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II. Thomas Hobbes and the Nature of the Early Royal Society

Part of: Retrospect: Science in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Quentin Skinner
Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
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Extract

Why was Thomas Hobbes never made a Fellow of the Royal Society? The question has been asked and answered in nearly all the intellectual biographies and other such studies of Hobbes, as well as in several of the histories of the early Royal Society itself. Since I wish to discuss the same question again, it is worth pausing first of all to neutralize two possible doubts about the value of this exercise.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 217 - 239
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 Beer, G.R. de, ‘Some Letters of Thomas Hobbes’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, VII (1950), 195–206,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 195. For similar judgements cf. Jones, Richard F., Ancients and Moderns (2nd ed.St Louis, 1961), pp. 127–8,Google Scholar and The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. Rupert, A. and Hall, Marie Boas (Wisconsin, 1965) I, 76.Google Scholar For similar contemporary judgements cf. the views of Aubrey and Sorbiere, cited in footnotes 4 and 28 below. For Hobbes's own attitude, see ‘Mr Hobbes Considered’ in The English Works, ed. SirMolesworth, W., 11 vols. (London, 1839–1845), VII, 435–7.Google Scholar

2 Peters, R.S., Hobbes (Harmondsworth, 1956), pp. 41–2.Google Scholar

3 See a letter from Hobbes to Aubrey, 24 Feb. 1674/5. Copy (fairly accurate) in Bodleian Library, Aubrey MSS. Original in ‘ Sir William Petty's Papers’, Lansdowne MSS. (Bowood), VI, part 11, item 17. I am very much indebted to the Most Hon. the Marquis of Lansdowne for permission to examine and to cite from this material. For the explanation of how Hobbes's original letter, which has not hitherto been published, came to be among the Lansdowne MSS. see Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, A., 2 vols. (London, 1898), I, 338.Google Scholar Aubrey's reply to Hobbes, 24 June 1675, is in British Museum Add. MSS. 32,533, fol. 27.

4 Bodleian Library, Aubrey MSS. 9, fol. 53v and 54. Transcription from original. Cf. Aubrey, ed. Clark, 1, 372.

5 Hobbes to Aubrey, 24 February 1674/5. Cf. footnote 3 above.

6 This can be inferred from both letters cited in footnote 3: in the first Hobbes mentions ‘Mr Hooke's design’ to Aubrey; in the reply, Aubrey mentions that Hooke ‘approves very well of your reasons’. For Aubrey's friendship with Hooke cf. Britton, J., Memoirs of John Aubrey (London, 1845), p. 60.Google Scholar

7 This is worth noting in itself, as the question of whether Hobbes was still working at this time on liberty and necessity has been raised by his biographers. See Robertson, G.C., Hobbes (Edinburgh, 1886), p. 202 n.Google Scholar

8 Aubrey, ed. Clark, I, 368.

9 See Hobbes, Thomas, ‘ Lux Mathematica’, in The Latin Works, ed. SirMolesworth, W., 5 vols. (London, 1839–1845), v,Google Scholar 89 ff. This work was issued as ‘a public memorial to the RoyalSociety’, with a dedication to that ‘most noble and erudite’ body, at pp. 91–2.

10 See Espinasse, M., Robert Hooke (London, 1956), pp. 121–2,Google Scholar and cf. Gunther, R.W.T., Early Science at Oxford, 14 vols. (Oxford, 1920–1945), VI, 139.Google Scholar

11 It is worth noting that Hobbes may even have misunderstood the extent to which it was possible for the Society, under its own rules, to dissociate itself from the views of a Fellow who had been ‘assigned’ a work to comment on, or to indicate its own approbation of such a work. See the minute for 20 August 1662: ‘that no books presented to the censure of the Society, shall receive a public approbation from them’, cited in Birch, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, 4 vols. (London, 1761 edn.), I, 105.Google Scholar

12 For the very small amount of information available on Neile, see C. A. Ronan and Sir H. Hartley, ‘ Sir Paul Neile, F.R.S. (1613–1686)’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society xv (1960), 159–65.Google Scholar

13 Birch, History, I, 42.

14 Boyle, Robert, ‘An Examen of Mr T. Hobbes his Dialogus Physicus de Natura Aeris’, Works, 5 vols. (London, 1744), I, 119.Google Scholar

15 Boyle, ‘Examen’, Works, I, 118.

16 Aubrey and Sorbière were agreed on this: see Sorbière, Samuel de, A Voyage to England London, 1709), p. 39.Google Scholar Cf. Aubrey to Hobbes, 24 June 1675 on Wallis as ‘a most illnatured man, an egregious Her and backbiter’. Cf. the account in Henry Stubbe to Cawdrey, 17 March 1657, Bodleian Library, Savile MSS. 26172, fol. I: Had Wallis ‘written against Mr Hobbes so as had befitted the University and his quality, I should have rejoiced in the confutation of Mr Hobbes's opinions; but neither his language nor management can please any person’ (spelling modernised).

