John Gribbin - The Fellowship: The Story of a Revolution

The Fellowship

JOHN GRIBBIN

The Story of a Revolution

ALLEN LANE

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First published 2005
1

Copyright John and Mary Gribbin, 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EISBN: 9780141902944

Men are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural things, and modern philosophers, as though dreaming in the darkness, must be aroused and taught the uses of things, the dealing with things; they must be made to quit the sort of learning that comes only from books, and that rests only on vain arguments from probability and upon conjectures

William Gilbert

De Magnete, 1600

Heralds of the Revolution

Getting Started

Coming of Age

Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses

As ever, Mary Gribbin played a significant role in the researching and writing of this book. The authorial we in the text refers to both of us, and sometimes to the reader as well; the occasional use of I indicates the personal view of JG. We are grateful to the Alfred C. Munger Foundation for a grant towards our research and travel expenses, and to the following institutions for providing access to their records: Bodleian Library, Oxford; British Library, London; Kings College, Cambridge; Observatoire de Paris; Public Record Office, Kew; Royal Observatory, Greenwich; Royal Astronomical Society; Royal Society; Trinity College, Cambridge; University of Cambridge Library.

The University of Sussex continued to provide us with a base from which to work.

Wednesday, 28 November 1660

It is just six months since Charles II landed at Dover en route to London, summoned by Parliament to take the crown which had once adorned the head of his father. One side effect of the restoration of the monarchy has been to bring together two groups of men whose lives have been kept apart by the events of the Civil War and the Parliamentary Interregnum, but who share a common interest in finding out how the world works. One group, headed by John Wilkins, has been based in Oxford during the Rule of Parliament; but many of them have now lost their jobs to Royalist sympathizers and gravitated to London seeking other opportunities. The other group are, by and large, Royalists who have had interesting lives during the Kings exile, but have, naturally, not been at the centre of things in England; they are now eager to take up the new opportunities provided for them in London by the return of the King.

The place where these two groups of men have come together is Gresham College, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1596. By 1660, this was the leading seat of learning in London, with professors of law, medicine, rhetoric, music, chemistry, and astronomy who gave lectures that were open to the public (or at least, the gentlemanly public of polite society). It was natural that gentlemen who were interested in what we would now call science, whatever their background, would attend these lectures, and get to know their kindred spirits. Some of these gentlemen took to meeting up after the lectures, enjoying the newly fashionable taste of coffee and discussing what they had just heard. Over the past few weeks, an idea has been brewing, carefully fostered by Wilkins, the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and formerly Warden of Wadham College, in Oxford. Instead of just talking about science (or natural philosophy, as they called it), why not do something about it? Why not form themselves into a society which would promote the use of experiments to probe nature and unlock her secrets?

Individual scientists, as we shall see, had already realized the importance of the experimental method in science, and had achieved isolated successes through its application. But this was a bold new proposal for a concerted attack, on a broad front, to find out how the world worked. In making this proposal, the Gresham group were consciously following the teaching (but not the practice) of the philosopher Francis Bacon, who was no experimental scientist himself but had written influential books promoting the idea of experimental science earlier in the seventeenth century. So it is at this meeting, on 28 November 1660, in rooms at Gresham College following a lecture on astronomy by Christopher Wren, that this particular group of natural philosophers have arranged to meet under the chairmanship of John Wilkins. Their intention is to formally constitute themselves as a society, with official minutes kept from the outset that record their objective that they might doe something answerable here for the promoting of Experimentall Philosophy. There are just a dozen men present to put their names to this modest ambition, but the society they found will become the catalyst for the scientific revolution; a revolution that happens because they are the right people, in the right place, at the right time

THE REASON WHY

The seventeenth century in Britain was one of unparalleled scientific discovery. Why? Why the seventeenth century, and why Britain? The timing is straightforward to explain as part of the Renaissance, and although an explanation of the timing of the Renaissance and the reasons for this revival of culture in Western Europe lies outside the scope of the present book, as I have argued in Science: A History a convenient marker for the start of the scientific revolution that would transform first Europe and then the rest of the world is 1543, the year in which Andreas Vesalius published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) and Nicolaus Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies). Copernicus was Polish, but had studied in Italy; Vesalius was from Brussels, studied briefly in Paris, and carried out his greatest work in Italy. Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance, which was fuelled by both scholars and manuscripts making the short journey from Constantinople around the time of the fall of Byzantium, in the middle of the fifteenth century. Other key (and related) developments brought about what has been called the First Industrial Revolution (I would prefer technological rather than industrial) with the introduction in Europe of moveable type and the printing press, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass. These changed the intellectual environment both by improving communications and providing information about new and exciting places, and by showing that the application of science could have practical benefits.