Page 41 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK
P. 41
AN
EXPERIMENTAL
SOCIETY
Over 350 years on from the Royal Society’s birth,
Patricia Fara reveals how its founder members’
conviction that experiments should take priority over
theories transformed the study of science for good
ow long does it take for Newton claimed that “I feign no
an organisation to Hypotheses”, he was reiterating Bacon’s
acquire a past? prescription that data should take priority
The Royal Society’s first over theory, a principle that underpins
history was published in modern science. At the time, university
1667, only five years after scholarship was dominated by Aristotelian
it rece
H ived its Royal logic, which reached conclusions by arguing
Charter. Since there had not been much time systematically from unchallengeable
for progress, Thomas Sprat’s History of the premises. In contrast, Sprat boasted that the
Royal Society was more of a manifesto for the Fellows “never affirm’d any thing, concern-
future than an account of earlier achieve- ing the cause, till the trial was past… for
ments. Its frontispiece (shown left) optimis- whoever has fix’d on his Cause, before he has
tically shows King Charles II being crowned A 1657 portrait of Francis Bacon, experimented; can hardly avoid fitting his
who did so much to shape the agenda
with a laurel wreath by the Goddess of Fame, Experiment, and his Observations, to his
of the early Royal Society
while his name is emphasised by the own Cause, which he had before imagin’d.”
Society’s first president, William Brouncker. As shown in the coat of arms above
However, these diplomatic hints for further Charles’s head, the Society’s official motto
financial support went unheeded and the The Fellows hoped was ‘Nullius in Verba’ (take nothing on
Society’s most influential figurehead sits on that through authority), although its policy was closer to
the right – Francis Bacon (1561–1626), here Bacon’s pithy edict that “knowledge is
portrayed in his official robes as King measurement and power”. In his extraordinary novel, The New
James’s lord chancellor. Atlantis (published in 1627, after his death),
Trained as a lawyer rather than a natural observation, they Bacon had envisaged an ideal research
philosopher, Bacon posthumously set the community divided into independent
agenda of the Royal Society by insisting that would learn how to project teams that aimed not only to increase
GETTY progress comes not from studying ancient control nature knowledge of God’s physical world, but also
to improve society. Similarly, the Fellows
texts, but from experiments. When Isaac
The Story of Science & Technology 41
