Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Hostname: page-component-684bc48f8b-kl86h Total loading time: 8.403 Render date: 2021-04-11T05:17:07.628Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true, "metricsAbstractViews": false, "figures": false, "newCiteModal": false, "newCitedByModal": true }
EnglishFrançais
The British Journal for the History of Science The British Journal for the History of Science

Article contents

Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2000

ADRIAN JOHNS
ADRIAN JOHNS
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego: 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Get access
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Historians of science have long acknowledged the important role that journals play in the scientific enterprise. They both secure the shared values of a scientific community and certify what that community takes to be licensed knowledge. The advent of the first learned periodicals in the mid-seventeenth century was therefore a major event. But why did this event happen when it did, and how was the permanence of the learned journal secured? This paper reveals some of the answers. It examines the shifting fortunes of one of the earliest of natural-philosophical periodicals, the Philosophical Transactions, launched in London in 1665 by Henry Oldenburg. The paper shows how fraught the enterprise of journal publishing was in the Europe of that period, and, not least, it draws attention to a number of publications that arose out of the commercial realm of the Restoration to rival (or parody) Oldenburg's now famous creation. By doing so it helps restore to view the hard work that underpinned the republic of letters.

And as for natural philosophy, is it not removed from Oxford and Cambridge to Gresham College in London, and to be learned out of their gazettes?

Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth (written c. 1668).

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 159 - 186
Copyright
© 2000 British Society for the History of Science

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.
If you should have access and can't see this content please contact technical support.

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views.

Total number of HTML views: 12
Total number of PDF views: 88 *
View data table for this chart

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between September 2016 - 11th April 2021. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

19
Cited by

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *