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
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-20T18:58:27.356Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

12 - Science and the book

from LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED

By
Adrian Johns
Edited by
John Barnard  and
D. F. McKenzie
With
Maureen Bell
Adrian Johns
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
John Barnard
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
D. F. McKenzie
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Maureen Bell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

Books and things

The period covered by this volume saw the most profound transformation in natural knowledge ever to take place in Britain. At the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign, Aristotelianism held sway, and natural philosophy was a largely contemplative enterprise pursued at universities. A century and a half later, scholasticism had been eclipsed for good. The intervening years saw the flourishing of mechanical and mathematical approaches to creation, the invention of experimental philosophy, the advent of the Royal Society, and the achievements of Francis Bacon, William Harvey and Robert Boyle. The greatest of all works of natural knowledge, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (‘Mathematical principles of natural philosophy’, 1687), had just appeared, and its enormous influence was beginning to be felt. If this was not quite a ‘scientific revolution’ – because what emerged from it was not yet modern science – it was nonetheless a change out of all recognition from anything that had gone before. What this dramatic transformation owed to the contemporary culture of the book, and what, if any, consequences it held for that culture, are the questions addressed in this chapter.

Many of those involved in creating the new philosophy of the period, and until recently most of their historians, would not have hesitated to answer these questions in dismissive terms. What was so admirable about the new philosophy, they were given to insisting, was that it abandoned the culture of the book altogether. It repudiated words in favour of things. Proponents called for the wholesale rejection of ‘bookish’ learning and its replacement by practical knowledge gained through direct experience.

