O R G A N O N 7 (1970) PRO BLÈM ES G É N É R A U X
Joseph Agassi (U.S.A.)
THE ORIGINS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
I
Trevor-R oper’s introduction to Miss P u rv er’s w ork * sums up the book adequately. There are tw o stories about th e antecedents of th e foun dation of the Royal Society of London, overlapping yet different. S p rat’s
H istory o f the Royal Society of 1667 declares th e Oxford group to be its
antecedent, w hereas most other w riters assume the London group to be the one. The prejudice against Sprat, nam ely th a t he was him self p re j udiced in favour of Oxford, is dispelled by showing th a t his H istory was the semi-official one. The question, however, is ideological. The Royal Society was Baconian. So w ere both th e Oxford and th e London groups. B ut w hereas th e London group held vulgar Baconianism, the Oxford group and its successor th e Royal Society w ere p u rist Baconian. Thus, th e tru e predecessor is th e Oxford group as S prat has claimed, not th e London group as his successors have claimed.
The London group’s vulgar Baconianism, to continue Trevor-Roper’s sum m ary, was the weaving into Bacon th e ideas of pantheism , social rad icalism, m illenarism ; th e nineteenth century followed M acaulay and read U tilitarianism into Bacon. P ure Baconianism (“th e new philosophy”) replaces th e idols of th e th e atre and th e m arket-place w ith the tru th .
So m uch for Trevor-R oper’s sum m ary. Regardless of how w ell he represents Miss P u rv e r’s views, the question m ay be asked, is his sum m ary acceptable prior to considering the new evidence? I s ta rt here because Trevor-Roper concludes his introduction frow ning at those who, like myself, tend to resist Miss P u rv e r’s conclusion before exam ining her new evidence. (She had published h e r conclusions w ithout the evidence some years before; see A ppendix below.)
* M argery P urver, T h e R o y a l S o c ie ty : C o n c e p t a n d C rea tio n , w ith an in tr o d u ction b y H. R. T revor-R oper, R ou tled ge a n d K eg en P au l, L ondon. 1967 d d
-It is trivially tru e th a t antecedents in intellectual history have to be judged ideologically in th e first instance. B ut th ere are, or m ay be, o th er 'kinds of antecedents w hich m ay be of in terest to a historian, even to a historian of ideas and ideologies. In th e case a t hand, in particular, the concern m ay be w ith a scientific organization. It was the seven teenth century w hich developed the very idea of scientific societies, and alm ost all im portant firsts, particularly the Paris, London, and Oxford groups, w ere inspired by Bacon, the inventor of th e idea of th e lay u n i versity, w ith its research laboratories—the non-m onastic m onastery. The Society was, in a way, a lam e substitute for th e lay university. To be m ore precise, th e idea of th e Society itself, as opposed to the groups, surely belongs to Evelyn, Boyle, and Wilkins, n o t to any group, th e Ox ford o r th e London. Evelyn was for a lay university, b u t not Boyle. The antecedent events leading to the form ation of th e Society, the various abortive efforts to organize something of a scientific institution, surely belong to th e vulgar Baconians of the P aris and London groups. I t will be interesting to see w h at Miss P u rver has to say about th e origins of the theory and practice of building a scientific community.
So m uch for organization as an additional dimension of the problem. Confining ourselves to ideology, then, w e have one m ore problem. How Baconian w ere th e London or the Oxford group? W hat exactly is tru e Baconianism and w h at is vulgar Baconianism? Trevor-Roper says, tru e Baconianism is th e idea of replacing th e idols of th e th eatre and th e m a rk e tp la c e by a “tru e model of the w orld”. This is w h at philosophers call th e (empirical) verification of scientific theory. Were th e London group against it and the Oxford group for it? This is hardly conceivable. Amos Comenius, an idol of one London group (for th ere w ere tw o or three of those, naturally) reg retted th a t Bacon had discovered th e key to th e secrets of N ature yet failed to use it. It is also true, of course, th a t various people had various m illenarian ideas of social radicalism, and th at th e Society confined itself to intellectual radicalism (as described by Trevor-Roper) and tabooed all other radicalist ideas, social or religious. How m uch this exclusivenees belongs to th e Oxford group, how m uch to the R estauration (as noticed by Macaulay), is an open question.
As to Bacon himself, it is hard to say a priori how m uch he was a pu re Baconian, how much vulgar. The vulgarization of the seventeenth cen tu ry m ay be in p a rt a n expression of immediate needs of the second q u arter of the century w hich had nothing to do w ith Bacon, who w rote in the first q u arter of th e century. A lternatively th e immediate succes sors of Bacon m ay have shared w ith him m uch background knowledge
and so n atu ra lly read him nearer to his intention than we do. This second idea is n ot mine, b u t th a t of Jam es Spedding whose ow n small odyssey is not w ithout interest.
O rigins o f the Royal Society 1 1 9
aulay ’s Essay on Bacon. In th a t essay M acaulay debunked Bacon the p hi losopher to the ex ten t th a t he gave rise to a problem: w hy had Bacon been so revered throughout th e eighteenth century as a philosopher? This problem has engrossed m ost Bacon students since, and is th e chief biographer of Newton and th e one who stated the problem , explained C. D. Broad, an d even more recent w ritings. S ir David Brewster, the biographer of Newton and the originator of th e problem , explained Bacon’s fam e b y reference to his political and literary career. Justus von Liebig, th e greatest and m ost influential of Bacon’s debunkers, later endorsed this solution; Macaulay, th e utilitarian, was m ore charitable,
and praised Bacon as the fath er of m odem utilitarianism .
At this junction of M acaulay’s essay, th e historian recedes to the background and the propagandist takes over. Had M acaulay been chal lenged in his attribution of m odern utilitarianism to Bacon, it seems he would have preferred to discuss the tru th o r falsity of th e doctrine th an th e tru th of falsity of his attrib u tio n of it to Bacon.
Spedding read M acaulay’s book as debunking, m ainly Bacon th e pol itician, since it h ardly treats Bacon the philosopher. Spedding w rote a very long defense of Bacon against M acaulay’s attack. A t about th e same time Robert Leslie Ellis was w orking on a complete edition of Ba con’s works. Ellis w as a m athem atician and a biologist, in addition to being somewhat of a classicist and a surprisingly w ell read scholar. He was a consumptive who died before he was forty. He asked Spedding to join him in his work, and died soon after, leaving it to Spedding to do w ith the uncom pleted task w hatever he found fit.