17 Hobbes's main defence is in ‘Mr Hobbes Considered’, a reply to the charge Wallis incautiously mentioned in Hobbius Heauton-timorumenos (Oxford, 1662), p. 5,Google Scholar that Hobbes had written Leviathan ‘in defence of Oliver's title’. Hobbes was able to reply rather devastatingly by reminding Wallis that he had used his mathematical abilities to decode captured Royalist despatches after Naseby.

18 Hobbes, Thomas, De Corpore (London, 1655), following p. 304.Google Scholar

19 Wallis's, Elenchus (London, 1655)Google Scholar was a reply to Hobbes's original defence of his geometry in De Corpore. He added the Due Correction (London, 1656)Google Scholar after Hobbes had taken advantage of the publication of the English edn. of De Corpore (Elements of Philosophy, London, 1656)Google Scholar to add Six Lessons on geometry, addressed to Ward and Wallis. Cf. the account in Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 174–6.

20 Hobbes replied to Wallis's Due Correction in his very vituperative Marks of the Absurd Geometry…of John Wallis (London, 1657),Google Scholar to which Wallis replied in his Hobbiani Puncti Dispunctio (London, 1657).Google Scholar There is no question that after this phase Hobbes was the aggressor, first in his five Latin dialogues, Examinatio et Emendatio (London, 1660),Google Scholar and then in his Dialogus Physicus (London, 1661),Google Scholar attacking Boyle as well as Wallis. For a complete account of the later stages of the dispute see Robertson, Hobbes, ch. VII, the best chronology, though extremely censorious. For the full bibliography see Macdonald, H. and Hargreaves, M.Thomas Hobbes, a Bibliography (London, 1952) especially pp. 41–51.Google Scholar

21 See Wallis, Hobbius (1662), written ‘in an epistolary discourse’ to Boyle, pp. 1–2 and 4.

22 Apart from his Thomae Hobbes Quadratura Circuil (Oxford, 1669),Google Scholar Wallis, who had by then wearied of having to repeat his demonstrations, contented himself with brief replies published in the Philosophical Transactions, and even stopped publishing these after 1672, although Hobbes was to go on to produce two further books on the subject.

23 Wallis, Hobbius (1662), pp. 7–8.

24 Ibid. pp. 3–4.

25 See ‘Behemoth’, English Works, VI, 348.

26 Aubrey, ed. Clark, I, 372, where he also cites the passage from Behemoth.

27 Hooke reported on this meeting in a letter to Boyle, cited in Boyle, Works, VI, 486. It is a mistake, however, as the letters I have cited now indicate, to suppose either that this was consistently Hooke's view, or even that the remark cited in Aubrey, ed. Clark, I, 30 is the only ‘other record of communication’ between Hooke and Hobbes. Cf. ’Espinasse, Hooke, p. 122.

28 Sorbière, Voyage, p. 40. For Sorbière and his voyage generally see Guilloton, V., ‘Autour de la relation du voyage de Samuel Sorbière en Angleterre’, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, XI (Northampton, Mass., 1930).Google Scholar

29 Sprat, Thomas, Observations, published with Sorbière, Voyage (London, 1709).Google Scholar

30 Sprat, Observations, p. 163.

31 A similar explanation is offered, for example in the article on Hobbes in the D.N.B. and in Sir Leslie Stephen, Hobbes (Ann Arbor edn., 1961), p. 54.

32 For the classic statement of this assumption, see Merton, Robert K., ‘Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England’, Osiris, IV (1938), 360–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The theme has been brilliantly elaborated by Christopher Hill, but has also been subjected to increasing challenge. For the most recent bibliography of both sides of the dispute see Shapiro, B.J., ‘Latitudinarianism and Science’, Past and Present, XL (1968), 16–41,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 16 n.

