‘Your very obliging correspondence’: the Royal Society and the provincial Republic of Letters in Georgian Lincolnshire

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Sims
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
International Networks ◽  
Research Fields

It has been said that the Royal Society of the eighteenth century was in decline. The ground-breaking experimentation of the Restoration period was long gone, to be followed by talk rather than action, and the pages of Philosophical Transactions were filled with papers by provincial clergymen on natural curiosities and antiquities. But the links between the Royal Society and the Spalding Gentlemen's Society (SGS)—founded in 1712 and still in existence as the country's longest-lived provincial learned society—show a connection not just between city and country, but between scientific and antiquarian research, fields that had not yet assumed their distinct modern forms. A fruitful correspondence existed between the two societies for several decades in the first half of the century, and a number of Fellows (including Newton) became honorary members of the SGS. In this article, I show that the SGS did not simply rely on its metropolitan connections for intellectual sustenance, but rather, that this joint association allowed it to flourish as a dynamic society that cultivated international networks.

Recording the Aloes at Chelsea - a singular solution to a difficult problem

1996 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Singular Solution ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
General Series ◽  
History Of

In the Royal Society archives there is a collection of drawings of Aloes and other plants, made by two of the great botanical artists of the eighteenth century - Georg Dionysius Ehret and Jacob van Huysum. Although the Manuscripts General Series Catalogue records this manuscript only as a ‘Volume of 35 botanical paintings by Georg Dionysius Ehret’ of unknown provenance, the manuscript catalogue of the Arundel and other manuscripts, said to be the work of Jonas Dryander (1748-1810), provides the first clue linking these drawings to the two artists, and to the important collection of Aloes growing at that time in the Society of Apothecaries Physic Garden at Chelsea'. The history of the commissioning of the drawings is told briefly in the Journal Books of the Royal Society, and in the Minutes of Council, but the significance of these lovely and important drawings has been almost completely overlooked.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the TermAnthropocene

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Morton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Earth’S Crust ◽  
Steam Engine ◽  
Radioactive Materials ◽  
Earth Systems ◽  
Huge Data ◽  
Earth's Crust ◽  
Great Acceleration ◽  
Geological Period

Not a day goes by in the 2010s without some humanities scholars becoming quite exercised about the termAnthropocene. In case we need reminding,Anthropocenenames the geological period starting in the later eighteenth century when, after the invention of the steam engine, humans began to deposit layers of carbon in Earth’s crust. Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer’s term has been current since 2000.1In 1945, there occurred “The Great Acceleration,” a huge data spike in the graph of human involvement in Earth systems. (The title’s Kubrick joke stems from the crustal deposition of radioactive materials since 1945.) Like Marx, Crutzen sees the steam engine as iconic. As this is written, geologists such as Jan Zalasiewicz are convincing the Royal Society of Geologists to make the term official.

Martin Folkes

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Roos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
New Science ◽  
Definition Of

In 1750, Martin Folkes became the only individual who was President of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and he contributed to efforts to unite both organizations. Although he failed, illness forcing him to resign both offices, this chapter outlines the book’s analysis of the ensuing disciplinary boundaries between the two organizations in the early Georgian era in the context of Folkes’s life and letters. While it is normally assumed that natural philosophy and antiquarianism are disciplines that were fast becoming disconnected in this period, this work will reconsider these assumptions. The Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries were nearly reunited for good reason. Both societies incorporated techniques and affinities from antiquarianism—natural history and landscape—and the ‘new science’—engineering principles, measurement, and empiricism. Using Folkes’s life and letters, this biography will examine the disciplinary boundaries between the humanities and sciences in early Georgian Britain and reassess the extent to which the separation of these ‘two cultures’ developed in this era. It will also consider to what extent Folkes continued the Newtonian programme in mathematics, optics, and astronomy on the Continent. In this manner, the work will refine its definition of Newtonianism and its scope in the early eighteenth century, elucidating and reclaiming the vibrant research programme that Folkes promoted in the period of English science least well understood between the age of Francis Bacon and the present.