Spedding found the editorial work painful. He followed Ellis’ change from adm iration to puzzlement, and found even more puzzlem ent. He found, w ith Ellis, th a t Bacon had no scheme for a new philosophy, no idea about induction, no willingness to accept, even tentatively, induc tion by generalization, no suggestion as to how science can be built on solid foundations. In addition he found th a t Bacon’s im m ediate succes sors were right in reading Bacon's m ythological and utopian w ritings not as m ere fables, but as serious works intended to be taken as serious.
Trevor-Roper says (p. xv) th a t “Miss P u rv er has recreated the ‘new philosophy’ of Bacon, redeem ing it not only from the p u ritan v u lg ari zation of H artlib and his friends b ut from the Victorian vulgarization of M acaulay.” He does not m ention Ellis, nor Spedding, but im plies th a t no Victorian com mentator on Bacon is b etter th a n Macaulay. One cannot but consider this a bit below th e dignity of a scholar—p articu larly so since a page la ter Trevor-Roper admits th a t S p rat’s reading of Bacon, which is the same as the Oxford group’s reading and as th e semi-official reading of the Royal Society, is an “idealized” version; th a t is, he adm its th a t Bacon him self is a bit vulgar. It is one thing to say th a t a reading
of a te x t is unhistorical and another to say th a t it is vulgar; as it happens, Spedding’s reading is both vulgar and historical, and he also offered an idealized and fran k ly unhistorical reading akin to S p rat’s, w hich he recom mended should be tried out. I t never was tried out. In his famous review of Spedding, W illiam W hewell criticized this proposal quite sharply, and it was forgotten.
This much for extended comments on Trevor-Roper’s seven page in troduction. Let us exam ine th e detail of the book, b u t w ith an increased pace.
II
The problem Miss P u rv er comes to solve is how reliable S p rat’s Histo
ry of 1667 is. The cu rren t view is th a t his claim th a t th e Oxford group
was th e one which led to th e foundation of th e Royal Society in 1660 is suspect as he was the m outhpiece of Wilkins of Oxford; Boyle had spo ken of “th e invisible college” in London of th e 1640’s, and John Wallis, the m athem atician from London, m ade a sim ilar claim. Then there are accounts of activities of other personalities in London in the period in question, especially Samuel H artlib whose invitation had brought Jan Amos Comenius to London. A fter 8 pages of thus presenting the prob lem, Miss P u rv er devotes about 150 pages to P a rt One, w here she ex pounds S prat’s and h er own view about th e Oxonian origins, and about 80 pages to P a rt Two on the alternative views.
P a rt One, C hapter one, allegedly on th e validity and significance of S p rat’s History, b u t in fact largely (ample) evidence th a t S prat’s work was officially declared the semi-official view of th e society. This ex
plains the delay in publication from 1664, when we know it nfcarly w ent to press, to 1667. This also explains why, as Charles R. Weld, a la- ten at the same time, will now read, description and history, etc.) uninform ative. (Incidentally “history” in S p rat’s title m ay be read as in
“n a tu ra l history” o r as in “th e history of England.” A ntony Wood’s
H istory and A ntiquities of the U niversity of Oxford, for example, w rit
ten at the same time, will now read, description and history, etc.)
C hapter tw o on Francis Bacon’s philosophy, w ithout w hich the Royal Society could n o t be as im portant as it was. Though a num ber of so cieties of sim ilar character had come and gone, the Royal Society was ,a real first. Evidence: Sprat says it succeeded to bring about in six years more th a n others have in six thousand (i.e. since Creation).
This is a very strange thing. It is not easy to declare th a t Miss P u r ver agrees w ith S prat an d accepts his testim ony as final. B ut I am afraid I could not find another reasonable reading of her text. This has some thing very nice and commendable—her taking S p rat’s claims seriously
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and literally—as well as something very partisan and intolerable—her uncritical acceptance of so m uch on his m ere say-so.
Radicalism is quite a thing to contend w ith. W hen one reads Bacon’s claim th a t he has followed no one’s footsteps and is th e v ery first of his kind, one cannot b u t be moved. Robert Leslie Ellis w as so moved th a t he was determ ined to attrib u te some valuable idea to Bacon. He could n o t attrib u te to him any idea about induction, because he said little about the technique of induction, because w h at little he did say was contingent on th e questionable assum ption of a very high degree of sim plicity and com prehensibility of nature, and because he explicitly declared induction by generalization childish. Ellis finally attrib u ted to him a version of atomism and an im portant idea in th e psychology of learning, both of w hich he found in Bacon’s m yth of Cupid. Ellis was a n immensely learned m an and so he could find the source of alm ost any idea in Bacon which he considered valuable. Y et somehow even his scho larship was not broad enough. He had overlooked Natalis Comes o r Con ti, though this stud ent of m yths was fairly w ell-know n in th e early sev enteenth century (see Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon, Chicago, 1968, p. 80). As C. W. Lemmi has shown (in his Classical Deities in Bacon, B alti more, 1933), w hat little original m aterial Ellis had found in Bacon was m aterial lifted by Bacon from Comes.
In his by now classical Ancients and Moderns, R. F. Jones quotes one Hakewill, probably a disciple of Bacon, to say of him self th a t he is u tterly original, in almost th e same words as Bacon. L ater on Lynn Thorndike, in an essay in Isis, quoted a long list of im portant Renaissance figures, all claiming u tte r originality in accord w ith w hat obviously was the fashionable form ula of the day. In th e light of this it is hard to take radicalist claims as seriously as Ellis did. M eanwhile th e arch- conservative Michael O akeshott in his Rationalism in Politics (Cambridge, 1959) has shown this to be a standard feature of radicalism (which he identifies w ith rationalism so as to arriv e from conservativism to irrationalism), quoting even Bernal to say in our century th a t since by comparison all science prior to ours is microscopic w e m ay well view science as m ore o r less an u ltra m odern creation. And Im re Lakatos has quoted B ertrand Russell (M ysticism and Logic) to say th a t perhaps George Boole was th e first m athem atician, b u t more likely Russell him self was.