Keywords

mathematical sciencesmedicinebook tradeHalley's investmentLondonnatural history
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
, pp. 274 - 303
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agrippa, H. C. Three books of occult philosophy, trans. Freake, J., ed. Tyson, D. (St Paul, MN), 1997.Google Scholar
Alexander, A. 1995 ‘The imperialist space of Elizabethan mathematics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aubrey, J. 1982 Brief lives (ed.) Barber, R., Woodbridge.Google Scholar
Baily, F. An account of the Reverend John Flamsteed (London, 1835).Google Scholar
Beer, E. S. ed. The correspondence of John Locke, (Oxford, 1976–89).Google Scholar
Bennett, J. A. 1982 The mathematical science of Christopher Wren, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. A. 1986 ‘The mechanics’ philosophy and the mechanical philosophy’, History of Science, 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, J. A. 1991 ‘The challenge of practical mathematics’, in Pumfrey, S., Rossi, P. L. and Slawinski, M. (eds.), Science, culture, and popular belief in Renaissance Europe, Manchester.Google Scholar
Biagioli, M. 1990 ‘Galileo’s system of patronage’, History of Science, 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biagioli, M. 1993 Galileo, courtier: the practice of science in the culture of absolutism, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birch, T. 1756–7 (ed.), The history of the Royal Society of London for improving of natural knowledge, 4 vols., London.Google Scholar
Blagden, C. 1958b ‘The distribution of almanacks in the second half of the seventeenth century’, Studies in Bibliography 11.Google Scholar
Blagden, C. 1960 The Stationers’ Company: a history 1403–1959, London.Google Scholar
Blair, A. 1997 The theater of nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance science, Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
Boyle, R. 1655 ‘An epistolical discourse … inviting all true lovers of vertue and mankind, to a free and generous communication of their secrets and receits in physick’, in Hartlib, S., Chymical, medicinal, and chyrurgical addresses made to Samuel Hartlib, Esq., London.Google Scholar
Capp, B. 1979 English almanacs 1500–1800: astrology and the popular press, London.Google Scholar
Chartier, R. 1995 Forms and meanings: texts, performances, and audiences from codex to computer, Philadelphia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Childrey, J. Britannia Baconica (London, 1661).Google Scholar
Cohen, I. B. 1971 Introduction to Newton’s Principia, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, H. 1986 The decline of the old medical regime in Stuart London, Ithaca, NY.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crossley, J. (ed.), Autobiographical tracts of Dr John Dee (London, 1851).Google Scholar
Culpeper, N. A physical directory (London, 1650), sigs. B1r–2v.Google Scholar
Cunningham, A. 1996 ‘The culture of gardens’, in Jardine, N., Secord, J. A., and Spary, E. C., (eds.) Cultures of natural history, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Daston, L. and Park, K., Wonders and the order of nature 1150–1750 (New York, 1998).Google Scholar
Daston, , ‘The factual sensibility’, Isis, 79 (1988).Google Scholar
Dear, P. 1995 Discipline and experience: the mathematical way in the scientific revolution, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Debus, A. G. 1966 The English Paracelsians, New York.Google Scholar
Dee, J. ‘Mathematicall praeface’, in The elements of geometrie of the most auncient philosopher Euclide of Megara, trans. Billingsley, H. (London, 1570).Google Scholar
Dee, J. General and rare memorials pertayning to the perfect arte of navigation (London, 1577), ‘A brief note scholasticall’,.Google Scholar
Digges, L. An arithmeticall militare treatise, named Stratioticos, ed. Digges, T. (London, 1579).Google Scholar
Dobbs, B. J. T. 1975 The foundations of Newton’s Alchemy: or, the hunting of the Greene Lyon, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Eamon, W. 1994 Science and the secrets of nature: books of secrets in medieval and early modern culture, Princeton, NJ.Google Scholar
Ezell, M. J. M. 1984 ‘Richard Waller, F. R. S.: “In the pursuit of nature”’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 38.Google Scholar
Feingold, M. 1997 ‘The mathematical sciences and new philosophies’, in The History of the University of Oxford, Oxford: I.Google Scholar
Findlen, P. 1994 Possessing nature: museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy, Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fissell, M. 1992 ‘Readers, texts, and contexts: vernacular medical works in early modern England’, in Porter, R. (ed.), The popularization of medicine, 1650–1850, London.Google Scholar
Fludd, called his series a natural history in his Mosaicall philosophy (London, 1659).Google Scholar
Fludd, R. Utriusque cosmi … historia, 7 vols. (Oppenheim, 1617–26).Google Scholar
Fludd, R. Doctor Fludds answer unto M. Foster (London, 1631).Google Scholar
Foucault, M. The order of things (London, 1974).Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo ‘The Assayer,’ in Drake 1957.Google Scholar
Gilbert, William On the Magnet [1600], trans. Mottelay, P. F. (New York, 1958).Google Scholar
Goldgar, A. 1995 Impolite learning: conduct and community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1750, New Haven and London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grew, N. The anatomy of plants (London, 1682).Google Scholar
Grew, N. The anatomy of vegetables begun (London, 1672).Google Scholar
Gunther, R. T. (ed.) 1923–67 Early science in Oxford, 15 vols., Oxford.Google Scholar
Hannaway, O. 1975 The chemists and the word: the didactic origins of chemistry, Baltimore, MD.Google Scholar
Harkness, D. 1997 ‘Managing an experimental household: the Dees of Mortlake and the practice of natural philosophy’, Isis, 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helvetius, J. H. The golden calf which the world adores (London, 1670).Google Scholar
Henry, J. 1991 ‘Doctors and healers: popular culture and the medical profession’, in Pumfrey, S., Rossi, P. L., and Slawinski, M. (eds.) Science, culture and popular belief in Renaissance Europe, Manchester.Google Scholar
