Some hitherto unknown facts about the private career of Henry Oldenburg

1963 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-103 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Exact Date ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Biography

The main outlines of Henry Oldenburg’s public career have long been known: ample evidence of bis activity as working secretary of the Royal Society from early in its history until his death in 1677 is furnished by Birch’s History of the Royal Society , by the very existence of the early volumes of the Philosophical Transactions , and by the archives of the Society. As we hope to show by editing Oldenburg’s correspondence in extenso , his exchange of letters with hundreds of learned men provides a valuable source for an understanding of the way in which scientific enterprise was conducted in the seventeenth century as well as for the understanding of many obscure points of the development of scientific thought. The correspondence also provides materials relating to Oldenburg’s own career. In spite of the detailed account in the Dictionary of National Biography , which made use of material collected from the Bremen Archives for information touching his ancestry, education and diplomatic career, Oldenburg’s private life has remained remarkably enigmatic. For example the exact date of his birth is unknown, his activities between the end of his formal education (1639) and his appearance as a diplomat in England (1653) hitherto untraced, his first wife’s name apparently unrecorded, and his means of livelihood mysterious. In the course of preparing for the press the first volume of our projected edition (to the end of 1662) we have found clues to illuminate the first two problems; work on the next two volumes (1663-5, and 1666-7, respectively) has illuminated the two latter problems.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

The Arse Poetica of Thomas Hobbes: On the Composition and Reception of De Mirabilibus Pecci

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-357
Author(s):  
Jessica Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Geological Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Mock Epic

This article provides a two-part study of Thomas Hobbes’ De Mirabilibus Pecci, a Latin poem composed very early in his career. Part one examines the poem as a product of Hobbes’ participation in the recreational literary culture of Caroline England, in particular analysing the influence of mock-epic and burlesque traditions that would continue to shape Hobbes’ writings but also studying how the poem offers compelling evidence for his early preoccupation with the laws of motion, with geological processes such as the creation and erosion of stone formations, and with the philosophy of Lucretius. Part two recounts the extraordinary history of the poem’s reception in the last decades of the seventeenth century. The poem’s familiarity among Hobbes’ allies and adversaries alike helped to cement his reputation as a master of scoffing and drollery, as an opponent of the experimental science practiced by the Royal Society, and as a freethinker or atheist.

The Reverend John Wallis, F. R. S. (1616-1703)

1960 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-67 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
John Wallis ◽  
The University ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
Country Town

John Wallis (1616-1703), one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society, was a scholar of amazing versatility. Though born into an age of intellectual giants he rapidly acquired a commanding place even among that brilliant group which has made the seventeenth century illustrious in the history of science. More than once he blazed the trail which led to some epoch-making discovery. When Newton modestly declared ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants’, he no doubt had the name of John WalHs well before his mind. Walks was born on 23 November 1616, at Ashford in East Kent, a country town of which his father was rector. On the death of his father, Wallis was sent to school at Ashford. Later he was moved to Tenter den, where he came under the care of Mr James Movat, and even in his earliest years he distinguished himself by that singular aptitude for learning which was to remain with him till the closing years of his life. At the age of fourteen he went to Felsted, and here he acquired a marked proficiency not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Hebrew. From Felsted he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and although his interest in mathematics dates from this period, he gave no evidence of unusual talent for the subject; this, he complains was because there was no one in the University to direct his studies. Divinity was his dominant interest. In 1640 he was ordained, and four years later he was appointed, together with Adoniram Byfield, Secretary to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Possibly on account of his ecclesiastical duties, which absorbed much of his time and energy, his early promise as a mathematician still remained unfulfilled.

Who Wrote What When: The Bible, Science and Criticism

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-315
Author(s):  
Geert Lernout
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
John William Draper ◽  
Century Science

According to the traditional (or ‘whig’) interpretation of history, sometime in the seventeenth century science was born in the form that we know today, in a new spirit that can best be summed up by the motto of the Royal Society: nullius in verba, take nobody's word for it. In the next few centuries this new critical way of looking at reality was instrumental in the creation of a coherent view of the world, and of that world's history, which was found to be increasingly at odds with traditional claims, most famously in the case of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. By the end of the nineteenth century, the divide between science and religion was described by means of words such as ‘conflict’ and ‘warfare,’ the terms used by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the titles of their respective books: History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).

The Nature of the Early Royal Society: Part I

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Theodore Hoppen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Working Out

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.

What happend to the Latin edition of Boyle's History of Cold?

1962 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-35
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Latin Version ◽  
Oxford University Press

In his Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle (ist ed. 1932, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1961), Dr Fulton has stated: ‘ The History of Cold seems never to have been translated into Latin.’ This conclusion is based on the fact that no Enghsh, American or Canadian library canvassed by Dr Fulton contained a copy of the Latin version, nor had it appeared for sale in any book catalogue seen in his survey. Yet there is ample evidence that a Latin translation of New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold (London, 1665 and 1683) was in fact made; that it was at least partly printed off; and that a completed edition may have been sold entire to a bookseller in Holland. The evidence for the possible existence of such an edition is to be found in the extensive correspondence between Henry Oldenburg, ‘publisher’ of the Enghsh edition of Cold and Secretary of the Royal Society, and Robert Boyle, who was mainly living in Oxford in the years 1664-66. Oldenburg’s side of the correspondence was printed by Thomas Birch in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 5 vols., 1744, 6 vols., 1772); Boyle’s scantier extant letters are to be found in the letterbooks of the Royal Society (MS. Bi).

Some early reactions to the Royal Society

1950 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-258 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Early Years ◽  
General Terms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Charter

BY the autumn of 1667 when Sprat’s History of the Royal Society was published the Society had been in officially recognized existence for seven years and incorporated by Royal Charter for five. The early years of the Society up to the end of the seventeenth century form as interesting a period as any in its history, and the glimpses of the Society’s members and activities revealed in letters and diaries, in prefaces to books written by or dedicated to its members, in numerous pamphlets, in descriptive accounts in the journals and ‘ voyages ’ of foreign visitors, and in the Minute Books and Philosophical Transactions , are not only interesting but often most entertaining. Without them Sprat’s so-called ‘ History ’ provides a very inadequate picture. However, to write a proper history, as Sprat acknowledged, was not really his aim ; nor is it the purpose of this essay which is concerned to inquire into some of the reactions to the Royal Society in its early days. To do this it will be necessary only to consider the Society’s history in very general terms in order to set it in its place in the broad movements of thought and ideas of the time. Since Sprat himself has provided just such a view of the Society it will be simplest to look at it through his History . Prefaced to the History is an Ode to the Royal Society by Abraham Cowley, one of its first members, who had already in 1661 published a Proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy .

Francis Kirkman's Counterfeit Authority: Autobiography, Subjectivity, Print

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jody Greene
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ultimate Failure ◽  
Authorial Persona

This essay explores the relation between print culture and literary authority in seventeenth-century England, through the career of the rogue author, translator, and autobiographer Francis Kirkman. Barred from traditional forms of authority by his middle-class birth and rudimentary education, Kirkman claimed new forms of self-authorization promised by the press. In his autobiography, The Unlucky Citizen, as well as in his biography of the impersonator Mary Carleton, the self-styled “German Princess,” Kirkman developed strategies of counterfeiting authority to compensate for the traditional entitlements he, like Carleton, lacked. These strategies involved harnessing the press to circulate authoritative versions of his authorial persona that were intended to substitute for his unauthorized status. Kirkman's ultimate failure to “gain some Reputation by being in Print” is instructive for scholars interested in the history of autobiography and in the changing conditions of authorship in the first era of print culture. (JG)

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