The Common Scientist of the Seventeenth Century

A Study of the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683-1708

K Theodore Hoppen

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135028534
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Filosofia
• Categoría: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Learned societies, such as the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Philosophical Society were a central feature of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. This volume shows that a study of the work and membership of these groups is essential before any realistic assessment can be made of the scientific world at this time. Based on a wide range of manuscript and other sources, this book illuminates, by means of an examination of a particular group of natural philosophers, on problems of general interest to all those concerned with the wider aspects of science in this period.

Chapter 1

Background and Beginnings

I. THE ENGLISH BACKGROUND

The optimistic hope that the new philosophy would make man a happier being, in body as well as in intellect, underlay and promoted that mental attitude congenial to scientific change which was one of the features of organized thought in seventeenth-century Europe. It gave added impetus to the progression towards the experimental method, which, although already present in the sixteenth century, only came into full flower during the hundred years that followed. When Thomas Sprat suggested in 1667 that while the old philosophy ‘could only bestow on us some barren terms and notions, the new shall impart to us the uses of all the creatures and shall inrich us with all the benefits of fruitfulness and plenty’,¹ the supporters of the latter were certainly on the offensive, although their opponents were still capable of making loud, often rude, and occasionally effective assertions of conservative disagreement. This growing confidence was reflected in the flood of pamphlet and other literature published in England between the years 1640 and 1690.

There were, however, also important political and economic forces involved in the shaping of the scientific movement. But Puritanism and the rule of the Commonwealth in England were factors conditioning men towards change, rather than direct propellents of the scientific method. Puritanism was of course in essence a spiritual phenomenon, and its concomitant political and social characteristics were incidental rather than central to its basically religious message. Puritanism could never more than till the ground for a new scheme of thought, the seed for which had to come from other, sometimes alien, philosophies of progress. T. K. Rabb is near the truth when he asserts that the stimulus given by Puritans to ‘the New Learning was due not to any inherent Puritan tendency, but rather to the revolutionary's natural adoption of the convenient, ready-made, and Baconian philosophy’.² It seems certain however that the Puritan stress on education, especially when practical and useful, helped to disseminate more widely the new ideas of the natural philosophers. But any precise statement about the exact relationship between cause and effect is difficult to formulate with accuracy. For instance, the Puritan's utilitarian outlook may itself have come about as a result of, or at least been given added impetus by, contemporary Baconian writings. The scientific movement was therefore rather in the nature of a perpetual chain-reaction, than one in which it is easy to isolate definite first causes.

William Petty, a founder fellow of the Royal Society of London and first president of the Dublin Philosophical Society, who, ‘besides Wilkins and Boyle, was as much responsible for the promotion of the new science as any of his contemporaries’,³was not alone in his eagerness to emphasize the usefulness of the new philosophy, especially when prosecuted by means of intensive use of physical experiment. In a pamphlet of 1648 he suggested the establishment of a ‘Gymnasium Mechanicum’ for the advancement of all ‘mechanical arts and manufactures’, which would make ‘trades miraculously prosper, and new inventions … more frequent than new fashions in clothes’, and the members of which would ‘pursue the means of acquiring the publick good and comfort of mankind a little further’.⁴Some twenty years later Petty's views on this point had become more precise. In a booklet refuting those who accused the Royal Society of engaging in useless undertakings, he wrote, ‘I have therefore, to streighten this crooked stick, bent it and my present discourse the quite contrary way, viz. to the sails and shapes of ships; to the carpentry and carriages; to mills, mill-dams, bulwarks; to the labour of horses, … which are handled in this exercise to prevent further imputation of needless nicety’, and went on to assert that he had ‘declined all speculations not tending to practice’.⁵ The fact that Petty thought it important to demonstrate in detail the errors of those attacking the Royal Society, indicates the contemporary vigour of opposing arguments, which were not always in themselves irrational or without foundation.

The serious scientific experiments dragged behind them a heterogeneous crowd whose only passion was for the obviously marvellous or bizarre. For these men the less understandable any phenomenon was, the more interesting it became. Mary Astell, writing in the last decade of the century, echoed earlier authors. ‘What discoveries do we owe to their labours? It is only the discovery of some few unheeded varieties of plants, shells, or insects, unheeded only because useless.’⁶ While Astell criticized only the lunatic fringe of scientific activity, Henry Stubbe was less discriminating, and condemned all modern learning. He conceived a particular hatred for Francis Bacon, because, like so many others, he considered him to have been the prime mover and direct source of the English exemplar of the New Learning. So pervasive and pernicious did Stubbe consider Bacon's posthumous influence that he felt it necessary to point out that ‘no law ever made him our dictator, nor is there any reason that concludes him infallible’.⁷