All this takes us fa r afield from Miss P u rv er’s study. She indicates h er radicalism by approving of Bacon an d of Sprat. Ellis is for h er b ut a follower of M acaulay who distorted Bacon and presented him as a u til itarian. She m akes no m ention of R. F. Jones or of Lynn Thorndike. Since she begins her chapter by a survey of the history of scientific so cieties I had hoped to find a reference to M artha O rnstein’s The Role of
the earliest recognitions of th e place of radicalism in th e seventeenth century. But no. Miss P urver, says H. R. Trevor-Roper (p. xiv), “has presum ed nothing. She starts from th e beginning, and tests every piece of evidence before using it.” He does not say w h at she does or ought to do w ith the evidence she does n ot use.
Bacon’s philosophy begins w ith th e maxim, presum e nothing, collect all th e available evidence. Let th e evidence lead you to th e form ation of a theory. W ith enough labour and patience you w ill arrive a t th e tru e theory. The basis of this process is radicalism : assume nothing; first, destroy all error. Somehow, all of Bacon’s debunkers, from B rew ster to date, being radicalists like all debunkers, took radicalism for granted, took for granted the idea th a t it is best to take for g ranted no idea; they therefore could not see Bacon as the great innovator, as the inven tor of radicalism. Miss P u rv er is a radicalist y et w ill n o t debunk him. Miss Purver, a t least, finds Bacon’s greatness in his radicalism; and though not original, she is quite right. (Her view is expressed in Paolo Rossi’s Bacon, opening of C hapter 6.) Also, this is for h er th e rationale of the founding of a society: the process of collecting vast data requires collaboration (Rossi) and hence organization. Also, she endorses Bacon’s radicalism. It is unusual to endorse Bacon’s radicalism y e t praise him; for a radical it is h ard to forgive Dacon’s failure to abide by his own rad icalism, his erroneous acceptance of magic, alchemy, and geocentricity, his calling Copernicus a charlatan, his poking crude fu n a t G ilbert while plagiarizing from him, his inability to u nderstand o r to ta k e notice of Galileo’s headline-m aking discoveries, etc. Miss P u rv er does not m eet the difficulty: she says, “The celestial bodies were, as Bacon scornfully re m arked, ‘supposed to be fixed in th e ir orbs like nails in a roof’.” (p. 28),
“Bacon was far from being th e only one to see th a t such a concept of the n atu ral order [the ‘A ristotelian’], even if considerably modified, presented grave obstacles to scientific progress.” (pp. 29-30), and even “In this context Bacon’s own resistance to th e Copernican hypothesis is not only reasonable, b u t scientifically impeccable.” (p. 40)—b u t n o t a hint at Bacon’s magic, alchemy, staunch geocentrism, and tirades against Co
pernicus. Miss P u rver, says Trevor-Roper, “tests every piece of evi dence before using it.’’
Miss P u rv er’s chapter on Bacon comprises over forty pages, most of which are devoted to a general exposition of Bacon’s works and thoughts. Ellis’ classical sum m ary is not much longer and C. D. Broad’s (Cambridge, 1926) is shorter. Both are m ore accurate, m ore informative, more interesting. N either is up-to-date, to be sure, b u t th eir errors are a t least understandable w ithin the term s of the accepted standards of scholarship.
In other words, the scholarly world, even when spouting the pure m ilk of Baconianism, practises a different, and non-radicalist, standard:
O rigins o f the R o yal Society 1 2 3
th e scholarly w orld recognizes th a t certain errors are perm issible w ithin scholarship yet other errors disqualify th eir p erp etrato rs as scholars. Miss P u rv er disqualifies M acaulay, whose Essay on Bacon is a paragon of beauty and of scholarship, because his presentation of Bacon’s philos ophy is (undoubtedly) scanty and erroneous. Standards m uch m ore lax
than hers are violated by her, such as those w hich include th e counsel to people w ho live in glass-houses to be sparing w ith th e throw ing of stones.
I l l
We now come to th e chapter on the Royal Society’s Baconianism. “That the m ovem ent originated in th e U niversity of O xford is not very surp ris ing” we are told (p. 63). “Its leaders, knowing th a t academ ically they w ere in hostile country, w ere conducting themselves w ith caution and tact, for nothing was to be gained b y antagonizing th e m ain body of th eir ow n university or of academic opinion elsewhere. So, when, in th a t year, Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, attacked th e w hole range of A ristotelian learning in th e universities, th e club did not welcome his efforts.” (p. 64) I like th e juxtaposition of these tw o quotes—less th an a page betw een them!
It m ay intrigue one th a t Miss P u rv e r has chosen this line as an opener for th e support of th e thesis th a t th e O xford group com prised tru e Baconian radicalists, the followers of the one who—to date—is th e severest critic of academic and A ristotelian practices. Miss P u rv er has an explanation: “In a w itty rejoinder” she continues (this is a slip of h er pen, “rejoinder” signifying a counter-offensive), th e group critized Hob bes as one w ho wished to replace Aristotle. This is a v arian t of Bacon’s attack on Copernicus w hich soon became traditional. Huygens said th e same of Descartes, and Dr. Thomas. Thomson said som ething sim ilar of Lavoisier: all radicalists m ust explain failure to im plem ent the radicalist formula; th e absence of pure intentions is th e easiest available, and th e one w hich Bacon had found in th e Cabbalistic an d alchemical literatu re (including th e w orks of Comes) and expounded in his various works.
A nother attack on A ristotle took place in th e m id-fifties, this tim e by a fran k Baconian (Hobbes, too, was influenced by Bacon, and even a personal friend; but n o t a disciple). I t was, however, aberrant: its author believed in astrology and alchemy. Miss P u rv e r forgets th a t even Boyle and Newton w ere aberrant. A nother m em ber of the group joins the comments this time, and w ith a “tactfu l statem en t” (p. 65) defends A ristotle’s scholarship, “im plicitly” endorsing some of th e criticism (p. 65). The interesting p a rt of the group’s counter-attack on th e poor frank Baconian was an expression of m ixed feeling tow ards Oxford. Miss P u rv er quotes b ut does not comment. She does n ot say w hy th e Oxford
group moved (1658-9) to London, even though O xford was “O xford of this enlightening and am eliorating influence”. By “this” she means m e rely th e Oxford group—now departing and taking the am elioration w ith them. W hy did th ey depart? Was anything amiss? No answer.