33 Peters, Hobbes, pp. 41–2.

34 Bredvold, Louis I., The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (1956 edn.), p. 58.Google Scholar Cf. the same author's ‘Dryden, Hobbes and the Royal Society’ Modern Philology XXV (1928), 422.Google Scholar

35 Goldsmith, M.M., Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York, 1966), p. 38n.Google Scholar

36 Westfall, Richard S., Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven, 1958), pp. 20–1.Google Scholar

37 Jones, Richard F., ‘The Background of the Attack on Science in the Age of Pope’, in Pope and his Contemporaries, ed. Clifford, James L. and Anda, Louis A. (Oxford, 1949), pp. 96–113, at p. 107.Google Scholar

38 Sprat, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, ed. Cope, Jackson I. and Jones, Harold W. (St. Louis, 1959), p. 106.Google Scholar

39 The oration does not seem to have survived, but it was much cited at the time, e.g. by Evelyn, and by John Wallis himself in a letter of July 1669 to Boyle, published in Boyle, Works, V, 514–15. This was also one of Henry Stubbe's main criticisms of the Society. See for example his Reply to a Letter of Dr. Henry More (London, 1671), p. 48:Google Scholar they ‘innovate in education, undermine the foundations of our Religion and Monarchy…’.

40 See the Dedication in Glanvill, Joseph, Scepsis scientifica (London, 1665),Google Scholar ‘Address’, Sig. b, Ia–Ib.

41 Sprat, ed. Cope and Jones, p. 345.

42 Glanvill, Scepsis Sdentifica Sig. b, Ib.

43 On this issue generally see Colie, Rosalie L., Light and Enlightenment (London, 1957),Google Scholar esp. chs. III–V. Two of the most prominent apologists were Glanvill and More. On the first see Cope, Jackson I., Joseph Glanvill, Anglican Apologist (St. Louis, 1956).Google Scholar On the second see Paul Anderson, R., Sciencein Defense of Liberal Religion (New York, 1933),Google Scholar esp. chs. III and IV.

44 Boyle, ‘Examen’, Works, I, II9a.

45 See for example the use of this quotation from Boyle in Mintz, S.I., The Hunting of Leviathan (London, 1962), p. 87.Google Scholar I am much indebted to Mintz's account, however, of the general reaction to Hobbes's materialism.

46 See the letter from Stillingfleet to Boyle, written at the same time (October 1662), urging Boyle to show that ‘those great personages’, such as himself, who have opened ‘the cabinets of nature’, are ‘far from looking on religion as mean and contemptible’. Quoted in Boyle, Works, V, 516.

47 Boyle, ‘Examen’, Works, I, 119a.

48 See the discussion in Hobbius (1662). p. 6.

49 Wallis to Tenison, draft letter, apparently unpublished, 30 November 1680, in Bodleian Library MSS. Add. D. 105, fols. 70ff.

50 Merton, loc. cit. pp. 471–2.

51 For a persuasive treatment of Wilkins as an anti-Puritan latitudinarian, see Shapiro, , Past and Present, XL (1968), pp. 23–5.Google Scholar Shapiro argues that in so far as religious commitments are relevant to the explanation of scientific advance at this time the relevant commitment is that of latitudinarianism.

52 For this quotation see the article on Wilkins in the D.N.B. For further examples of Wilkins's de facto-ist moderation see Shapiro, , Past and Present (1968), pp. 21–3.Google Scholar

53 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, The Life of Sir William Petty (London, 1895), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

54 For Graunt's personal as well as professional relations with Petty see Glass, D.V., ‘John Graunt and his Natural and Political Observations’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, XIX (1964), 63–100,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. pp. 63–9.

55 See Petty to Pell, November 1645, quoted in Fitzmaurice, Petty, pp. 7–8.

56 See for example Aubrey to Hobbes, 24 June 1675, cited in footnote 3, above. Petty had sought Hobbes's professional opinion on his Duplicate Proportion, which Hobbes discussed in his letter to Aubrey of February 1675. In return Petty ‘desires to be very kindly mentioned’ to Hobbes, and ‘always asks for you with much affection’. Cf. also the ref. to Hobbes in Duplicate Proportion, Sig. A, 8 b‘9a.

57 Merton, loc. cit. p. 472.

58 This is clear from the memoranda on ‘Religion’ in the Lansdowne MSS., some of which are published in The Petty Papers, ed. The Marquis of Lansdowne, 2 vols. (London, 1927), I, 113–45.Google Scholar Even these published fragments contain many ‘Hobbist’ remarks, e.g. that ‘civill lawes may for the most part effect what Religion pretendeth to do’, p. 118; that Religion is only able to ‘to support and promote what ever the Civill and Temporall authority shall enjoyne’, p. 137. There is also a short treatise on religion (pp. 121–8) which actually quotes from Leviathan, as the editor duly notes. For De cive as suitable reading, see Petty Papers, II, 5.

