διαμόρφωση εννοιολογικές δομές οι οποίες σχετίζονται με την έννοια της νευτώνειας δύναμης και οι οποίες συγκροτούνται βάσει της συζήτησης περί της κατάλληλης φιλοσοφικής γλώσσας. Οι συγχρονικά ασαφείς εννοιολογικές δομές συμπυκνώνονται στη, αλλά και συγκροτούν τη διαμάχη οι οποία βασίστηκε και διαμορφώθηκε από τα αντιθετικά φιλοσοφικά μοντέλα αφενός του Thomas Hobbes και αφετέρου των πρώιμων μελών της Royal Society. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, ο Νεύτωνας δεν θεωρείται πνευματικό επίγονος της Royal Society, αλλά της φιλοσοφικής διαμάχης μεταξύ του Hobbes και των πρώιμων μελών της Royal Society. Όπως ακριβώς και η νευτώνεια έννοια της δύναμης που δρα από απόσταση δεν είναι η συσσώρευση μαθηματικών και φυσικών φιλοσοφικών λεπτομερειών της εποχής, αλλά αναγνωρίζεται ως η συμπύκνωση μίας πληθώρας εννοιολογικών, πνευματικών, θρησκευτικών, πολιτικών και φυσικών φιλοσοφικών σχέσεων, οι οποίες θέτουν ένα συγκεκριμένο ορίζονται πιθανών εμπειριών και θεωριών.

Creating Science: The Royal Society and the New Literatures of Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Direct Observation ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
Thomas Sprat

An overview of the founding of the Royal Society of London and early members, including Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, John Wilkins, Robert Boyle, and Henry Oldenburg, who first published the Philosophical Transactions. In addition to the creation and improvement of scientific instruments, including microscopes and telescopes, as recorded by their historian Thomas Sprat, the members of the Royal Society wished to create a language of science free from distorting images and metaphor and to base science on empirical experiments and direct observation. Although challenged by many for promoting an atheist understanding of the natural world, members such as Robert Boyle defended science as complementary with theology. The Society promoted publications and established networks of scientific correspondence to include members outside London and on the Continent.

scholarly journals Seventeenth-Century ‘double writing’ schemes, and a 1676 letter in the phonetic script and real character of John Wilkins

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Poole
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Real Character ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
First Time

Royal Society Classified Papers XVI contains a letter written in not one but two seemingly mysterious scripts. As a result, this letter has remained until now effectively illegible, and has been miscatalogued. These scripts are rare examples of the written forms devised by John Wilkins to accompany his proposals for an artificial language, published under the auspices of the Royal Society in 1668. This article therefore first correctly identifies and decodes this letter, which is shown to be from the Somersetshire clergyman Andrew Paschall to Robert Hooke in London in 1676, and then surveys other surviving texts written in Wilkins's scripts or language. Finally the article addresses the contents of the letter, namely its author's attempt to build a workable double writing device, in effect an early ‘pantograph’. Designs for such instruments had been much touted in the 1650s, and the complex history of such proposals is unravelled properly for the first time.

The efforts of the Aubrey correspondence group to revise John Wilkins’ Essay (1668) and their context

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhodri Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
John Ray ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Society Committee ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Individual ◽  
John Wallis ◽  
Christopher Wren

Summary In the aftermath of the publication of John Wilkins’s Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), the Royal Society established a committee to consider and develop Wilkins’s proposals, whose members included Seth Ward (1617–89), Robert Hooke (1635–1703), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), John Wallis (1616–1703), John Ray (1627–1705), Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and William Holder (1616–1698). Despite the fact that this committee never reported, work on the Essay did continue, with many of the individual members conducting a detailed correspondence, marshalled by John Aubrey (1626–1697). In addition to the members of the original Royal Society committee, this group’s participants included Francis Lodwick (1619–1694), the Somerset clergyman Andrew Paschall (c.1630–c.1696), and Thomas Pigott (1657–1686), fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. The correspondents could not, however, agree on the best means of advancing the Essay, with the principal bone of contention being the ideas of Seth Ward. Thus, their efforts were eventually fruitless. This article traces the activities of this group and the intellectual milieu in which the revision of Wilkins’s Essay took place.