In 1661 Glanvill attacks astrology. In 1665 he revises his w ork and dedicates it to th e Royal Society. He is soon elected fellow of th e So ciety. (The story of his being forced to revise his book is told by R. F. Jones. We find no explanation here as to w hy he revised it.) In 1667 S p rat’s H istory appears, and in 1668 G lanvill’s Plus Ultra, both apologies for th e Society. Miss P u rv er gives the impression th at Glanvill is a Baconian. Those interested in him m ay read Professor Richard Popkin’s exposition of his skeptical philosophy.
In the fifties Oxford was th e birthplace—a “not very surprising” (p. 63) fact since Oxford had “enlightening an d am eliorating influence” (p. 67)—even if all this required some compromising. Things got better w ith th e rise of the Society and its defense by S prat and Granvill. So, in 1669, it all led to an open clash betw een Oxford U niversity and the Royal Society. This m ay all be very clear to Miss P urver; for m y p art I w ish she had explained the trend m ore clearly.
Anyway, clearly, th e universities (for Cam bridge joined Oxford) feared com petition (p. 72-3), and competition not from a new university or its like, b u t from the new experim ental Baconian ideology (p. 75-6). Is this “enlightening an d am eliorating”?
The evidence is from S prat’s History. The history is of 1667, the quarrel from 1669. It is clear, however, th a t no t S prat was on th e attack bu t the universities: clearly, w hen he said th e Society did in six years m ore th an the whole w orld since Creation, he was ju st stating the facts. What, however, has happened to tact? Was the Society so sure of the oncoming attack th a t it decided that 1667 was no tim e for niceties? Miss P u rv er does not say.
Nevertheless, Miss P u rver is right on th e m ajor issue: the quarrel w ith the Universities was ideological: it was the Baconian radicalist ideology w hich made th e Royal Society declare through Sprat th at the universities w ere worse th a n nothing.
We are now in th e m idst of Miss P u rv er’s exposition of S p rat’s Ba conian radicalism. The m ain point is Baconian indeed: th e Society in sisted on experim enting first, leaving theorizing to a later stage (so as to avoid erro r and dogma). Miss P urv er admits, how ever (p. 84), th a t in a clever one. First, it is not to be doubted th a t Boyle's report is true, a t least irrelevant. And she takes as a silly exam ple Boyle’s report that he had been informed th a t excessive coffee drinking causes palsy.
With b o m any silly examples around, Miss P urver had to choose
a clever one. First, it is not to be doubted th a t Boyle’s rep ort is trus. Second, th a t suppressing it would have been irresponsible, since he could
O rigins of the Royal Society 1 2 5
not know a priori w hether there was anything to it. Third, a t least in view of the social unacceptability of coffee, possibly even the theory Boyle reports to have heard w as also tru e (assuming th e paralysis re ported to be hysterical). B ut this only refers to incidentals and to u n known ones (was the paralysis hysterical?), w here principle m atters m uch more; to w hich I now revert.
A scientific fact m ust be repeatable. This was instituted by Boyle in 1661, in his essay on “The Unsuccessful Experim ent” (the expression is Bacon’s, but he m eant it—in his Advancem ent—to denote an unsuccessful attem pt to build a useful machine), u nder th e influence of Galileo (in
The Assayer). Boyle also suggested to declare any unrepeatable ex p eri
m ent unsuccessful rath er th a n a distortion. Now a delicate m atter, both politically and philosophically, is hidden in this suggestion and I w ish to discuss both.
H enry Stubbe, th e leading enem y of th e Royal Society, attacked its radicalism most. In his attack on S prat (Legends, No Histories) he says, the Society should m ake experim ents instead of trying to remove all the rubbish of the past. Indeed, he adds, everyone knows th a t Bacon him self made a lot of mistakes, especially in gardening, as even fellows of the Society admits. The reference is to th e fact th a t Bacon had tran s cribed from P lin y about gardening, especially roses, and forgetting th a t the climatic conditions in Italy and England are different, and to th e fact th a t Boyle him self uses this as an exam ple of an obstacle to rep e atability though w ithout explicity asserting th a t Bacon had transcribed w hat he had professed to report.
Bacon m ust have em barrassed his followers quite a bit. John Evelyn, for example, shows this in his letter to William W otton on Boyle (Wot- ton was going to w rite Boyle’s life b u t never did). Evelyn says there, Boyle always perform ed his experim ents, unlike Bacon, though the fact about Bacon need not be broadcast. (Miss P u rv e r quotes from this le tte r only th e passage about the early days of th e Society).
Bacon’s most Baconian w ork was his S ylva Sylvarum , ten books of one hundred facts each, p u t a t random and full of superstition. Boyle w anted to w rite a book to replace it, and called in The Promiscous E xp er
im ent. The fact th a t he advertized it y et never published it is quite
rem arkable since th e man published volum inously and regularly. John Beale, his old school-m ate from Eaton, reg u larly urged him to publish th e book. He even rem inded him how grateful they w ere to Bacon, how im pressed they w ere when, for th e first tim e H enry W otton (the founder of Eaton and th e fath er of the above m entioned William) placed Bacon’s w ork in their hands (when th ey w ere in th eir teens; W otton was the first Baconian who even perform ed experim ents such as conceived by Bacon—see his posthum ous Reliquia Wottoniana).
E xperim ent can be found in w hat seems to be th e substitute for the Pro miscuous Experim ent, w hich is Boyle’s posthumous Expérim enta et Ob s e r v a tio n s Physicae. Boyle w rote in the preface to this w ork th a t he
tried to describe th e facts in it as circum stantially as possible, b u t he feared th a t nevertheless it is possible th a t in some descriptions some cir cumstances necessary for repetition w ere inadvertantly om itted; and he calls on his old friend Oldenburg (the secretary of the Society) to testify th a t he had perform ed even th e experim ents w hich the reader m ay find unrepeatable. W hen a dying m an calls a dead m an to testify in his fa vour he m ust be talking in earnest, and on a disturbing point.
This indicates how aw are Boyle was of th e philosophical difficulty involved in th e philosophy of induction: we cannot decide w hat is an observed fact w ithout deciding w hat of the observation is p art of the observed fact and w hat is incidental to it. To decide this is to rely on theory, and to rely on theory prior to experim ent m ay be a prejudice...