59 See Aubrey, ed. Clark, I, 334–5. 339. 353. 357. 360–1.

60 Greene, Robert A., ‘Henry More and Robert Boyle on the Spirit of Nature’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXIII (1962), 451–74, at p. 462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Bredvold, Intellectual Milieu, p. 58.

62 Goldsmith, Hobbes, p. 38.

63 Hobbes, English Works, IV, 436–7.

64 For Hobbes's relations in the 1640s and correspondence in the 1650s with the French scientists of the Mersenne and Montmor academies, see my own article, ‘Thomas Hobbes and his Disciples in France and England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (1966), 153–67.Google Scholar

65 Sprat, Observations, p. 164.

66 Boyle, Works, I, 118a.

67 See The Diary, ed. Wheatley, H.B., 8 vols. (London, 1904 edn.), IV 27,Google Scholar on the famous occasion when the King ‘mightily laughed at’ the Society ‘for spending time only in weighing of ayre’.

68 See the treatise Duplicate Proportion (London 1674). pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

69 Stubbe, Henry, Legends no Histories (London, 1670)Google Scholar attacks ‘these comical Wits’ in his Preface, sig.*3b, and devotes most of his space to attempted refutations of the value of the Society's experimental works, pp. 23–24, 35–40, 102–27, etc. See also the lampoons in Shadwell's Virtuoso and Butler's Elephant in the Moon for popular contemporary attacks.

70 Henry Oldenburg in the Philosophical Transactions for 1666, cited in Jones, H.W., ‘ La Société Royale de Londres au XVIIe siècle’, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, III (1950), 218.Google Scholar

71 See esp. Purver, Margery, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (London, 1967)Google Scholar for the fullest account of the Royal Society as the implementation of a Baconian philosophy.

72 Boas, Marie, ‘The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy’,Osiris, X (1952), 412–541,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 453.

73 Power, Henry, Experimental Philosophy, (London, 1663),Google Scholar preface, sig. C I a and C2b. Cf. Webster, C., ‘Henry Power's Experimental Philosophy’, Ambix, XIV (1967), 150–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Mayow, John, Tractatus Quinque Medico-physici (Oxford, 1674),Google Scholar e.g. Treatise1, I ch. VI.

75 Boas, loc. cit. p. 452. The works of Charleton, Digby and Glanvill also exhibit strong Cartesian influences. See further Laudon, Laurens, ‘The Clock Metaphor and Probabilism’, Annals of Science, 22 (1966), 73–104,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and articles by C. Webster cited in n. 73 above and n. 137 and 138 below.

76 For Ross, who denounced Wilkins as well as Hobbes from a scholastic point of view, see the account in Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan, pp. 67–9. For Casaubon, Cross and Stubbe, see Syfret, R.H., ‘ Some Early Critics of the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, VIII (1951), 20–64.Google Scholar

77 Stubbe, Legends no Histories, p. 9.

78 Birch, History, I, 26–7. Cf. also Cowley, who wrote odes both to Hobbes and to the Royal Society, on Hobbes as the Columbus of the new philosophy.

79 Casaubon, Meric, A Letter of Meric Casaubon, D.D. to Peter du Moulin, D.D. (Cambridge, 1669), p. 30.Google Scholar Quotations modernised here and below.

80 For Hobbes's attempt ‘to create a philosophic system encompassing both natural and political science' see esp. Goldsmith, Hobbes's Science of Politics. On Hobbes and Boyle ‘ side by side’ as mechanists opposed to scholastic learning, see Applebaum, Wilbur, ‘Boyle and Hobbes: a Reconsideration’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXV (1964), 117–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 Casaubon, Letter, 21.

82 Casaubon, Letter, p. 27. Cf. also his claim, p. 17, that the result will be ‘a religion that should need no Christ’.

83 For the resulting attempt to invest even the work of the experimental philosophers with its appropriate implications of ‘spirit’ and divine agency, see More, Henry, Antidote Against Atheism (London, 1662), pp. 40,Google Scholar 46, etc., on Boyle's vacuum experiments and their alleged proof (which Boyle never suggested) of the presence of ‘ spirit’. This obsession with investing the world with spirits which mechanistic explanations might appear to rule out also explains, of course, the anxiety of Glanvill, reported in Sadducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681),Google Scholar to discover the existence of ghosts. For these points cf. the discussions in Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan, pp. 84–8 and 107–9.