Highmore, N. The history of generation (London, 1651).Google Scholar
Hobbes, T. Correspondence, ed. Malcolm, N. (Oxford, 1994), I.Google Scholar
Hood, T. The making and use of the geometricall instrument, called a sector (London, 1598).Google Scholar
Hooke, , The diary of Robert Hooke … 1672–1680, ed. obinson, H.W. and Adams, W. (London, 1935).Google Scholar
Hunt, J. D. 1994 ‘Hortulan affairs’, in Greengrass, , Leslie, , and Raylor, 1994.Google Scholar
Jagger, G. 1995 ‘Joseph Moxon, F. R. S., and the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 49.Google Scholar
Jenner, M. 1994 ‘“Another epocha?” Hartlib, John Lanyon, and the improvement of London in the 1650s’, in Greengrass, , Leslie, , and Raylor, 1994.Google Scholar
Johns, A. 1996 ‘Natural history as print culture’, in Jardine, N., Secord, J. A., and Spary, E. C. (eds.), Cultures of natural history, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Johns, A. 1998 The nature of the book: print and knowledge in the making, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, S. 1991 ‘Mathematical practitioners and instruments in Elizabethan England’, Annals of Science 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josten, C. H. (ed.) 1966 Elias Ashmole (1617–1692): his autobiographical and historical notes, his correspondence, and other contemporary sources relating to his life and work, 5 vols., Oxford.Google Scholar
Maier, M. Atalanta fugiens (Oppenheim, 1618).Google Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. 1966 The Cambridge University Press, 1696–1712: a bibliographical study, 2 vols., Cambridge.Google Scholar
Moran, B. T. The alchemical world of the German court (Stuttgart, 1991).Google ScholarPubMed
Moss, A. 1996 Printed commonplace-books and the structuring of Renaissance thought, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moxon, J. 1962 Mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing, 2nd edn (ed.) Davis, H. and Carter, H., London.Google Scholar
Moxon, J. Tutor to astronomy & geography, (4th edn. London, 1686).Google Scholar
Moxon, J. Regulae trium ordinum literarum typographicarum (London, 1676);Google Scholar
Moxon, J. Mechanick exercises: or the doctrine of handy-works (3rd edn, London, 1703), sigs. A2r–[A4]v;Google Scholar
Naudé, G. trans. Evelyn, J., Instructions concerning erecting of a library (London, 1661).Google Scholar
Newman, W. R. 1994a Gehennical fire: the lives of George Starkey, an American alchemist in the scientific revolution, Cambridge, MA. Google Scholar
Newman, W. R. 1994b ‘George Starkey and the selling of secrets’, in Greengrass, , Leslie, , and Raylor, 1994.Google Scholar
Norman, R. The newe attractive (London, 1581).Google Scholar
Norwood, R. Trigonometrie (London, 1631).Google Scholar
Oldenburg, H. 1965–86, The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ed.) Hall, A. R., and Hall, M. B., 13 vols., Madison, WI, and London.Google Scholar
Petty’s, William remarks (W. Petty, Discourse made before the Royal Society …concerning the use of duplicate proportion (London, 1674), sigs. A3v–4r, A8r–v)Google Scholar
Pitfield, A. trans., Memoirs for a natural history of animals (London, 1688), ‘The Publisher to the Reader’,.Google Scholar
Plattes, G. ‘A caveat for alchymists’, in Chymical, medicinal, and chyrurgical addresses made to Samuel Hartlib, Esquire (London, 1655).Google Scholar
Principe, L. The aspiring adept: Robert Boyle and his alchemical quest (Princeton, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Recorde, R. The pathway to knowledge (London, 1551).Google Scholar
Rigaud, S. J. (ed.), Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century (Oxford, 1841), I.Google Scholar
Salusbury, T. (ed.), Mathematical collections and translations, 2 vols. (London, 1661–65), I.Google Scholar
Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. J. Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985).Google Scholar
Shapin, S. The scientific revolution (Chicago, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, S. The social history of truth (Chicago and London, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, G. The hydrostaticks (Edinburgh, 1672).Google Scholar
Slack, P. 1979 ‘Mirrors of health and treasures of poor men: the uses of the vernacular medical literature of Tudor England’, in Webster, C. (ed.), Health, medicine, and mortality in the sixteenth century, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Smith, N. 1994 Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660, New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Sprat, T. Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier’s voyage into England (London, 1665).Google Scholar
Taylor, E.G.R. The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954).Google Scholar
Turner, R. Paracelsus of the supreme mysteries of nature (London, 1656).Google Scholar
Walwyn, W. The writings of William Walwyn, ed. McMichael, J. R. and Taft, B. (Athens, GA, 1989), p. ;Google Scholar
Webster, C. 1975 The Great Instauration: science, medicine and reform, 1626–1660, London.Google Scholar
Webster, C. 1982 From Paracelsus to Newton: magic and the making of modern science, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Westfall, R.S. Never at rest:a biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar
Westman, R. S. ‘The astronomer’s role in the sixteenth century: a preliminary study’, History of Science, 18 (1980).Google Scholar
Willughby, F. Ornithology, ed. Ray, J., (London, 1678).Google Scholar
Wither, G. The schollers purgatory (London[?], 1624).Google Scholar
Woodfield, D. B. 1973 Surreptitious printing in England, 1550–1640, New York.Google Scholar
Young, R. F. 1932 Comenius in England: the visit of Jan Komensky (Comenius) to London in 1641–1642, London.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@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 saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved 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.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please 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 account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please 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 account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×