The Heroic Ideal by M. Gregory Kendrick

Author:M. Gregory Kendrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland

One natural philosopher who was very much inspired by Bacon’s ideal society and its heroic inventors was the chemist Robert Boyle. In 1660, Boyle and eleven other adherents of the new science—a group that included Bishop John Wilkins, the philosopher Joseph Glanvill, the mathematician John Wallis, inventor and microscopist Robert Hooke, and the architect, Christopher Wren—formed their own version of Salomon’s House, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. This organization, which was granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1662, was openly Baconian in its aims. It attempted to conduct research and gather knowledge about every aspect of nature with an eye aimed at using this information to benefit humanity. The Society’s members also assisted the government in its efforts to rebuild London in the aftermath of the great fire of 1666 by providing technical advice, blueprints for new construction, and a “political arithmetic” that we now describe as social statistics.16

Aside from becoming a clearinghouse for research on natural phenomena, the Royal Society of London also took a number of steps aimed at providing both a public forum and standards of excellence for their fledgling profession. These included publication of the first professional scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, in 1665; the institution of lectures where working scientists were invited to discuss and demonstrate their research; the establishment of official criteria for membership in the Society; and the practice of offering medals and other prizes to honor significant discoveries in the natural sciences. Among the 17th century luminaries who were made fellows of the Society, participated in its forums, and received its honors were Isaac Newton and Robert Halley.

Mention is made of England’s Royal Society because it becomes the model for similar scientific academies and foundations throughout the West. Indeed, by the turn of the 17th century, these organizations are to be found in France, Holland, Sweden, the Germanic states, and Russia. Like their English counterpart, these groups function as something akin to both a Baconian House of Salomon and an Arthurian fellowship. They bring together their countries’ best and brightest in the natural sciences, provide these folks with an opportunity to “strut their stuff,” publicly honor them for their achievements, and articulate, disseminate, and enforce a code of conduct they are expected to follow in their explorations, experiments, and exchanges with one another. All of these groups also enshrine through plaques, statues, busts, inscriptions, galleries, or pantheons the memory of those individuals foreign and domestic who they regard as heroes of scientific exploration and invention. And, not surprisingly, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, and Bacon are always counted in the front ranks of these “new Atlanteans” of science.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.