84 Merton, loc. cit. p. 443 n.

85 Casaubon, Letter, p. 27.

86 Merton, loc. cit. p. 443 and n., insists that we must not confuse theology with religion. But this is precisely what he seems to have done.

87 Boas, Marie, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth Century Chemistry (Cambridge, 1958), p. 17.Google Scholar

88 Hartlib to Boyle, May 1648, in Boyle, Works, v, 257, cited in Boas, Boyle, pp. 17–18.

89 Oldenburg, ed. Halls, I, 75.

90 Oldenburg to Hobbes, June 1655, quoted in Oldenburg, ed. Halls, I, 74–5.

91 Sorbière, Voyage, pp. 26–7.

92 Aubrey, ed. Clark, I, 372.

93 Stewart, H.L., ‘The Personality of Hobbes’, The Hibbert Journal, XLVII (1948–1949), 126.Google Scholar

94 This is the judgement both in Leslie Stephen, Hobbes, p. 54, and in Bredvold, Intellectual Milieu, p. 57, who, as will now be evident, covers himself by offering all three of the possible explanations for Hobbes's exclusion which I have discussed.

95 De Beer, , ‘Letters’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, VII (1950), 197.Google Scholar

96 The amount of space which Wallis took to expose Hobbes's mistakes even surprised certain contemporary mathematicians, who felt merely that the whole dispute was absurd. See for example Huygens to Moray, July 1662, being ‘astonished’ that Wallis troubled so much with ‘objections so frivolous’. Quoted in Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1841), I, 92.Google Scholar

97 Doubtless they were correct to be so severe, although the only mathematician who has re-examined the controversy insisted that Hobbes ‘ was not the ignoramus in geometry that he is sometimes supposed’. See de Morgan, A., A Budget of Paradoxes (London, 1872), p. 67.Google Scholar

98 For a general account of this concept of paradigms, and for its application to intellectual history, see my own article ‘ Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, VIII (1969).Google Scholar

99 M. Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation. See also the Introduction, by H.R. Trevor-Roper, which endorses its claims.

100 purver Royal Society, pp. 5 and 235–7.

101 Ibid. p. 238.

102 Ibid. p. 84.

103 Ibid. pp. 84, 239.

104 See the lists in The Record of the Royal Society of London, 4th edn. (London, 1940), pp. 375–8.Google Scholar For the best brief account see Hall, A. Rupert, The Scientific Revolution (2nd edn.London, 1962), pp. 192–9.Google Scholar

105 Sprat, ed. Cope and Jones, gives a list of Fellows at pp. 431–3.

106 Sprat, ed. Cope and Jones, pp. 71–2.

107 Ibid. p. 67.

108 purver, Royal Society, p. 84.

109 For Goddard's cure see the account in the D.N.B. article. For the other examples, cf. the account in Wolf, A., A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2nd edn.London, 1950), p. 63.Google Scholar

110 Trevor-Roper, Introduction to Purver, Royal Society, p. xi, and Purver, p. 3.

111 Purver, Royal Society, p. 3.

112 Stubbe, Legends no Histories, levels the charge that ‘ many of the nobility, most of the physicians and other understanding and serious persons have either totally deserted the Society, or discontinued their presence at their Assemblies’, see sig.*3a. This was not pure invention. See the report made in 1674 by Sir John Lowther, in Birch, History, III, 127, that members had been complaining ‘ that they had been drawn into the Society contrary to their inclination’.

113 See The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. De Beer, E.S., 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), v, 599.Google Scholar

114 See Birch, History, II, 68.

115 On these activities see the account in Sir Sibbald, Robert, Autobiography (Edinburgh, 1833). pp. 21–3.Google Scholar

116 See the Philosophical Transactions, vol. XIX (1698), pp. 321–5;Google Scholar vol. XX (1699), pp 264–7; Vol. XXII (1702), pp. 693–4, etc.

