Page images
PDF
EPUB

perience, and the arrangement of the facts, which experience ascertained.' The united inquiries, observations, and memoranda, of as many as possible of the intelligent and enlightened part of the human race were henceforth understood to afford the only means for its true improvement. Men became now first sensible, that, by due investigation of the qualities and the phænomena of matter, they might discover modes of science unknown to the ancients. And the necessity for the association of philosophers, in order to the accomplishment of the great purposes of philosophical inquiry, was from this time, by those who adopted the views of Bacon, warmly acknowledged.

It dwelt much upon the minds of the ingenious and inquisitive in England. Milton's plan for a new seminary and course of education, in his letter to Hartlib, seems to have been suggested by this fundamental idea, Cowley's proposal of a philosophical college, to be established, with an income of four thousand pounds a year, at Chelsea, was a fine model for the union of a school with a society for the advancement of physical knowledge. It was within a few years after the death of Charles the First, that a few of those persons, who were afterwards incorporated into the Royal Society of London, began at Dr. Wilkins's lodgings, in Wadham College, Oxford, those philosophical meet ings, which were to be in that society continued.

These were almost the first philosophical meetings in Europe for the advancement of physical knowledge. There were in Italy more than forty academies for the refining of the Italian language and the social study of

At Aix, in Pro

the fine arts: but, though the societies of architects, sculptors, and painters, might make some inquiries and observations relative to those parts of physicks, in which their respective arts were immediately concerned; yet the opprobrium of atheism, which was charged against the earlier natura philosophers in that country, had, with other causes, hitherto prevented societies, with express and exclusive views to physical discovery from there arising. In France an academy had been instituted at Paris for the refinement of the French language. A similar establishment began to be formed at Caen. vence, the illustrious Peiresc, the Robert Boyle of France, not only corresponded with the most emi nent and ingenious men in Europe on almost every interesting subject in physicks and in the study of antiquities, but engaged his friends often to assemble in his house for the mutual communication of their observations and discoveries, as well in natural philosophy as in every other part of knowledge. But the institution of an academy of scienccs was reserved to distinguish, at a period somewhat later, the ministry of Colbert, and the most splendid, part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth. The professors in the German universities occasionally met and conversed about the subjects and ends of their studies; but, in these, physical science had hitherto but small share; and there was not as yet in Germany any separate company of philosophers, associated for the investigation of the laws of material na

ture.

Dr. Seth Ward, the Hon. Robert Boyle, Dr. Wilkins, Sir William Petty, Mr. Matthew Wren,

Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Willis, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Christopher Wren, and Mr. Rooke, were the principal persons, who associated at the meetings in Wadham college. They met rather to perform experiments, than to discourse about them. Mechanicks and chemistry were the branches of science, to which their first experiments chiefly related. In the year 1658 the scene of their meetings was transferred from Oxford to Gresham college, in London.

Their number was here considerably augmented. Their meetings were, for a time, interrupted by the disturbances, which ensued between the usurpation of the Cromwells and the restoration in 1660.

At the restoration, two Scotsmen, Sir Robert Moray, of Tibbermuir, and a Mr. Erskine, who, having followed the king in his exile, had now influence at court, eagerly joined the philosophical meetings at Gresham college, and persuaded their sovereign to take the rising society under his own special patronage. A royal charter was soon after granted, incorporating these philosophers into a body, to consist of a president, a council of one-and-twenty members, and an indeterminate number of fellows. William Lord Viscount Brounker became their first president. The institution was, for a time, very much an object of fashionable attention at court. The king himself, as the patron and founder, the duke of Buckingham, prince Rupert, the earl of Clarendop, the first earl of Shaftesbury, Monk duke of Albemarle, duke Albert of BrunswickLunenburgh, the earl of Peterborough, were enrolled at the head of a number of distinguished names in the first list of the mem

bers-Omne ignotum pro mirabili. For a time the most extravagant enthusiasm was excited in favour of the new society, and from its exertions an improvement in the most extraordinary of all the arts of life was expected at once to en

sue.