Exciting an Emulation

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Anton Howes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Government Revenue

This chapter discusses the Royal Society of Arts' promotion of commerce. It traces trade in the eighteenth century, which was closely tied to the coercive power of the state and was one of the principal sources of government revenue. It also describes trade as a tool for enriching a country at the expense of its neighbors, emphasizing the belief among rulers and politicians across Europe that it was essential to maximize a country's stock of specie. The chapter explains mercantilism as an attitude towards trade in which rivals were made to pay for exports, while as little as possible were spent on foreign imports. It also points out how mercantilist attitudes had geopolitical repercussions.

scholarly journals VIII. Remarks on the tendency to calculous diseases; with observations on the nature of urinary concretions, and an analysis of a large part of the collection belonging to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital

1829 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 55-81 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
County Hospital ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Extensive Practice

Having, since my residence in the neighbourhood of Norwich, and my connection with the county hospital, paid considerable attention to calculous diseases and their concretions, I beg leave to lay some observations on those subjects before the Royal Society, to whose Transactions we owe much valuable information on the branches of pathology which relate to urinary complaints. Part I.— Of the tendency to Calculous Diseases . The county of Norfolk has long been remarkable for the occurrence of cal­culous diseases among its inhabitants; but there are no means of ascertaining how far this disposition extended, previous to the establishment of its hospital in 1772. Many of its cases went, of course, to the metropolis before that time; but there is, besides, every reason for concluding, that the operation of litho­tomy was frequently performed in Norfolk, during all the preceding part of the eighteenth century, both from the reputation and extensive practice of Mr. Gooch, one of the principal surgeons and surgical writers of his time, who lived near Norwich; and the occasional observations made by that gentleman in his surgical works, as to the skill, and experience in lithotomy, of practi­tioners in different parts of the county.

scholarly journals Afterlives of the Republic of Letters: Learned Journals and Scholarly Community in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116
Author(s):  
Floris Solleveld
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Changing Role

Abstract What happened to the Republic of Letters? Its history seems to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. And yet, in the nineteenth century, there still existed a community gathered in scholarly societies, maintaining a transnational correspondence network and filling learned journals. The term indeed becomes less frequent, but does not go entirely out of use. This article traces the afterlives of the Republic of Letters in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigates texts that attempt to (re)define the Republic of Letters or a cognate, the wider diffusion of the term, and the changing role of learned journals in that period. While most attempts to reinvent the Republic of Letters failed miserably, they indicate a diagnosis of the state of learning and the position of scholars in a period of transition, and in doing so they contradict an ‘unpolitical’ conception of the Republic of Letters.

scholarly journals Stokes at 200: a celebration of the remarkable achievements of Sir George Gabriel Stokes two hundred years after his birth

2020 ◽  
Vol 378 (2174) ◽  
pp. 20190505
Author(s):  
Silvana S. S. Cardoso ◽  
Julyan H. E. Cartwright ◽  
Herbert E. Huppert ◽  
Christopher Ness
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
The State ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Mathematics

Sir George Gabriel Stokes PRS was for 30 years an inimitable Secretary of the Royal Society and its President from 1885 to 1890. Two hundred years after his birth, Stokes is a towering figure in physics and applied mathematics; fluids, asymptotics, optics, acoustics among many other fields. At the Stokes 200 meeting, held at Pembroke College, Cambridge from 15–18th September 2019, an invited audience of about 100 discussed the state of the art in all the modern research fields that have sprung from his work in physics and mathematics, along with the history of how we have got from Stokes’ contributions to where we are now. This theme issue is based on work presented at the Stokes 200 meeting. In bringing together people whose work today is based upon Stokes’ own, we aim to emphasize his influence and legacy at 200 to the community as a whole. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Stokes at 200 (Part 1)’.

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