117 See the acknowledgements in the first volume of Ray, John, Historia Plantarum, 3 vols. (London, 1686–1704).Google Scholar Cf. the discussion in Raven, Charles, John Ray, Naturalist (Cambridge, 1942), pp. 231–2.Google Scholar

118 See Sir Clark, George, The Later Stuarts (2nd edn.London, 1955), p. 376.Google Scholar

119 See Birch, History, I, 212. Evelyn went to hear him lecture in 1675. See The Diary, IV, 68.

120 There is no question, moreover, of unfriendly rivalry between the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society. ‘There was never any quarrel’, and the physicians ‘ had a great share in the new foundation’, according to Sir Clark, George, A History of the Royal College of Physicians, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1964–1966), I, 309–11.Google Scholar

121 This was the work of‘ one of the greatest physicians of any age’ according to Stimson, D., ‘Puritanism and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth Century England’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, III (1935), 321–34, at p. 332.Google Scholar

122 See, for Sydenham and Locke, Dewhurst, Kenneth, John Locke, Physician and Philosopher (London, 1963), esp. pp. 38–41Google Scholar and 137 n.

123 Sydenham, Thomas, Methodus Curandi Febres (London, 1666),Google Scholar sig. A2a to A46, is dedicated to ‘ the most illustrious and excellent’ Robert Boyle.

124 For Sydenham and Sloane, see Brooker, E. St. J., Sir Hans Sloane (London, 1954), pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

125 Philosophical Transactions, vol. v (1670), p. 1189.Google Scholar

126 For the correspondence with Power, see the article on Browne in D.N.B.; with Evelyn, see the Diary, III, 594. Raven in John Ray records that Ray made use of some of Browne's drawings, pp. 116–17.

127 Boyle, Works, I, 345.

128 For the value of Browne'contribution, esp. in scientific method, see generally Chalmers, Gordon K., ‘Sir Thomas Browne, True Scientist’, Osiris, II (1936), 28–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

129 For this judgement see Munk, William, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, 2nd edn. (3 vols. London, 1878), I, 356.Google Scholar

130 See Birch, History, II, 99.

131 Ibid. p. 76. The report was made by Merrett. Hodges's observations were published as Λoιµoλoγía, sive pestis nuperae apud populum Londinensem grassantis narratio historica (London, 1672),Google Scholar and in that year Hodges was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

132 Wiseman, Richard, A Treatise of Wounds (London, 1672).Google Scholar Wiseman also wrote Severall Chirurgicall Treatises (London, 1676).Google Scholar For an appraisal of Wiseman's ‘ permanent importance’ as one of the first‘ to make surgery a scientific subject’, see Ogg, David, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2nd edn. (2 vols. London, 1956), II, 725–7.Google Scholar

133 For Whiston on Newton's personal hostility, see the account in Whiston's Memoirs, cited by More, Louis T., Isaac Newton, a Biography (New York, 1934), p. 56.Google Scholar

134 For an account of the quarrel see Raven, John Ray, p. 184. As a result, Raven says (p. 186), ‘The Royal Society ignored him’.

135 For their quarrel, see Passmore, J.A., Ralph Cudworth, An Interpretation (Cambridge 1951). pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

136 Purver, Royal Society, pp. 100 and 235.

137 See Birch, History for 30 June, 1671: the Society adjourns sine die, and does not meet again until 11 November, 485. Similarly in 1672, the Society adjourns 10 July, and does not meet again until 11 October. And in 1674, the Society decides ‘considering the small number of members’ to adjourn all fixed meetings, and to try ‘ to consider of a better way … to provide good entertainment’, III, 135. Cf. generally on this issue, Espinasse, M., ‘The Decline and Fall of Restoration Science’, Past and Present, XIV (1958), 71–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As Dr C. Webster points out, after the initial burst of interest the Royal Society provided little serious scientific interest even to those ‘professionals’ who had become Fellows. Boyle, Lower, Mayow, Power, Ray, Wallis and Willis all continued to do their main work at Oxford, and of these only Boyle and Wallis kept up any extended contacts, either institutional or scientific, with the Royal Society in London. Further examples of important scientific work outside London and independent of the Royal Society are provided by Flamsteed in Derbyshire and the Towneley group in Lancashire. The latter was particularly important, although Towneley himself was never a Fellow of the Royal Society. See Webster, C., ‘Richard Towneley, 1629–1707, and the Towneley Group’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 118 (1966), 51–76.Google Scholar

138 I wish to express my thanks to Dr P. Rattansi and Dr R. Young, at whose invitation I originally wrote this paper and delivered it to their seminar on the history of science at King's College, Cambridge. I am particularly indebted to Dr Charles Webster for reading my paper in draft, discussing it, and correcting a number of mistakes. For some parallel arguments, see Dr Webster's review—article, ‘The Origins of the Royal Society’, History of Science 6 (1967), 106–128.Google Scholar