Back to Miss Purver, w ho accepts th e m axim to begin w ith facts yet insists th a t they all be relevant. She is now recounting th e list of th e experim ental projects reported by Sprat—w ith great approval. Those in terested m ay be well advised to supplem ent her review of S p rat’s his tory w ith L. L. W hyte’s review of the facsim ile edition of the w ork in the British Journal for the Philosophy o f Science. Miss P u rver quotes G lanvill’s Plus Ultra and o th er sources to prove th at th e Society was orthodox Baconian. She then devotes a page to represent S prat on lan guage, concealing his chauvinism and his m ention of M ilton as th e only English poet of an y significance. She ends by declaring th a t the Royal Society alone pu t Bacon’s vision into practice. The vision, w e remember, is of removing past prejudices and of organizing a vast search of data. The vision was quite reasonable in th e seventeenth century, w hen only geniuses like Boyle could criticize it. Centuries later, afte r criticisms by philosophers, psychologists, and Bacon scholars, Miss P u rv er endorses it w ith th e same naïve freshness.
IV
Chapter 4 takes us back to Oxford—S prat on Oxford, others on Oxford, some biographical data. The Oxford Club was founded in 1648; this is a b it of a n exaggeration: th e re was no foundation and no club, only an inform al colloquium. Anyway, the first public reference to it is by Ward in 1654, “declaring th a t Aristotelianism was being oombatted” (p. 113). A footnote refers us back to pages 64-7, w here all th a t w e are told is on page 65 th a t W ard w rote a rejoinder to Hobbes’s attack on Aristotle and on page 66 th a t Ward said in Oxford th ey w ere teaching not only Aristotelianism b u t also m odern versions of Copernicanism “either as an opinion, or a t leastwise, as th e m ost intelligible and most convenient hy
O rigins o f the R o yal Society 127
pothesis.” This is not exactly evidence th a t “A ristotelianism was being com batted”. Miss P u rv er takes some lib erty w ith h er own crucial point of evidence.
The chapter can hardly be summarized; a t least I cannot summarize it. Again, no explanation of th e m ovem ent to London, or to Gresham College. They referred to themselves as “the Society” o r “th e Company” or “the illustrious Company th a t meets at G resham College”. A nd soon they received the Royal Charter.
C hapter 5, The Royal C harter. The Society was founded in 1660 and ran into financial difficulties. C. R. Weld, a later historian of th e Society (1848), discusses these difficulties; S p rat does not, nor does Miss P urver. The farth est she goes is to quote in a footnote S p rat and Birch to say th at some fellows w ere researches others w ere financial contributors. On a previous page (109) she m entions th a t in 1654 W ilkins “had given 200 pounds tow ards a College of Experim ents and Mechanics to be set up” in Oxford. Also, she quotes (p. 113) Seth W ard to speak then of “a conjunction of both purses and endeavours of several persons.” It now seems th a t something had changed: W ilkins was broke (p. 130). There w ere people in b etter financial shape, especially Boyle. W eld com plains. Even a biographer of Boyle, L. T. More, is not very approving. Miss P u rv e r is reticent.
It is clear th a t Boyle’s friends, p articu larly Oldenburg, tried hard to get Boyle to finance some scientific activity o r another, preferably found a secular college on the Baconian line. B ut Boyle never did. Even w hen his friends procured for him some confiscated Irish land (1662) so as to enable him to support science w ithout loss he was adam ant: he isaid since his friends had1 not consulted him he w as no t bound b y their intents and spent th e money on charity and on missions. (This is the source of th e complaints.) In his im portant early work, The Spring of
the A ir (1660), in th e introductory p a rt he says, a philosopher needs
a purse as well as a brain (in obvious contrast to W ard’s above quoted rem ark); in his w ill he bequeathed all his scientific m aterials to the Royal Society, including his stones b u t excluding th e gems. All th is was deliberate, it seems, and systematic. It even agrees w ith Boyle’s philos ophy of mind: w hereas Descartes assumed th e m ind to possess reason alone, Boyle assumed it to possess reason and emotion. To reason he ascribed n atural religion, w hich includes n atu ra l theology and ex peri m ental philosophy (as doctrine and ritu al respectively); to em otion he ascribed C hristianity (including revelations an d miracles) as ancillary doc
trine and as second chance for those w ho jettison reason. And so charity becomes religion bu t not science. Also, of course, science is rationally su perior to religion as it is rational and so w hen science and faith clash science m ust win, a n d the Bible m ust be understood as a m ere system of ethics, etc.
W ithout discussing Boyle’s role in th e Royal Society, w e can take it for granted th a t he was a prom inent m em ber of the Society, and th a t he w anted it to function as a means of bringing am ateur scientists together. If so, it cannot be suggested th a t he w ould oppose the idea of adm itting to the Society people whose contribution is only financial, though he m ust have coveted th e ir brains m ore th a n th eir purses. Nor could he have objected to th e Royal C harter and such, and for sim ilar reasons. We m ust rem em ber th a t though he rejected peerage, bishopric, presi dency of the Society and provostship of Eaton, though he was proud of not being a college fellow, he could not resist an Oxford degree as this eased the tension betw een the U niversity and the Society. This last point was noticed in the thirties by J. F. Fulton, th e renow n Boyle bib liophile.
And so, Miss P u rv er’s explanation of the foundation of the Society from W ard’s viewpoint does not quite clash w ith an y explanation from Boyle’s viewpoint—on the condition th a t w e notice th a t th ey differ, W ard liking b etter th e idea of th e m an w ith a purse supporting th e study of the m an w ith th e brain, and Boyle liking b etter th e m an w ith a purse pursuing his ow n researches.
Anyway, th e story according to Miss P u rver is sufficiently straight forw ard. The Royal C harter was given in 1662, allowing the Society a few privileges. It was revised and im plem ented in 1663; the revision did not offer new privileges (contrary to w hat historians say), b u t a coat of arms, the full name— the Royal Society for the A dvancem ent of N at u ral Knowledge—and the statem ent th a t the King was its Founder and Patron. Some details about membership. I rem em ber having read th a t one founding m em ber was expelled. Miss P u rv er’s talen t could be p u t into use in search of th e story; h er disposition lies elsewhere.
C hapter 6 on the religious policy of th e Society, and the end of P art One. “Bacon’s view of new sciences was down to ea rth ”, it begins. Be fore one stops to gasp she adds, “the facts of natu re w ere the subject of his study. Yet th e impulse behind it was essentially a religious one”. Before one stops to congratulate Miss P u rv er on her perceptive notice of the religion of science, she adds, “and th e Royal Society, as a body, fol lowed his percepts on religion in its relation to science.” I have now quoted the whole first paragraph of Miss P u rver’s chapter on religion. I can only say I am at an u tte r loss.
