The intellectual origins of the Royal Society

Abstract

Abstract A few decades ago historical studies of the background to the English scientific movement of the seventeenth century tended to involve discussions of the influence of utilitarian motives in drawing men to the study of nature. At one extreme, the technical needs of the ‘English bourgeoisie’ were said to be of primary importance (1). Other studies made utilitarian considerations part of a constellation of attitudes which supplied a religious motivation for engaging in scientific activity (2). Although some of these issues were recently raised anew, they wear a faded air, having been pushed to the periphery of historical interest by a number of brilliant explorations of the intellectual structure of the new mechanical world-view (3). Once the Earth had been ‘hurled into the skies’ by Copernicus, and the finite, graded universe of Aristotle with its associated qualitative and teleological physics had been discredited, it was the enormous intellectual adventure of fashioning a new world-picture which called forth the deepest energies of the creators of modern science. Problems were essentially set and solved by an inner dialectic of advance.

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