But if the so-called virtuosi indulged in useless, if interesting, activities, the leaders of scientific advance claimed to be firmly practical. Robert Boyle, besides Newton the outstanding figure of the time, declared in 1663, ‘I should not have neer so high a value as I now cherish for physiology, if I thought it could onely teach a man to discourse of nature, but not at all to master her; … I shall not dare to think my self a true naturalist, till my skill can make my garden yield better herbs and flowers, or my orchard better fruit.’⁸ Robert Hooke, for a time Boyle's laboratory assistant, was also convinced that if the new philosophy were properly pursued, all the ‘universal metaphysical natures, which the luxury of subtil brains has devis'd, would quickly vanish, and give place to solid histories, experiments, and works’.⁹ Thomas Sprat, although himself no scientist, wrote one of the best defences of the contemporary scientific method in The History of the Royal Society, in which he never tired of describing his subject as an institution ‘that prefers works before words’.¹⁰ But some enthusiasts for the New Learning went further, and by overstating their case, presented an easy target for the arrows of antagonists. Samuel Parker, an opponent of Cambridge Platonism, had nothing but contempt for the whole corpus of ancient knowledge, the new methods being ‘unquestionable, and therefore must needs render all lesser evidence vain and unnecessary’.¹¹

B

In any case the argument from utility is most commonly found among the propagandists of science. Those who themselves brought about major intellectual advances were at least as concerned with abstract speculation as with matters of use. Furthermore the nature of scientific change in the seventeenth century cannot be properly understood without reference to the fundamental ambivalence which typified it. Boyle for example was deeply concerned with problems which had formed the core of Hermetic teaching, while Newton's chronological studies owed as much to medieval number mysticism as they did to modern mathematics.

This is not to deny the existence of real struggle and meaningful dispute. One hardy perennial in this field concerned religion. The Royal Society in particular came under severe censure from those who regarded it, not only as having no real interest in sound belief, but far worse, as tolerating fanaticism and papism. Sprat merely emphasized the point when he mentioned how at the society ‘the divine, the Presbyterian, the Papist, the Independent, and those of orthodox judgement, have laid aside their names of distinction, and calmly conspir'd in a mutual agreement of labors and desires’.¹² Stubbe was quick to react to this passage. ‘I believe it is not displeasing to them,’ he wrote, referring to the Roman Catholics, ‘to see how friendly the Protestants and Papists converse… in this assembly, and it must needs raise their hopes of bringing things to a closer union, when they perceive the strangeness, that ought to be, and hath been, betwixt them, taken off. … I say, how great benefit popery may draw hence, I cannot well comprehend.’¹³ He himself, as was righteously pointed out, stood firmly on the rockbed of the establishment, namely, ‘the present monarchy, the Church of England, the universities, and my own faculty’.¹⁴ Stubbe's writings, although strident in tone, were not as influential as he imagined them to be, and while it is true that he became a sort of leader for those of like view, it was in the main an uninspiring captaincy. As early as 1671 John Beale could claim that ‘the wings of the Stubbians are already broken and their reputation withers’.¹⁵

Throughout this period of controversy, many of those interested in the new philosophy formulated schemes for combining themselves into colleges or societies, so that, by means of mutual help they might advance the cause of scientific learning. One such institution had already been in existence since late Elizabethan times, namely London's Gresham College, founded in 1596. This provided a focus for science outside the universities, but its organization and its staff of seven celibate professors lecturing to the public, were far too modest to satisfy the demands of the ‘Bacon-faced generation’.¹⁶ The many schemes and plans produced are evidence that Gresham College was not enough, although its very existence gave it an advantage over the always elaborate and often impracticable dreams of the projectors. But despite the obvious eagerness to establish new scientific institutions, an eagerness not at all dimmed by the Restoration, John Flamsteed, one of Gresham's professors, was in 1681 lecturing to almost non-existent audiences. His friend William Molyneux of Dublin, on hearing his complaints, agreed that:

‘Tis pitty so noble a designe should fall to the ground, and ’tis a shame for the gentry of London to suffer the great professors of that colledge to read sometimes to almost bare walls, were a seditious balling fanatick in the pulpit he would have a thick audience to hear his infernall doctrine, whilst the celestiall discourses of a learned astronomer or other mathematician are heard but by a few and perhaps by them neglected.¹⁷

The archetype for most of these schemes was Bacon's New Atlantis. Although already in the late sixteenth century John Dee had gathered a group of like-minded men about him at his house in Mortlake, the idea of scientific strength through finely organized cooperation was in England essentially a Baconian concept. But Bacon was often misunderstood by his admirers. He ‘professed no such narrow utilitarianism as later went under his name. … “Works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life.” … Knowledge should not be sought as … “a shop for profit and sale”.’¹⁸ But as so often in the past, the misunderstandings were to become more important in their effects than the realities which they distorted. It would however be wrong to stress too strongly these interpretative mistakes on the part of Bacon's would-be disciples, for the whole matter was one of emphasis rather than fundamentals.

Samuel Hartlib, a German living in England, was foremost among the projectors. He was not a scientist, but one of those Puritan thinkers who became enthusiasts for the New Learning. Among others, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, and the poet Abraham Cowley, can also be mentioned as having made important contributions in thi...