The meetings of the society continued after its incorporation by charter, as before, to be held at Gresham college. They took place every Wednesday in term time, immediately after the lecture of the professor of astronomy in that college, and were eagerly attended by the members. Dr. Croone, with the title of register, had, at first, the care of recording the transactions at these meetings in journals. It was afterwards committed to Dr. Wilkins and Mr. Oldenburgh, the two first secretaries. Cowley had demanded a revenue of four thousand pounds a year for his projected college at Chelsea; but the Royal Society was supported without any publick fund, simply by the voluntary contributions of the gentlemen of whom it was composed.

The society entered upon its researches with views at once magnificent and philosophically modest. It proposed but to make faithful records of all the works of nature and art.' By these it hoped to explode errours, to restore neglected truths, to apply philosophy to the uses of life, and to open the avenues to future discovery. It professed to admit into its association men of all religions, all countries, all conditions and employments in life. They proposed to derive useful truth not only from the learned and professed philosophers, but from the shops of mechanicks, the voyages of merchants, the ploughs of husbandmen, the sports, fish

ponds, parks, and gardens, of gentlemen. Some hesitated whether Mr. Grant, a small shopkeeper in London, the author of some excellent observations on the bills of mortality, should be received into such a company of philosophers. But king Charles, on perusing his observations, not only recommended his immediate admission, but desired that they would add to their number as many shopkeepers as possible of equal endow

ments.

In their researches they would not trust the reports of others in any case, where they could bring the inatter under the examination of their own senses. In some instances they allowed particular members to choose whatever sub jects they should think proper; to institute, at pleasure, any train of experiments on them; to defray the expense from the purse of the society; and then to report at the meetings the series and the results of the experiments they had thus made. Other experiments were expressly ordered by the voice of the whole society, and were entrusted in the performance, not to single persons, but to committees nominated for the occasion. For inquiry concerning things at a distance they had, very early, begun a correspondence with inquisitive and enlightened in almost every different part of the world. At many experiments in the parks, in the royal gardens, and on the Thames, the king himself zealously assisted in person.

Mr.

Huygens, the famous philosopher in Flanders, received, soon after the institution of this society, its frequent assistance, and communicated to it all his discoveries and inventions; in particular, that noble one of the first application of the motion of pendulums to clocks

and watches. The philosophers of Florence, and especially the grand duke's brother, prince Leopold, entered into friendly correspondence with the English philophers, and acquainted them with every new observation that was made on nature in Italy. The Germans no sooner heard of this institution than they sent many of their books to be submitted to its censure, and contributed likewise presents of various new instruments of their invention. The travellers, physicians, surgeons, anatomists, &c. of France were peculiarly early and frank in their communications to it. The Academy of Arts and Sciences at Paris was soon after embodied in imitation of this society and the example of the English was quickly, more or less, followed in almost every country in Europe in favour of the physical sciences and the useful arts,

The experiments, which king Charles the Second was the most attentive to, related chiefly to chemistry and mechanicks. He would often amuse himself at Whitehall in the execution of curious mechanical works. He had also in his palace a small laboratory for chemical operations. made astronomical observations, upon various occasions, in Saint James's Park. ingly curious in directing the inquiries of the society to every thing, that concerned the improvement of the art of ship-building. He attended and directed different experiments at the Tower of London, as well as at Whitehall, to ascertain the forces of projectiles, with their variations in different circumstances.

He was exceed

In their early meetings the members of the society were at great pains to distinguish what ob

jects were the worthiest of their e first inquiries. Some were directed to examine all treatises and descriptions' of the natural and artificial productions of foreign countries: others were commissioned to discourse with seamen, travellers, tradesmen, and merchants, by whom those countries and their productions had been personally examined. From the union of the viva voce with the written intelligence papers were formed, explaining summarily what was known concerning every different country, and what remained to be yet inquired into. These papers were read at subsequent meetings; and queries were then drawn from them, to be transmitted for answers to the society's foreign correspondents.