That Bacon w anted people to study facts and find natural laws is uncontestable. Does this m ake him “dow n-to-earth”? Miss P urver ana lyzes Bacon’s utopia, The N ew Atlantis, in detail. In particu lar she n o ti ces th a t N ew A tlantis is C hristian b u t religiously tolerant. But this sounds more pedestrian th an visionary. She does not state clearly enough to my taste th a t there was a revelation particularly for the benefit of th e inhabitants of N ew A tlantis (wich is isolated from the outside world,
O rigins o f the R o yal Society 1 2 9
though somehow it has all sorts of immigrants, including Jews), and she hardly presents th e place in all its tru e colors. In N ew A tlantis th e lay college which engages in research has the power to decide w hich of its inventions to m ake public, w hich to m ake state secrets, and w hich to w ithhold (as too dangerous) even from th e state. The O ppenheim er case shows th a t technocracy has no t y et developed to the height of Bacon’s vision. N either Einstein nor Bohr, nor P resident Pusey of H arvard, ever entered tow n in a procession th e w ay th e College P resident in N ew A t
lantis did. Bacon even tells us he found it impossible to get a ticket for
the stand, and he only got one through his Jew ish host. The host even arranges for a n audience and th e president tells Bacon all about the college, including th e ir statues of discoverers and inventors and including
the prayers to God to assist them in th e ir researches.
Miss P u rver is right: Bacon’s view of science as a mode of worship separated from established religion, as w ell as Bacon’s notion of re ligious tolerance, w ere central to the Society, w hich had Catholic m em bers and somewhat low-Church (not really) protestants. This, says Miss Purver, disproves the thesis of M erton th a t the Royal Society was an expression of protestan t ethics (in W eber’s sense of th e word). And since protestant ethics is utilitarian, she adds, surely the Society did n o t ac cept this ethics.
The interested reader m ay find a sum m ary of the literatu re on the topic in Richard L. Greaves’ “Puritanism and Science” in the Journal of
the H istory of Ideas, 1969. H ere let me only add this. In W eber’s sense
protestant ethics represents the idea of th e v irtu e of work, and this certainly is something w hich Bacon had preached. Also W eber assumes th a t protestant ethics is Calvin’s invention, w hich m ay be tru e for th e business w orld (though this has been questioned too), b ut is certainly not tru e for learned w orld w here good works and ritu al w ere p arts of purification processes of the mystic scholar, as expressed in th e cabba- list and alchemical litera tu re and echoed in Comes and in Bacon. Boyle, expounding sim ilar views in his Seraphick Love of 1659, ascribes its o ri gins to Philo Judeus! Unless we m ake clear w h at is new in “protestan t ethics”, we can scarcely decide its influence on the “new philosophy”.
Miss P urver quotes some details about th e toleration of th e Royal Society which had even led some of its opponents to view it as an in strum ent in the hand of the Catholics. The presence of this typical in tolerant argum ent m ight be expected a priori, though how w eighty it was considered, o r how large was the intolerant group am ongst th e in tellectuals is very hard to assess. Miss P u rv er does not raise the question, how significant her evidence is. Miss P u rv er m entions th a t in th e House of Lords Wilkins openly criticized th e K ing’s attem pt to pass an in toler ant law. But this has almost nothing to do w ith our topic. M acaulay has noted th a t th e political significance of th e foundation of th e Society
is th a t it kept some im portant minds off politics; now religion was at the tim e a m ajor political item. There is little doubt th a t th e King could have his cake and eat it, allowing th e Society to fight for tolerance and impose tolerance on its members, not on its founder and patron. I think Miss P u rv er should have told h er readers clearly th a t we have ample evidence against the notion th a t Charles II had any weakness for either enlightenm ent or toleration.
V
We now come to P art II, on th e London group, pp. 161-234 in four chap ters. F irst John W allis’s account of the origins of the Royal Society, second on Gresham College, th ird on Boyle’s account on the Invisible College, and fo urth on H artlib and his pansophia.
Wallis. He reports th at before Wilkins w ent to Oxford he belonged, w ith Wallis, in a London group which was interested in th e new philos ophy. Now, first of all, we are told, Wallis was a plagiarist and a hot- -head. True, b u t unimpressive. Secondly, Wallis uses the term “New Philosophy” for ideas preceding those of the Baconian radicalism of the Royal Society. He considers H arvey’s views on the circulation of the blood, which he had studied in Cambridge, as an example. Now, clearly, absorbing a new idea into th e old system is a sin by any radicalist stand ard, of Bacon or of Miss P u rv er (p. 169); and W allis’ acceptance of his Cambridge teacher’s non-radicalist practice is really bad: “it seems to indicate”, she quietly chafes, “th a t he never did fully appreciate th e state of affairs which John Wilkins and... his group at O xford sought to rem edy” (168-9).
This is a tough spot for a critic, and I w ish I had th e tact which Miss P urv er ascribes to Wilkins an d th e Oxford group w hen she explains w hy they did not act in Oxford as good radicals should. B ut let this ride. Wallis’ list of sins is not here exhausted: he calls “th e New Philosophy” not Bacon’s ideas, but those “which, from th e tim e of Galileo... and .... ... Bacon hath been much cultivated... abroad, as well as in England.” He gives as exam ples a list of topics discussed by the London group. This is no evidence th at the group m ade new discoveries. Indeed, the same list had been presented in G lanvill’s Plus Ultra as examples of individual contributions, in contrast to th e Baconian collective projects of the Society.
Thus, Wallis’ evidence, though acceptable as factual, is rejected as an interpretation. Indeed, Wallis reports th a t Theodor Haak, a foreign res ident, initiated these meetings. As H arcourt Brown has suggested (Scien
O rigins of the R o yal Society 1 3 1
tific Organizations in the Seventeenth C entury France, Baltimore, 1934),
Haak was influenced by F ath er Mersenne, th e founder of the Paris group, w ith whom he corresponded. M ersenne was to a large ex ten t a Baconian, who m ade even Descartes express approval of Bacon’s attitude towards experim ents. Miss Purver, however, has no difficulty showing th a t he was first an A ristotelian of sorts, th en a Cartesian of sorts. (There is no difficulty showing this of Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, etc. etc.) She even sees (p. 174) in M ersenne’s suggestion to found a n acade m y of science in France an attem pt “to ensure w h at he considered to be the proper intellectual control of knowledge, an d no doubt to offset Ba con’s proposal of colleges on an international scale”. Even if her quota tion from Bacon w ere in agreem ent w ith h er statem ent, even if M er senne’s (Cartesian) mechanical philosophy w ere not the one also en dorsed by the Oxford group and the Royal Society, even then, Miss P u rv e r’s reading of nasty motives in M ersenne m ay m ake me w ithdraw th e wish th a t I could be tactful.