The Universities and Science in Seventeenth Century England

1971 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Major Exception ◽  
University Life ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Universe

In the course of the debate over Puritan contributions to the scientific movement it sometimes has been asserted, and even more often assumed, that the English universities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were either unsympathetic towards or even hostile to the “new philosophy,” and that scientific studies had no place within their confines. Proponents of this position acknowledge one major exception to the scientific hiatus at Oxford and Cambridge, that of the Wadham group organized by John Wilkins in the 1650s which was the precursor of the Royal Society. However, the exception itself is said to result from Puritan intervention in the universities, and the dissolution of the group to follow from the demise of the Puritan regime.It will be the purpose of this paper to examine the state of the sciences in Oxford and Cambridge prior to, during, and after the Interregnum in order to suggest that universities had shown a continuous interest in science, that Puritan intervention did not significantly alter the pattern of scientific concerns and that the existence of the Wadham group of the 1650s does little to lend support to the notion of a connection between Puritanism and the development of science.The evidence for science in the universities before the Puritan Revolution is necessarily incomplete and scattered as is much of our knowledge of university life in that period. It might be best to begin with the work of Mark Curtis and F. R. Johnson who have already shown that the traditional framework of studies permitted the introduction of new ideas. By 1610 Oxford men had been disputing about such topics as the Copernican thesis, the infinity of the universe, the plurality of worlds, the habitability of the moon, and the earth as a magnet in formal university exercises.

Hooke recommemorated

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-140
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
History Of

Richard Nichols, The Diaries of Robert Hooke, The Leonardo of London, 1635-1703 . Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994, Pp. 185, £15.00. ISBN 0- 86332-930-6. Richard Nichols is a science master turned historian of science who celebrates in this book Robert Hooke’s contributions to the arts and sciences. The appreciation brings together comments from Hooke’s Diaries , and other works, on each of his main enterprises, and on his personal interaction with each of his principal friends and foes. Further references to Hooke and his activities are drawn from Birch’s History of the Royal Society, Aubrey’s Brief Lives , and the Diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys. The first section of the book, ‘Hooke the Man’, covers his early years of education at home in Freshwater, at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he soon joined the group of experimental philosophers who set him up as Curator of the Royal Society and Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, Bishopsgate. Hooke’s domestic life at Gresham College is described - his intimate relationships with a series of housekeepers, including his niece, Grace Hooke, and his social life at the College and in the London coffee houses.

Robert Hooke: A fractographic study of Kettering–stone

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Hull
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Microscopical Observation ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Fractographic Study

Observ. XV. illustrated by Schem. IX. Figur:1 (figure 1 of this paper) in Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665)1 is a description of Kettering–stone ‘which is brought from Kettering in Northampton–shire, and digg’d out of a Quarry, as I am inform'd’. As Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society from 1662, Hooke was charged by the Society to bring in at every meeting one microscopical observation at least. The minutes of the Society2 record that on 15 April 1663 ‘Mr Hooke showed the Company two Microscopicall Schemas; one representing the Pores of Cork … the other a Kettering Stone, appearing to be composed of Globules; and those hollow ones, each having 3 Coatings, sticking to one another, and so making up one entire firm stone’.

scholarly journals The visit of Comenius to London in 1641-1642 and its bearing on the origins of the Royal Society

1940 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-160 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Invisible College ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Important Stage ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Invisible

Miss Dorothy Stimson, Dean of Groucher College, U.S.A., in an article in Isis for 1 September 1935, tried to traverse the view stated in the Introduction to my Comenius in England (Oxford University Press (1932)), pp. 6-7, that the visit of Comenius (Komensky) to London in 1641-1642 marked an important stage in the development in England of the idea of a great society for scientific research which resulted in the organization of the informal ‘Invisible College’ by Theodore Haak and others in 1645, and prepared the way for the foundation of the Royal Society in 1662. She was however unable to explain away the fact that Theodore Haak, who was one of the most active supporters of Komensky’s plan for a Scientific College in 1641, was in 1645 the virtual founder of the informal ‘Invisible College,’ the precursor of the Royal Society. Miss Stimson stresses the contrast between the universal speculative plan of Comenius as outlined in his Via Lucis (1642), and the empirical and specialized activities of the Invisible College. Miss Stimson however has completely overlooked the fact that John Wilkins (1614-1672), Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, whom she rightly regards as one of the most active members of the Invisible College, held views very similar to those of Comenius on scientific method and on the desirability of a universal language.

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