One set of queries, which were prepared among the earlier labours of this society, had for its object, to mark what things were needful to be observed in order to the making of a natural history in general.' They formed similar queries respecting the histories of the air, atmosphere, and weather; of the production, growth, &c. of vegetables; of agriculture, &c. They marked out trains of experiments to be tried on rarefaction and condensation; on the petrifaction of wood; on the loadstone; on the discoveries wanting to complete the science of anatomy; on injections into the blood of animals, and on the transfusion of the blood of one animal into another; on the tides of the sea; on the varieties of oysters, and the manner of their nourishment; and on the phænomena of mines. They gave directions to seamen for the observation of the eclipses of the moon, the eclipses of the sun by Mercury, and the satellites of Jupiter. They sent abroad direc

tions for observations and experiments to be made in India, China, the island of St. Helena, Teneriffe, Guinea, Barbary, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Transylvania, Poland, Sweden, Iceland, and Greenland.

One of the first answers they received to their inquiries concerning foreign countries, was sent from Batavia by Sir Philiberto Vernatti. It corrected an errour, prevalent in Europe, that diamonds and other precious stones were in the Indian isies continually renewed, as by vegetation, in the quarries out of which they are taken.' It informed them of the existence of a volcanick mountain in Java, and another in Sumatra. It exploded a vulgar errour, which one should have thought to be, even otherwise, incapable of obtaining for a moment the assent of philosophers that there was in the island of Sambrero, lying north from Sumatra, a sensitive plant,that would, when pulled with the hand, shrink into the earth, and that had for its root a living worm.' It brought one of the first accounts propagated in Europe of the existence of the bohan upas, the famous poison-tree of Java. It added a variety of other curious information concerning the most extraordinary objects and arts in the East. ries sent out, it left still many unanswered.

But of the que

Mr. Hooke was one of the most ingenious and indefatigable of the early members of this society. He explained, in an admirable paper, the best method of making a history of the phænomena of the weather. He made many experiments, which were repeated, with many variations of circumstances, by the society, to prove,

that visible and sensible fire was but the act of the dissolution of heated bodies by the air that this dissolution of such bodies took place in a manner perfectly similar to the solution of iron, tin, and copper, by acids: that the evolution of heat and light was a necessary result of the solution of heated and combustible bodies in air: that the ashes of a burnt body were a residuum of it, that was insoluble in air.' This chemical theory, as the learned reader cannot but perceive, differs from that, which was proposed by M. Lavoisier, and which is now deservedly received as philosophical truth,only in being expressed in the chemical dialect of that time, which is now obsolete; and in being, in the intention of its author, to a certain degree accommodated to other theories, which then prevailed. In verifying the theory of Hooke, the society made a number of experiments to ascertain how long a candle, a lamp, or ignited coals, would continue to burn in a cube foot of common, of rarefied, and of condensed air; to exhibit the sudden extinction of flame by the affusion of air already satiated with burning, and the impossibility of even the most intense and torrid heat to continue without a supply of fresh air; and to find what particular degree of heat was to be produced from the burning of every different combustible material. By other experiments, having a respect to the same theory, they ascertained that flame was subject to be extinguished by the air in a deep well. They made beside these, and with a view to discern the varied phænomena of ignition and combustion, independently of Mr. Hooke's system, a great number of other experiments on the bringing of copper into a state of

great combustibility, on the igniting of tin filings by the help of nitre, &c. &c.

They instituted a multitude of experiments to determine the nature, properties, and uses of air. By the care especially of Mr. Boyle, many trials were made to find, by means of the baroscope, the different degrees of the pressure or gravity of the atmosphere at different heights and depths. They took much pains to discover the opposite limits of the rarefaction and the condensation of air. They made a variety of experiments on the propagation of sound in air and what is, in a chemical point of view, highly remarkable, a number of their experiments were directed to ascertain the generation of air, by corrosive menstrua, out of fermenting liquors; and to determine the fitness or unfitness of such air to support combustion and respiration.' Other experiments were made by them for the purpose of discovering how long a man might live by inspiring and respiring the same air; whether air contaminated by respiration might be again made pure and respirable; whether the unfitness of contaminated air for respiration were not a quality altogether independent of its temperature, as hot or cold. By other experiments they examined what quantity of air might be sufficient for the respiration of an animal for a given space of time; and in what manner air, previously applied to support combustion, became by that unfit to be respired. Others of these experiments respected the necessity of air to support vegetation; and it was the object of others to examine what use was made of air in the vital functions of fishes under water.

Water was the immediate sub

« PreviousContinue »