Miss P u rv er is rig h t in dividing W allis’ account into th e factual and the interpretative; she is right in saying he later w ithdrew his own interpretation and said, the Society had originated in Oxford; she is right in saying, the official version says Oxford, not London. She is even right in saying the official version is not a small m atter since it is the radicalist version. There is only one snag; radicalism is false.
Up till now S prat was the authority, n o t Glanviil. The Society even recognized, we are told (p. 14), differences between th e two, and endorsed only the form er. Some of Miss P u rv e r’s evidence against Wallis is from Glanviil. Of course, the reason is th a t both Glanvil and Wallis m ention the same list of discoveries—Wallis to prove th a t th e London group was the original one, Glanviil as a m ere admission th a t some pre-Baconian individual discoveries—of Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, etc.—are quite im portant. P erhaps we have here some clash between Glanvil and S prat who said, we rem em ber, th a t the Society, as a group of Baconians, did m ore in six years than the rest of the w orld in six thousand! If so, Glanviil m ust yield to Sprat; by Miss P u rv e r’s own standards.
Miss P urver’s interpretation is not very convincing. She should not follow G lanviil and say, as she does, the discoveries Wallis m entions are no t new; she should follow Sprat and say, as the good radicalist she is, th e discoveries are not im portant! If they are im portant, as Glanviil b u t not Sprat admits, then those w ho m et to discuss them m ay be seen as some beginning of the Society. Radicalism perm its no ancestry to rad icalism, as Bacon declared, as many others did (see above p. 121). Miss P u rv e r’s study of the evidence is som ew hat coloured by h er radicalism. Take away her radicalism and W allis’ reading m ay sound much m ore congenial.
The n ex t hypothesis Miss P u rver refutes in th e second chapter is th a t Gresham College had anything to do w ith the foundation of the So ciety. I really find it too tedious to go into details, w here th e all-or- nothing attitu d e of Miss P u rv er leads her to an ever easier victory. I t is a real pity. For, though no t a real college, G resham could have devel oped into a secular college proper, indeed in accord w ith Bacon’s wishes, and th e wishes of almost all its founders.
I do not w ish to qu arrel w ith Boyle’s insistence th a t th e Company found a Society, not a college. His idea of am ateur scientists w as also inspired by Bacon, and m ade better sense to him as th e basis of a disin terested activity. There is evidence th a t w hen Evelyn, Boyle, and Wilk ins, called th e founding meeting, a t least Evelyn, and probably also Wilkins, wished for a college, b u t Boyle was adam ant and only he could afford the founding of a college. It was no doubt his privilege to refuse and his alternative idea did prove useful. Y et th e connexion w ith Gresham for about half a century is some indication of the retention of some vestige of hope to establish a college. The U niversity of London was formed only in 1830, partly because th e scientific societies played a significant intellectual role am ongst those debarred from Oxbridge and p artly because even in the 19th century Oxbridge was not very tol eran t and debarred nonconformists, Jew s, and agnostics, not to m ention th e poor. As to Miss P u rver’s details of the weakness of Gresham Col lege, they a re misleading: th e other universities w ere terrible a t th a t time, and showed less hope. The hope, finally, fizzled out; but it could have materialized even afte r the college’s demise—ju st as the Society could have disintegrated b u t did not, a fte r Boyle died and before Newton revived it.
The th ird chapter deals w ith Boyle’s report, w ith his famous “invis ible college”—this is his label; theirs was “philosophical college”. Though it had been identified w ith Theodor H aak’s group, it is clearly th e group of Samuel H artlib—another foreign resident of London. (This was first noted by Miss R. H. Syfret; see note on p. 200.) Miss P u rv er also argues from the fact th a t H artlib and his group w anted a college proper; b ut so did Evelyn, Oldenburg, Petty, and others.
There is also th e question, how distinct w ere the th ree groups. From all w e 'know the overlaps w ere small; b u t th en this m ay be due to a di vision perceived m ore than practised. And Boyle m ay have felt th e need to view all groups as essentially one.
Also Boyle, in 1646, a t the age of 19, says th e invisible college is in principle utilitarian. This, says Miss P u rv er (p. 194), shows it belonged to H artlib. B ut again I am uneasy. I do not think anyone was a u tilita r ian then, not even Boyle. A private le tte r of a 19 year, old, even a genius,
is not exactly clinching evidence.
O rigins of the Royal Society 1 3 3
and state” (p. 201). Now this is n o t a utilitarian reform ationism ; even Miss P u rver notices th a t much. The whole adventure was one m uddled turmoil, w here Copem ican and C artesian and atomic theories m ixed w ith Baconian condemnation of all speculations; w here looking backw ard to antiquity m ixed w ith looking forw ard to new horizons; w here extrem e radicalism in philosophy mixed finally w ith R estauration m oderation and toleration in politics and religion.
There is no need to go into m uch detail of th e discussion in th e n ex t chapter on H artlib, Comenius, and “pansophia”. Of course Comenius adm ired Bacon most an d was influenced b y him both as a philosopher and as an educationist. Of course “pansophia” av erts to th e fact th a t Bacon had taken the whole of N ature as his province. Y et Miss P u rv er sees only “a superficial resemblance” (p. 210) betw een his aphorism s and Bacon’s. This is a superficial impressionism, and of a n apologetic brand. Of course, Comenius was also influenced by others, including one Johann V alentin Andreae, th e inventor of th e w ord “pansophia” who, too, was a Baconian, though even less th a n Comenius (p. 211). True, A ndreae was much influenced by other Utopians; so was Bacon, to be sure. To me, clearly, Bacon’s dream of a technocratic society is p a rt and parcel of contem porary utopianism and a n offshoot of a rem ark of More, perhaps indirectly related to the dreams of Roger Bacon. H artlib even saw both More’s and Bacon’s utopianism as a symptom of th e period’s (neo-neo-) Platonism (p. 218). Miss Purver, however, puts a wedge here: P lato in his Atlantis, M ore in his Utopia, etc., “saw his ideal society as a n en d in itself. Bacon, on the o ther hand, had a specific aim in his N ew Atlantis. Although his society was to have th e spiritual a n d social virtues w hich he considered desirable, the actual purpose of his proposed institution was to build up a new system of n atu ra l sciences” (pp. 225-6). This hot a ir should read, More w anted m ainly justice, Bacon w anted justice too but stressed efficient technocracy. For Miss P u rv er th a t sets him apart, for m e th a t sets him w ell w ithin, th e group of Utopians—though ad m ittedly w ith the m erit of an added v arian t w hich proved very inge nious indeed.
