THE ROYAL SOCIETY

RS

THE ROYAL SOCIETY

1660-1800

Project Promethus.

Catalogue of the correspondence in the Royal Society relating to Europe

(1660 - 1800)

As part of the Prometheus Project, this catalogue is a complete list of the correspondence between Britain and the European periphery held within the Royal Society archives. Limited to the period 1660 to 1800, it includes letter from native scientists, British travellers and other virtuosi who made reference to the European periphery in their writings. It gives some idea of the significance that the European periphery and its scientists held within the Royal Society's original discussions.

The various networks of correspondence reveal a fluid culture which in some ways undermines the structuring notions of centre and periphery. The rich mix of diplomatic envoys, itinerant merchants, exiled physicians, naval surgeons and company chaplains who contributed to this crrespondence constituted a highly mobile population. Motivated by forces as varied as trade, education, curiosity, war and religious persecution these peripatetic scientist undid the ideas of national or cultural boundaries. From this perspective, the idea that the scientific revolution was disseminated from the centre of Europe outwards to the periphery, becomes problematic. Instead the question is raised of how the centre itself was constituted. The efforts of Oldenburg, Sherard and Watson amongst others to create and co-ordinate trans-European networks of correspondence, can be seen as foundational to the emergence of the Royal Society at the nexus of the new science.

Compiled by Rhodri Hayward

English

20 files

Writing to Robert Boyle in 1666, Henry Oldenburg expressed the wish that "our society will in time ferment all Europe" with its knowledge. The idea was to maintain a potent hold on both the historical and the scientific imagination over the centuries that followed. It located scientific enlightenment within a distinct and limited sphere(London) and depicted its expansion as a movement into territories of superstition and ignorance.

This Project, remaining loyal to Oldenburg's vision, has sought to trace the migration of scientific ideas from an enlightened center (defined as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands) to the European periphery. However, in contrast to Oldenburg's vision, the Prometheus Project draws also attention to the indigenous cultures of the European periphery, demonstrating both their contribution to the Scientific Revolution and their active transformation of its ideas in local proctice.