Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 “Innocent Witch-craft of Lights”: Developing Visual Judgment through Printed Books
- 2 “A New Visible World”: Developing a Visual Vocabulary for the Microscopic
- 3 “Nearly Resembling the Live Birds”: Collecting and Collating for the Reformation of Natural History
- 4 “These Rude Collections”: Accumulating Observations and Experiments
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - “These Rude Collections”: Accumulating Observations and Experiments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 “Innocent Witch-craft of Lights”: Developing Visual Judgment through Printed Books
- 2 “A New Visible World”: Developing a Visual Vocabulary for the Microscopic
- 3 “Nearly Resembling the Live Birds”: Collecting and Collating for the Reformation of Natural History
- 4 “These Rude Collections”: Accumulating Observations and Experiments
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter consists of a close study of the illustrated articles related to astronomy and anatomy from the early years of Philosophical Transactions. Studying these engravings along with their sources reveals the importance of images to the process of communication within the early modern scientific community and highlights the important role of Oldenburg's network of correspondents in the production of a corporate record of experiments and observations. Moving across languages and among correspondents who rarely, if ever, saw one another's instruments or workspaces, the visual component of these articles was not peripheral to their usefulness, but indeed was a central feature. Studying these articles shows how accuracy was produced through the accumulation of images that circulated among this pan- European community.
Keywords: Henry Oldenburg, Philosophical Transactions, Periodicals, Anatomy, Astronomy
In the first issue of the newly organized Philosophical Transactions, its editor, Henry Oldenburg, promised in the Introduction to provide his readers “knowledge of what this Kingdom, or other parts of the World, do, from time to time, afford.” He clarified his purpose on the title page for the first volume as the full title of the work was: “Philosophical Transactions: Giving some accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many Considerable parts of the world.” This journal then was to be not just an English effort, but an international one. Oldenburg was at pains to emphasize in his dedicatory letter to the Royal Society that this was not an official publication of the Royal Society, but rather his own private project:
In these Rude Collections, which are onely the Gleanings of my private diversions in broken hours, it may appear, that many Minds and Hands are in many places industriously employed, under Your Countenance and by Your Example, in the pursuit of those Excellent Ends, which belong to Your Heroical Undertakings.
His “Rude Collections” then were the product of his own reading and correspondence with many like-minded individuals scattered across Europe and beyond. Despite Oldenburg's protestations and the evidence Adrian Johns has found for Oldenburg's financial investment in the Philosophical Transactions, the pan-European community, nonetheless, perceived the journal as being part of the Royal Society's work.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Engraving Accuracy in Early Modern EnglandVisual Communication and the Royal Society, pp. 177 - 214Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022