In th e last pages of h er book, though, Miss P u rv er offers a pleasant surprise, a hitherto unpublished le tter from John Beale (Boyle’s school m ate m entioned above) to Samuel H artlib, concerning a h ith erto un p u b lished plan. The same A ndreae who had influenced Comenius has also influenced a Swedish nobleman who developed a plan about a Royal So ciety w hich m ade Beale suggest th a t King Charles II should be th e pa tron and founder of th e Royal Society. (See p. 228 and p. 229 and notes there). And so, Andreae, H artlib, and others, somehow m anaged to en ter into the act. This should w arm th e h eart of an anti-radical like me, b u t I am not so much a t home in th e Establishm ent either, and find th e whole business of “Royal” in the Royal Society not over-exciting.
VI
In conclusion, Miss P u rver has rendered us a service she has n o t in tended to, and at least I am glad I have studied h er book—though this is only a retrospective feeling. She did force me to reexam ine the known documents, and she did impose on m e an image of a radicalist group which know ingly suppressed th eir origins in earlier groups w hich had understood th e term “th e new philosophy” in a less radical sense; a group w hich was em barrassed by th e fact th a t it had to pay homage to some thinkers of previous generations other th a n Bacon; a group which functioned as a group and w ith a radicalist ideology which ju sti fied ju st this new facet.
Yet science is not a group activity or a collective activity. Contrary to th e Baconian ideology of the founders of th e Royal Society, w e still see the foundation of th eir Society as no m ore th an a landm ark: Miss P u rv er is quite righ t in the factual p a rt of her com plaint (p. 3 et passim), though I do not see th a t we need change our appraisal.
This being so, one m ay w onder how the Society could function and contribute so much to th e advancem ent of learning. T hat it contributed to hum an w elfare in general is neith er problem atic nor questionable: in addition to their Baconian toleration and drive for enlightenm ent in general, th eir stress on th e mechanical and agricultural practices, from shipbuilding and gunpow der to milking and gardening, this had a lasting democratizing effect; and their anti-Baconian stress on natural know ledge in a period renow ned for its w itch-hunts is of suprem e significance too. Even w ithin th e commonwealth of learning th eir influence in the arousal of interest and hopes, as w ell as th e ir offering a platform for scientific encounter, publications, and th e like, could no t b u t be benefi cial. Yet th e Society did m ore as an in strum ent for the advancem ent of learning: contrary to its own ideology, it encouraged th e developm ent of hypotheses and controversies, and contributions of individual thinkers as individuals head and shoulder above their colleagues.
There it little doubt th a t the Society's ideology was som ew hat tem pered w ith common sense from the start. The only staunch an ti-radi- calist in th e group was Robert Boyle. His Seraphick Love of 1659, which moved Evelyn to tears and sent him first to Boyle and then to W ilkins and thus to th e foundation of the Society which soon became Royal, spoke of n atu ra l religion as encompassing experim ental philosophy as a ritual and as sublim ation of unrequited love. His “Proem ial Essay” to
Certain Physiological Essays does endorse a quasi-Baconian philosophy,
but staunchly rejects all radicalism and all hostility to hypotheses (such as preached by w riters from Bacon to Miss Purver). This “Proem ial Essay” is well reflected in the constitution of th e Society which was
O rigins o f the Royal Society 135
proposed by Lord Brouncker, th e light-w eight first president of th e So ciety, and seconded by Boyle.
The tradition of science still reflects a double-standard, a shopwin- dow image w hich is radicalist and n e at and devoid of all problem, and a workshop image w here all is in constant mess. In this century, for some time, m en of science tried to break aw ay from this trad itio n and expose th e workshop to lay inspection; b ut old traditions die hard, and Miss P u rv er’s volume is but an instance of this.
A P P E N D IX
T h e B eg in n in g o f th e R o y a l S o c ie ty , O xford, 1960, toy M argery P u rver a n d E. J. B o w en , F. R. S., Ii6 -pages, recou n ts Sprats sto r y in b rief, su p p lem en ts it, ad d s som e b iograp h ical daita, and such. It is a p u b lica tio n d ev o id o f an y m erit e x c e p t th a t it a n n ou n ces M iss P u rv er’s co n c lu sio n s to th e w orld . In v ie w o f th is it is hard ly su rp risin g th at, a s T revor-R op er com p lain s, h er con clu sion s w e r e resisted b efo re her e v id e n c e w a s heard. W hy th ere sh ou ld b e n o resista n ce to th e co n clu sio n s w h e n th e y a r e n ot argued fo r? B ut T revor-R op er fin d s com fort in th e fa ct th at a lrea d y in 1638 W ilk in s sa id it is th e fa te o f n e w tru th s to b e d erid ed by th e ign oran t an d rejected b y o th ers w h o are p erv erse. T his is n ic e : if I en d o rse your v ie w it is b ecau se you are right, if I reject it, it is b eca u se n e w tru th s a r e r e s is ted. Is it p o ssib le th a t so m e a lle g e d ly n e w id eas are resisted b eca u se th e y are old hat? T h e com b in ation o f sc ie n tific rad icalism w ith E sta b lish m en t so cia l a ttitu d es is o n e w e m a y ca ll passé. F or m y o w n part, I n eith er a ccep t nor re je c t M iss P u r v e r ’s solu tion , a s I reject th e p resu p p o sitio n s o f h er problem . A n te c e d e n ts a r e n e v e r as clea r -cu t as to a llo w u s to p o se th e q u estion . T h o se w h o d id p o se it in th e 17th cen tu ry w a n ted a n eat and tru e sh o p -w in d o w p ic tu r e o f th e a n te c e d e n ts o f th e
