The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while inherent (...) inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

This paper analyses the different ways in which Isaac Newton employed queries in his writings on natural philosophy. It is argued that queries were used in three different ways by Newton and that each of these uses is best understood against the background of the role that queries played in the Baconian method that was adopted by the leading experimenters of the early Royal Society. After a discussion of the role of queries in Francis Bacon’s natural historical method, Newton’s queries (...) in his Trinity Notebook are shown to reveal the influence of his early reading in the new experimental philosophy. Then after a discussion of Robert Hooke’s view of the role of queries, the paper turns to an assessment of Newton’s correspondence and Opticks. It is argued that the queries in his correspondence with Oldenburg on his early optical experiments are closely tied to an experimental program, whereas the queries in the Opticks are more discursive and speculative, but that each of these uses of queries represents a significant Baconian legacy in his natural philosophical methodology.Author Keywords: Bacon; Experiment; Hypothesis; Method; Newton; Query. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the natural philosophical method of Geminiano Montanari, one of the most prominent Italian natural philosophers of the late seventeenth century. Montanari’s views are used as a case study to assess recent claims concerning early modern experimental philosophy. Having presented the distinctive tenets of seventeenth-century experimental philosophers, I argue that Montanari adheres to them explicitly, thoroughly, and consistently. The study of Montanari’s views supports three claims. First, experimental philosophy was not an exclusively British phenomenon. Second, in spite of (...) some portrayals of experimental philosophy as an ‘atheoretical’ or ‘purely descriptive’ enterprise, experimental philosophers could consistently endorse a variety of natural philosophical explanations and postulate theoretical entities. Third, experimental philosophy and mechanical philosophy were not, as such, antagonistic. They could be consistently combined in a single philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Joseph Glanvill is well known for his enthusiastic support of the early Royal Society. Even before Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society of London appeared in full, Glanvill had set a philosophic background for the new science in his Vanity of dogmatizing , had attacked the outdatedness of contemporary Aristotelians in a revised edition of Vanity called Scepsis scientifica , had praised the Society at length in a flowery address in Scepsis, and had defended the programme of the Society (...) in his private correspondence. If propaganda and enthusiastic support were needed for the growth of science in Restoration England, no one seems to have done more to supply these ingredients during the early years of the Royal Society's existence than the colourful rector of Bath and Frome. (shrink)

The ArgumentIt is not easy to point to the place of knowledge in our culture. More precisely, it is difficult to locate the production of our most valued forms of knowledge, including those of religion, literature and science. A pervasive topos in Western culture, from the Greeks onward, stipulates that the most authentic intellectual agents are the most solitary. The place of knowledge is nowhere in particular and anywhere at all. I sketch some uses of the theme of the solitary (...) philosopher across a broad sweep of history, giving particular attention to its deployment in and around the scientific culture of seventeenth-century England. I argue that the rhetoric of solitude is strongly implicated in individualistic views of society and empiricist portrayals of scientific knowledge. Solitude is a state that symbolically expresses direct engagement with the sources of knowledge – divine and transcendent or natural and empirical. At the same time, solitude publicly expresses disengagement from society, identified as a set of conventions and concerns which act to corrupt knowledge. Hence, the study of the social uses of solitude adds further support to the notion that problems of knowledge and problems of social order are solved together. (shrink)

Before the Royal Society there was the Society of Astrologers, a group of around forty practitioners who met in London to enjoy lavish feasts, listen to sermons and exchange instruments and manuscripts. This article, drawing on untapped archival material, offers the first full account of this overlooked group. Convinced that astrology had been misunderstood by the professors who refused to teach it and the preachers who railed against it, the Society of Astrologers sought to democratize and legitimize their art. In (...) contrast to the received view of seventeenth-century London astrologers, which emphasizes their bitter interrelationships, this article draws attention instead to their endeavours to mount a united front in defence of astrology. The article locates the society's attempts to promote astrological literacy within broader contemporary programmes to encourage mathematical education. Unlike other mathematical arts, however, astrology's religious credibility was an area of serious concern. The society therefore commissioned the delivery and publication of apologetic sermons that justified astrology on the basis of its sacred history. In this context, the legitimacy of astrology was more a religious than a scientific question. The society's public relations campaign ultimately failed, however, and its members disbanded in the mid-1680s. Not only were they mounting a rearguard action, but also they built their campaign on out-of-date historical arguments. (shrink)

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising almost (...) none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development. (shrink)

In developing an "internal" sociology of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge drew on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reinterpret traditional epistemological topics in sociological terms. By construing scientific reasoning as rule following within a collective, sociologists David Bloor and Harry Collins effectively blocked outside criticism of a scientific field, whether scientific, philosophical, or political. Ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch developed an alternative, Wittgensteinian reading that similarly blocked philosophical or political critique, while also disallowing analytical appeals to historical or institutional contexts. I criticize (...) these Wittgensteinian sociologies and argue for the historical and contemporary significance of methodological criticisms of scientific practice that conjoin epistemological and political categories. I consider two such cases briefly: the Baconian criticism of Scholastic science in the early Royal Society and the criticism of AIDS drug testing protocols by activists. Key Words: Wittgenstein • sociology of scientific knowledge • ethnomethodology • scientific method • interpretive sociology. (shrink)

Recent literature has explored at some length the transition between individual observations and the experimental facts that they are supposed to establish, emphasizing particularly the social dimension of this question. In this article I examine some crucial stages in the history of this problem, in particular, the way in which the establishment of experimental facts became social. I begin with a brief discussion of experimental facthood in late Renaissance thought before turning to Bacon and Descartes and showing the extent to (...) which their conception of experimental facthood is radically individualistic. I then discuss the self-consciously social conception of experimental facthood found in the writings of the early Royal Society. After a digression about some recent issues concerning the rhetoric of scientific experiments in the period, I end with some speculations about why the transition occurred when it did. The transformation in the philosophical view about the role of community in the establishment of experimental facts, I suggest, is closely connected with the emergence of a community entitled to make the judgments necessary to establish such facts. (shrink)