[A tale of 2 cities. The dispute over the true origins of the Royal Society].

Abstract

When the Royal Society was founded in November 1660 it took scientific societies already existing in other European countries as its model. However, at a time when the new mathematical and experimental sciences were still generally without a secure institutional foundation there was also great interest in the new society on the part of scientists and scholars abroad. Soon visitors such as Christiaan Huygens and Balthazar de Monconys were able to report positively on its practical orientation, while among others Johannes Hevelius and Philipp Jacob Sachs von Lewenhaimb in letters to the founder member John Wallis and to the secretary Henry Oldenburg requested more information on its origins and statutes. Meanwhile, in England the Royal Society found itself the object of vociferous criticism, especially from the universities, which saw their own role as centres of learning increasingly compromised by the existence of an institution dedicated to the promotion of modern science. The Royal Society responded to this interest from abroad and criticism at home by commissioning an official history written by Thomas Sprat, a man with a university as well as a literary background. However, despite the author's good credentials, the History of the Royal Society presents a one-sided account of the institution, mainly from the perspective of the circle around John Wilkins to which Sprat had belonged. According to their point of view the Royal Society arose from meetings which Wilkins had organized at Wadham College in Oxford in the early 1650s. For members of the old guard, such as Wallis and William Brouncker, the origins of the Royal Society were, however, not in Oxford but rather in London, where meetings involving a significant number of members of the future institution had taken place already in the mid-1640s. This was not simply a question of historical accuracy, but also of the way in which the Royal Society conceived itself: while the circle around Wilkins was in decisive respects experimentally orientated, Wallis, Brouncker and their friends stood for a more mathematical approach to physics as well as for the promotion of mathematics itself. By taking into account a number of sources not previously considered in context, the paper seeks to shed new light on a problem which has remained largely unresolved since the debate began in the late Seventeenth Century.